Miscellany | Your Left Hand Doesn't Love Me
This post has a personal connection. I hope you like it.
Miscellany (noun): a collection of things of various kinds || A home for: my thoughts; my essays; my memoirs; my writing
The inner door swings shut, sealing the tiny, dead room with a soft suck, gentle as a kiss.
It’s a room within a room, really. Carpet lines the walls and the floor is sprung to absorb vibration. It is utterly silent. Draw the blinds and switch off the lights, and it’d be like being buried alive.
I should be used to it now — we’ve been coming here for years, after all, the one time Jake could be relied upon to not only be present but to take the lead — but today, perhaps because I’m here alone, it seems even worse. I focus on the double window, on the life I can still see teeming outside, the traffic meandering along the main road, the mothers pushing buggies, the office-workers with their suits and mobile phones. Out there, the world reverberates with chaos and noise, but none of it reaches us.
In here there is only a womb-like stillness. There’s even a light by the door that will flash if there’s a fire, since even the hospital alarm’s piercing screech— loud enough to drive even the most stubborn of patients to seek safety and escape — wouldn’t reach us. In here, we’d burn alive.
I watch my daughter rush happily to the audiologist — Cathy, her favourite — who’s already seated at the low table at which they’re both to work for the next hour or so. She’s explained it to me, over and over. The implant works by delivering a tiny electric charge to the innermost part of Hope’s ear, and for each of the twenty or so wires she’s had implanted on each side they need to measure how much charge is necessary for her to just about hear a sound, and also how much for would make a sound so loud as to be uncomfortable. That way they can program her devices so that speech is loud enough but not uncomfortable; so that the background hum of traffic on the street, or conversation in the cafe, doesn’t overwhelm her; so that she can hear the teacher’s voice and understand what she’s being told.
It’s hard work as Hope isn’t quite old enough to sit quietly and press a button when she hears a sound — not for as long as it takes and as many different sounds — so they turn it into a game. And for the whole time, her normal microphone is switched of; the beeps and whistles from the computer is all she can hear.
Hope is unfazed, of course; for her the silence is normal. And for Cathy and her co-worker — whose name I didn’t catch — this is just another day in the office.
It’s just me who wants desperately to escape, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s what happened last night. I can’t stop wondering if Jake is behind it somehow. If — despite the fact I take detours when I go home from picking Hope up and always sit in a coffee shop for half an hour to make sure we’re not being followed — he’s still somehow found out where we’re living.
I sink into the silence. Hope’s health visitor had referred us for an assessment following a routine check when she was three months. She hadn’t passed, but the health visitor explained that there were lots of reasons for that — fluid in the ears for example, or an infection — and asked if I was worried about her hearing.
‘And what did you say?’ said Jake, when I told him. ‘I mean, we’re not. Are we?’
You’re not, I thought, but I’d been having doubts. She seemed to have gone from a normal, noisy baby to being unnaturally quiet, as if she’d given up on using her voice. And there were occasions when there’d been loud sound — a motorbike that had roared into life when we were sitting outside a coffee shop, for example, a door that Jake had slammed during one of our arguments — that had failed to wake her from sleep.
But I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t face an argument, on top of everything else. And so, after two appointments which Jake had insisted we cancel as they clashed with work, I ended up bringing her for the tests alone. The audiologist — Emily — asked me again whether I was worried, she asked whether anyone in the family had a hearing problem and whether I was related to Jake, ‘other than by marriage.’ She asked about the birth and though she was particularly interested in the fact she’d come a few weeks early seemed relieved when I told her Hope’s weight and that she didn’t have to go to special care. She asked about allergies and I told her about my problem with nuts.
Then Emily was joined by a colleague. They sat Hope on my lap and played whistles and buzzes from the huge speakers set up on either side of the room, checking to see her reaction.
There was none. Even when the sound was so loud I had to wear industrial headphones. She only turned when the noise was so loud and so deep I could feel my teeth vibrate in my jaw.
I knew then, I suppose, but it was another week until they repeated the tests and it was confirmed. I begged Jake to come with me and this time he relented. It was Emily again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, though her sad smile had already telegraphed what she was about to say. ‘They’re not the results we were hoping for.’
I looked at her. It was such an odd sentence, and for some reason my mind was stuck, whirring in the mud.
Perhaps they’re trained to break the news like this, I thought. Then it hit me. She was breaking news. Bad news.
I wanted to start again. I wanted to go out, come back in, answer the same questions, do the same tests, but with a different outcome.
That was possible. Surely? Emily was looking at me. I’ve a feeling she’d asked a question, but I had no idea what it was.
‘What…? I’m sorry?’
‘There must be some mistake,’ said Jake, and even then I remember thinking, typical. ‘Can I see someone else? Your manager?’
Emily was unflappable. She spoke calmly, with no trace of defensiveness.
‘You could,’ she said. ‘But I’m the person who’s been working with Hope, and my manager won’t say any different I’m afraid.’ She paused for a moment. ’We’ve repeated the tests,’ she said. I tried to listen, but the words weren’t making sense. I looked at Emily. Smart skirt, flat shoes, no makeup, a cream blouse under a V-necked sweater. ‘And they’re conclusive.’
I looked down at Hope where she played happily on the floor and suddenly felt like I had no idea who she was, or how I was going to give her the love she’d need. When I looked up Jake had begun asking questions.
‘What might’ve caused it?’
‘We don’t know. Hope was born at term?’
’No,’ said Jake. ‘Early.’
He looked at me, as if it were somehow my fault.
‘Thirty-eight weeks,’ I said.
‘And the birth?’ said Emily, and I told her. It was difficult, she wasn’t positioned well and became distressed, her heartbeat was erratic and there was some worry she might have breathed in some meconium. But in the end a caesarian wasn’t necessary, she was delivered with the aid of a suction cup, crying heartily. They checked her and pronounced all well, then put her gently on my chest.
‘Does she have a name?’
‘Hope,’ I said. I looked at Jake. ‘She’s called Hope?’
He nodded. Hope it was. I remember thinking how appropriate it was. She was going to bring us closer together, was going to repair the cracks that had I’d begun to see in our marriage, cracks which Jake told me I was imagining.
I hadn’t realised then, but that’s a lot to expect of a little girl.
V. Good