Lust in Translation (Harbour Point SEAL Series Book 1) Page 15

  “Are you here to fix my fucking hearing?” I ask, tilting my head left and right. There’s a weird fullness in my ears that won’t seem to go away.

  The doctor looks embarrassed and then speaks to Kendall. Kendall walks closer to me, until she gets close enough to grab my hand. Kendall releases me and points at her lips.

  I smirk. Doesn’t she know how much I love her lips? She doesn’t need to point them out. “Do you know sign language? A little?” As she speaks very slowly, her hands are moving in front of her.

  I shake my head. I contort one hand into the okay sign and put my forefinger from my other hand through the hole. The universal sign for fucking.

  She shakes her head, frustrated with my joke. The doctor is grinning and they make a quick exchange I can’t understand, and he leaves the room. “I’ll be fine any second. I know it. It was a big explosion. Can they get me into the ear doctor soon?”

  Kendall’s face is a mask of worry. I hate that I’m the reason. I tell her the story from the last time I was deployed overseas and we were heading to visit a diplomat. The bad guys discovered our plans and they laid an IED along our usual route. All of our trucks and vehicles are armored and we had our dogs with us that day. They located the explosive device, and set it off. It wasn’t a direct hit, but the explosion was at a decibel that made our ears ring for a few minutes. I tell her this is just like that. “Maybe I fucked them up a little worse this time and they’ll have to recover a bit.”

  The doctor comes back in with a white board and a marker and pushes it into Kendall’s waiting hand. She scribbles a note. Her handwriting is sloppy. “What else hurts?”

  “Nothing,” I reply. “I’m just a little wobbly.” I meet the doctor’s eyes and he nods. He says something and Kendall erases and begins writing again.

  “What can you hear?”

  I clear my throat and meet her eyes. “The usual ringing. Tinnitus. It happens after shooting sometimes, or when we’re out by the planes without ear pro. No big deal.”

  The doctor nods. Kendall writes down, “No noises other than that?”

  The urge to lie arises because Kendall’s panicked. “Nothing yet. Silence. My ears feel a little full.” The doctor comes over with his otoscope and looks in both ears. He’s careful not to make a face to indicate good or bad.

  “How is your head?” Kendall scrawls on the board.

  I cock it side to side. “A little fucked up, but you already knew that.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Come on,” she says. I read her lips.

  “A bit of a headache. Earache. I’m telling you, I feel fine. When can they get me in for testing?”

  Kendall is already writing. “They need you to heal a bit before they test your hearing. It just happened. You ear drums are perforated on both sides. The fact you hear nothing might mean you have acoustic nerve damage. It’s a waiting game.”

  “Fuck,” I say. “How long?”

  Kendall shakes her head—eyes slanting down. The doctor says something else and Kendall writes. A nurse comes in and hooks me up to monitors and inserts an IV into my arm. “You need to rest.” The doctor draws the shade and speaks to the nurse. Her back is to me so I can’t attempt to read her lips. Kendall keeps writing, her handwriting smaller now as she has more to say.

  “You’ve said a lot today.” She told me she loves me.

  Her gaze flicks to mine and she presses her lips together. Kendall casts a glance over her shoulder. “Wish I could have heard it. Raincheck? It’s been a hell of a day.”

  The doctor and nurse leave the room and pull my curtain shut on their way out. She flips the board toward me. “The blast on the water side of the building was calculated at decibels far more than five hundred. They think the one on our side of the building was greater. You were really close. It’s a miracle you’re in one piece. Also, you saved me. Again.”

  I’ll ignore the bad parts in favor of Kendall. “Again?” I ask, quirking a brow. Kendall grabs a tissue and wipes at my face. When she’s finished, it comes away black stained. The marker is already moving the second she’s finished with my face.

  “You saved me from myself and then you physically saved me from the explosion. Another fire. I’m starting to think I’m cursed. I will die by fire if God has any say in this.” She rubs at her own forehead while I read.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? Did they check you out?”

  She nods. “I’m fine,” she mouths, or says, I can’t be sure.

  “I’ll hear again soon. Don’t worry about me, okay? Who else was injured?” I can’t see into the hall or listen for conversations, so I’m completely in the dark.

  Kendall scribbles down a few names I don’t recognize and erases the board once more. Employees in the civilian building. “I’m so happy you’re okay.” I rest a hand on her leg. She still feels cold.

  I’m not okay. “Go call your mom and let her know you’re in one piece. I bet this is already ricocheting on every news channel.” Panic strikes. “It was an isolated incident, right? It wasn’t something worse, was it?” When WWIII began, it was a series of organized terrorist attacks that spanned across the world, at almost the exact same time. There has never been more death and destruction than there was on that day. Every single person on the planet felt the sting in some way or another.

  She shakes her hands and makes a gesture with her hand. “No.” She shakes her head and makes the same gesture again. “That means no?”

  She nods, smiling.

  “Got it,” I reply. “Good.”

  Kendall leans over and kisses my cheek.

  “Not in the hospital,” I joke. It was innocent enough. Friendly, if an onlooker didn’t know how hot we burn for each other. She can’t hide the fear in her eyes. I pull her into me and she goes willingly, her small body against mine.

  We stay like that for a long time, but not long enough. She writes another message that says, “Do you want me to call anyone for you?”

  Yes, is on the tip of my tongue. Avery. She’ll see the news and the crazy bitch will go into a tailspin. “No. That’s okay.”

  Kendall stands, leaving a warm spot on that side of the bed, and opens the curtain. “I love you, too, Kendall.”

  I wish I could hear how those words sounded. Actually speaking the truth I’ve hidden for so long. She turns back and tears trickle down her cheeks, sliding over her lips. “I love you,” she mouths.

  I close my eyes, and with my eyesight dark, combined with the isolating silence, I’ve never felt more alone in my life. I understand I didn’t just give a pound of flesh for the woman I love, I gave so much more.

  I would have given it all.

  I should have.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LEO

  THE RINGING FADED BUT the silence has not. It encases me in my own body not unlike skin. I’m sequestered in the confines of my own mind and what those around me are capable of conveying by means of notes, hand gestures, or by trying to read their lips. My parents flew in and stayed at my house for almost four months. My mom kept track of all of the medical appointments and my dad drove me to them. Like a small child, they came together to care for me like they did for Natalia. They only left when the medical appointments slowed to a trickle and I insisted I needed to learn how to do life on my own. Losing a sense after having it your entire life proves more challenging than if you were born with the loss. The adjustments are colossal and everything in my world is affected.

  If you don’t know what hearing traffic or cars around you sounds like, then you always use another sense, like vision, to determine your safety cues. My brain is like what the fuck is going on, bro? We don’t know how to do anything anymore. I’m on medical leave from work, although I’ve already seen paperwork with the words medical discharge scrawled across the top. I didn’t pause too long to consider it because that was before they gave me my dim prognosis.

  Profound Hearing Loss. That’s the kind hearing aids won’t help. That first doctor, on day
one, who mentioned acoustic nerve damage was absolutely correct. Bi-lateral acoustic nerve damage. Damage might be too soft a word. Destroyed completely would better sum up the fucking situation. There are moments of fuzzy static and ringing, but there’s not much else. No voices or sounds I’ve been accustomed to hearing. We drove into Boston for a second and third opinion. One of those doctors said we needed to wait another couple of months before he would assess me, and the other agreed with the Navy physicians, but said there was talk of a surgery that might be able to give me some of my hearing back. It wasn’t in the human trial stage yet. They’ve only operated on rats with success, and the risk of brain damage was prevalent.

  Sunlight filters into my home. I ripped down all of the blinds and curtains in the entire house because I hate the dark now. That which I used to prowl in—used to seek out to conduct business is now just as terrifying as being one of the men whom I hunted. I want to see everything because I can hear nothing. I dropped a spoon on the floor seventeen times this morning just so I could feel the vibration on the floor and try to conjure the sound that is supposed to go with it. It’s demeaning. I’ve lost all of my pride and sense of self. Did the permanence of the hearing loss cross my mind in the beginning? Maybe for half a second. If it were permanent I’d lose my entire life and everything and everyone in it. Why dwell on something that tragic? Turns out it’s as bad as I assumed. Worse.

  The overhead light in my bedroom flickers on and off three times. I groan, and throw an arm over my face. There’s one person who escapes my rule of seeing everything. I wish she were dark black invisible so I wouldn’t know what I was missing. Kendall hops on my bed, the fucking marker board in one hand and a pink capped marker in the other. She smiles wide, trying to disguise how upset it makes her to see me like this. Every day she comes here. Every day she tries to help me. Every day I turn her away—push her into the dungeon of my self-pity. I don’t deserve a woman like her. Not one who is currently finalizing a divorce I helped create.

  “Go away, Sunshine. I don’t have time for your bullshit today. I’ll answer your normal questions before you even ask. No I don’t want to learn sign language and no I don’t want to go anywhere.” I lift my arm to watch her face.

  She frowns and signs, “Please.” Fuck, I’m picking up on it. She’s so sneaky with it that I’m learning when I don’t know I’m learning. I’ve picked up words here and there. Simple phrases and a few letters. She left a poster with the American Sign Language alphabet in my living room. In a desperate moment of absolute boredom, I looked at it. Studied it. Realized how useful it would be to know it. I used to be a pragmatic man, and that won’t go away easily.

  “No, Kendall. Please just go.”

  She writes on the larger-than-life board. “You are a coward. I don’t care if you learn sign language for you because you’re a bastard. I want you to learn it for me. DO YOU KNOW HOW ANNOYING IT IS TO WRITE A CONVERSATION? Learn a bit more for me?”

  “Wow,” I exclaim. “You’ve got teeth today. Who pissed in your Cheerios?”

  She signs one I know, “Your mom.”

  I laugh out loud and her mouth quirks into a grin. She finger spells something in sign language, but goes too quickly. “I have no idea what you just said.” Anger rises. It’s all bullshit. This is fucking bullshit. I want her voice.

  She slows down. “Bog night.” Then, “Warm outside.”

  I look away. Kendall drops a hand on my exposed stomach and runs it up to my chest and back down. She neither needs to sign for me to know what she’s thinking, nor does she need a translator to know what the tent in my sheet means. I take her wrist firmly. Her big eyes meet mine. “Quit it.”

  She smirks and signs, “What?” with her free hand, throwing it out to the side.

  “You’re so coy, Kendall Simmons,” I say, shaking my head. This is what every day consists of. So close to her, yet so far away.

  Kendall takes her hand away from my grasp and folds her hands in her lap. Her face falls. I sit up and scoot so my head is resting against the headboard. If I’m not at a medical appointment, eating, or working out in my home gym, I’m in this fucking bed feeling sorry for myself. “What’s the matter?”

  She shakes her head, erasing the marker board. “The divorce was finalized. Not sure how to sign that so you know what I’m saying.” I watch as she writes and read it upside down. She doesn’t need to turn it so I see it. Kendall knows this. She erases and keeps writing. “I’m officially not a Simmons anymore. Sager. Back to the maiden name.”

  “Are you upset? I’m sorry,” I say into the void.

  She shrugs. “It’s been a long time coming. I’m happy that we’re through it. Adam moved out. I helped him. It’s just Coal and me. It’s lonely, but not bad. The title of divorcée kind of sucks. Starting over is strange. I was Adam’s wife. Now I’m single. Weird.” She finishes writing and shrugs once more and signs, “I’m okay, bog night?”

  “Why do you want a bog night so badly?”

  “I miss you,” she signs. “I miss us.” She motions between our bodies. My heart pounds. How long have I waited for Kendall to be available? Five years? It feels like a lifetime. I’ve wanted to take her for my own from the moment I first laid eyes on her. When it wasn’t socially acceptable for a nineteen-year-old man to look at a seventeen-year-old girl in such a way. Now the moment has arrived, Kendall is perched on my bed touching my bare skin while calling herself single, and I’m so fucked up it’d be a crime to act on my emotions.

  “You see me every day. How can you miss me? I’m really proud of you. It took courage to get through that process, and I’m a bad friend. I didn’t help you at all.”

  She nods and signs, “Yes.” Her eyes tell me the rest of the story. Kendall wants what she’s always wanted from me. More than I can give. She writes down, “I wish I could sign this. It would make both of our lives easier. I tell you every day that nothing has changed for me. What’s it been? Three months?”

  “Four,” I correct her. “I looked at the poster, FYI.”

  She rolls her eyes and writes on, “It doesn’t matter to me you can’t hear. That doesn’t change how I feel about you. I know you hold out hope the damage isn’t permanent, and I hope that for you, as well, but if it’s not the case, then I’m here for that, too. I’m here.”

  “You shouldn’t be. I don’t deserve any favors. I did this to myself.”

  She slams a finger into my chest. The sunlight beats down on her angry face. I don’t make out the words, but I know what she’s saying—rather, what she’s refuting. It’s funny how I can argue with her without knowing exactly what she’s saying.

  “One day you’ll see that I’m doing you a favor.”

  I can read her lips now. “A favor?” she yells, neck straining. “You are an asshole!”

  “Come now, Sunshine, that’s not a very nice thing to say. I’m trying to be honest with you. You don’t want any part of this.” I wave my arm around my room.

  Kendall writes on the marker board like a pissed-off headmistress. “You don’t get to tell me what I want. I know what I want. I’ve known what I’ve wanted since I was seventeen. You are going through some shit. I know about going through shit. I won’t abandon you because you’re not feeling like yourself. Let me decide what I deserve. Don’t you think I’ve earned that choice?”

  My heart slams against my rib cage the second I let my guard slip. I’m weak. The defenses I’ve set are ineffectual when facing the fury of Kendall’s love. Hasn’t it always been that way, though? Didn’t I fall in love with her because of the way she looked at me? The way she loved me? “You have earned much more than a choice in the matter. I don’t know how to give you what you need.”

  “Don’t you realize you’ve already given me everything without even trying?” Kendall scribbles. “That by merely being my friend, you’ve brought me back to life. Maybe I can do that for you.”

  I sigh, catching my breath. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.�
��

  Kendall hops off the bed, a tangle of brown hair swishing as she spins to face my dresser. She pulls open the top drawer and finds what she’s looking for. It’s Natalia’s notebook. My stomach turns when I see Kendall thumbing through the pages. The drawings and poems contained in that book bring me both happiness and pain. She opens it to a page I have turned to countless times. It’s near the back—and it’s a page I have wanted to show Kendall countless times. Gingerly, she sets it in my lap and points. As I take in the quote, Kendall uncaps the marker and writes.

  The greatest love of your life will follow your biggest mistake. It balances life’s scales. There’s nothing to fear. Only love to embrace.

  I can’t believe out of all of the quotes she could have found, this is the one. “What was my mistake?” I ask, rubbing my lips to hide the trembling. Natalia was wise beyond her years. An angel sent for a short time to better the parts of the Earth she touched.

  Kendall wraps her arm around her midsection. “Me,” she says.

  Narrowing my eyes, I say, “And the greatest love of my life?”

  Releasing me, she signs, “Me,” the look on her face tells me it is both a question and a statement.

  I chuckle. “Both? You can’t be both.”

  Kendall looks away, out the window, and nods her head.

  “Say I believe that and the fact that Natalia was sending us a message, what do you propose I do? Everything in my life is up in the air right now. I may not have a job or insurance or a goddamn purpose in life. There are too many variables for me to make promises I can’t keep.”

  Kendall writes on the marker board. “I don’t care about any of that. What’s the point in this moment right here?” She’s bringing us back to the day my whole life changed. A place I don’t visit frequently or willingly. She taps the pen on the question two more times, leaving angry, hot pink dots.