Signs (26 page)

“The money that was put aside for his CI. It’s still there, since he didn’t have to pay for it.”

“Are you kidding me?” Luc said.

Ilse pushed her dark hair behind her shoulder. “No, I’m not kidding you. I already wrote it off for tax purposes. Worked out well for me and for the company too. Nice charity donation. Bleeding heart liberals that we are.”

“I thought….”

“What?”

“I thought that when the company said they’d cover the costs, that you’d….”

“Take it back?” she finished for him. “No, Luc. That money was to help with Caleb’s recovery. It’s still there, unless he’s gone in and taken it out.”

“I don’t believe it,” Luc breathed. “We could practically buy a place with that!”

“Not quite,” Ilse said, rolling her eyes. “But it would probably go a long way toward renting a place for three years. Or four.”

“I love you,” he said, jumping out of the armchair and depositing himself in her lap. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She laughed and ruffled his hair. “It’s been there for ages, honey. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it before.”

Luc pouted.

This changed everything.

With close to seventy thousand dollars in the trust account, he renewed his search, doing the mental calculations as to what they could now afford. They would both have student loans to take care of most of their living expenses, and they’d discussed getting part-time jobs in order to supplement their income and prevent them having to borrow too much in the next few years. Caleb had discussed being a sign language interpreter or teaching ASL, which Luc thought was an amazing idea.

Luc’s school fees would be covered by the money his dad had left. It had been protected, so when the lawyers were dividing up his father’s estate to pay off bills and debts, the money hadn’t been touched. Nor had the funds that had been set aside for Ilse and Jo.

It was funny. In the past few weeks, Luc hadn’t thought about his father once. The nightmares were waning too. He still woke up sweating sometimes, but the horrors seemed further away than they used to be.

Luc attributed this completely to the fact that Caleb was sleeping beside him every night. It was a comforting thing, the weight of another person’s body next to his, especially when that other person was someone he loved. Luc decided not to tell Caleb about the trust and the apartment right away. Being able to surprise him with a new place where they would live for the next few years would make it even better.

L
UC
PUSHED
open the bathroom door, hugely pleased with the clean white bathroom suite and fresh new shower curtain that hung over the tub. It was a modest apartment, nothing flashy, but the exact sort of place he could imagine starting out college life with Caleb. The bathroom was about the same size as the kitchen but on the other side of the apartment, with the bedroom tucked out of the way at the back and an alcove space he thought could work well as an office next to the living room.

The building was a few blocks away from NYU, a reasonable walking distance since this was New York, and everyone walked here. It was a building just for student apartments, although they weren’t dorms in the traditional sense. Each unit was self-contained, designed for one or two people to share.

Luc wandered back through, thinking about changing the color of the paint, if the landlord would let them, and what sort of furniture they’d need to get. A decent-sized double bed was high on his list of priorities.

The realtor was a grouchy woman in her early thirties who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else than showing this kid around an empty apartment. Luc had liked her from the moment they’d met.

“We’ll take it,” he said with a grin.

I
N
THE
weeks after Caleb’s operation they went back and forth to the hospital every few days so the doctors could check on Caleb’s progress. He found it incredibly uncomfortable to sleep with the thick bandages around his head, and those came off pretty quickly, at his insistence, in favor of a smaller bandage that covered his left ear.

With that change in place he felt more comfortable going outside, and they had a chance to explore some of the area around the hospital: little parks that Luc hadn’t been to before, a few cafés, a book shop, and an art gallery.

It felt, in a strange way, like a trial run for the rest of their lives.

Caleb never wanted to venture far, instead preferring to stick to the few blocks between the hotel and the hospital that they covered extensively going back and forth. Ilse came by to see them a few times a week, visiting with cakes and cookies, staying for a while before heading back to her job. Luc’s mom never came.

Caleb called his parents every day to video chat, updating them on his progress and how he was feeling, what they’d been up to during the day. He didn’t mind, but it felt like they were checking up on him.

The CI was already giving him a freedom he’d never been afforded before, even before it was turned on.

When the day came, Caleb woke up so nervous he threw up before breakfast. He brushed his teeth, hoping Luc hadn’t heard him, and splashed water on his face to hide the splotchy color his skin had taken on. There was a car waiting to take them over to the hospital, and Luc held Caleb’s hand the whole way.

This journey was familiar now. They could, if they wanted, walk the dozen or so blocks, and Caleb thought he might like to walk back again, depending on how he felt. It was a perfect summer morning in New York: warm and clear, a light breeze stirring the tops of the trees. The city smelled like car exhaust and garbage, like it always did, but this corner of Manhattan was decidedly more genteel than other areas Caleb had seen.

As they crept through traffic, he watched a woman walking an impossibly tiny dog while tottering on impossibly high heels, a father struggling with three unruly children, an old man wearing a flat cap and tweed jacket shuffling along, a newspaper tucked under his arm. None of these people knew about the significance of this day. No one knew what was about to change.

At the hospital Caleb gripped Luc’s hand hard as a lot of people swarmed around them. They’d been shown into a small waiting room, then ushered into the office that Dr. Spencer seemed to be occupying for the trial. He greeted them with a smile and a warm handshake, then excused himself to go talk to the nurses.

Those nurses bustled in, took Caleb’s temperature and blood pressure, asked him how he was feeling and if he’d eaten anything that morning. He’d managed a croissant—just. Luc was uncharacteristically quiet, his thumb stroking back and forth over Caleb’s wrist in a soothing gesture.

When the time finally came,
finally
, Caleb thought, he was so stressed his fingers were trembling, and he was forced to press his hand flat against his thigh to keep it still. There were far too many people in the room now—Dr. Spencer and Luc, two nurses, one person making notes, another technician who knew how the CI worked, and a few people he thought might be interns.

“Okay, Caleb
,” Dr. Spencer signed. “
Are you ready
?”

Caleb nodded, not trusting his fingers to say what he wanted them to. One of the nurses started to peel the bandages off his head with gloved fingers, the latex catching uncomfortably against his skin. He’d had the dressings changed a few times since the operation, so this procedure was familiar to him.

His ear felt hot when all the layers were peeled away, the air unnaturally cool. The area where the device had been implanted in his head had long since healed, and even though there was some ache around the hole in his skull, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been post-operation.

The doctors had been forced to shave his head in order to fix the device in place, and Caleb had had his hair cut short before coming to New York for the operation so it wouldn’t look so unnatural. He was still playing with the idea of letting his hair grow out, long and shaggy, to hide the CI and the thick white scars that would forever cut through his hairline. Those were decisions for later.

Unlike the hearing aids, which Caleb could and would take out fairly regularly, the CI would remain attached to his body for the rest of his life. There was a hard case that fitted around the shell of his ear and a small wire that connected under his skin to a receptor on the back of his head. It would always be obvious to outsiders that there was something different about him.

Stretching his neck from side to side, Caleb tried to relax. He rolled his shoulders and gave Dr. Spencer a reassuring smile.

“
This is your remote
,” Dr. Spencer said as the technician showed Caleb a small black case about three inches long with dials on the front and switches on the back. It would fit neatly into his pocket and had several different settings that allowed him to adjust to different environments. Dr. Spencer had explained that this was particularly important for someone like Caleb, who had other issues as well as his deafness. If he was feeling overwhelmed or panicky, he could limit the amount of information being sent to his brain, then restore his hearing when he was ready.

When the CI was turned on, he didn’t feel anything. The group of people assembled in the room were looking at him expectantly, Luc included. It was incredibly anticlimactic.

“
Now what
?” Caleb asked, and Dr. Spencer laughed.

“
Now it’s all yours
,” he signed. “
I recommend you don’t turn it up more than about 10 percent at a time, to allow your body to get used to the change
.”

“
Okay.
”

With Caleb’s nod, the technician pressed a button until the screen showed 10 percent in glowing green. Caleb twitched his head. This was similar to when he had his hearing aids in—a disconcerting soft buzzing in the back of his head. He only noticed how hard he was concentrating on this when Luc squeezed his hand again.

Caleb turned to his boyfriend, brow furrowed.

“Hi,” Luc said.

One word, but loaded with emotion that felt like a punch right to Caleb’s chest. Luc looked the same as he always did: dark hair, pale skin, the silver loop through his bottom lip. He’d known all this about Luc, and so much more, but not what his voice sounded like. Not until now.

Caleb’s throat felt thick, and tears welled in his eyes. He didn’t bother to push them away.

“Hi,” he said back.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Dear reader,

This is a story about a young deaf man. When I first worked on the character of Caleb, I knew he was deaf—it was as much a part of his character as the color of his hair or his artistic side. His disability wasn’t added as an afterthought.

For that reason, I couldn’t just erase that part of him when I figured out how difficult it is to translate American Sign Language (ASL) into English. There’s no formal written language in ASL and no standard way of expressing it in written form. Although it’s used in an English-speaking country, the language has its own set of grammar rules and sentence structure which are very different from English.

I’ve experimented with a few different ways of writing the language down, from the literal to the abstract, and none of these work (for me). That is why the ASL you will read in this novel is written as if it was translated into English.

If you’d like to learn more about ASL, please visit www.handspeak.com.

I’d also like to mention that the cochlear implant Caleb receives and the associated trial are sadly works of science fiction. Although research and development on these types of devices continues in the real world, for now this CI will only exist in this book and my imagination.

Anna

About the Author

A
NNA
M
ARTIN
is from a picturesque seaside village in the south-west of England and now lives in the slightly arty, slightly quirky city of Bristol. After spending most of her childhood making up stories, she studied English Literature at university before attempting to turn her hand as a professional writer.

Apart from being physically dependent on her laptop, Anna is enthusiastic about writing and producing local grassroots theater (especially at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she can be found every summer), going to visit friends in other countries, baking weird and wonderful sweets, learning to play the ukulele, and Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.

Anna claims her entire career is due to the love, support, pre-reading, and creative ass kicking provided by her best friend Jennifer. Jennifer refuses to accept responsibility for anything Anna has written.

2nd place winner of the 2012 Goodreads M/M Romance Member’s Choice Award “Best Musician/Rockstars” for
Tattoos & Teacups
.

Website: http://annamartin-fiction.com/

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