For The Sake of Science

Chapter 2 - A Silent Storm

They sat in the dark bedroom for an hour chatting about the end of their freshman year of High School, their plans for the upcoming year, riddled with countless inside jokes.

Cole was sitting next to Emily on the floor, leaning against the bed Casey, Star, Ian, and Matt occupied. James and Amanda were practically snuggled up on the couch, grazing hands. The room was lit with Amanda's reading lantern, giving it a cozy ambiance despite the unsettling storm outside. But no one seemed to mind. It was nice to be away from home and get a break from the noisy bus. It was rare the whole group hung out outside the confines of school.

The fun was cut short, the warning beeps of Emilky's hearing aids filled her ears. The ones that signaled her charge was dangerously low. Star who had been sitting above her noticed the little light begin to blink yellow. Emily looked up at her with wide eyes.

"Shit," Star groaned.

"What, what's wrong?" Ian rubbed her arm.

"My hearing aids are about to die, and I can't charge them because of the power outage," Emily sighed.

"Oh, I didn't even think of that," Amanda frowned, "How long does it give you from the warning beep till the battery dies?"

"Around twenty minutes, they're five years old and the battery doesn't hold the same charge it used to," Emily could normally tell the charge using her mobile app but had to use her manual settings since she couldn't bring it with her.

"Hopefully, the power will come back on soon," Cole chimed in apologetically.

"Hopefully,"

Emily had been born Hard of Hearing into a fully hearing family. They barely knew what sign language was let alone how to navigate the hearing world with a deaf child. She had a Deaf mentor who happened to attend their small Baptist church that taught her American Sign Language.

She began learning ASL as a baby, was prescribed hearing aids at the age of four, and her elderly mentor passed away when she was only seven years old. Her parents never reached out to the Deaf community to search for another one, instead, they paid for her to attend ASL courses at a local community college all throughout middle school. She sat in large classrooms and at signing socials with students three times her age. Emily somehow managed to absorb the language well enough through her less-than-ideal learning environment.

She started going to a Deaf summer camp in Washington around the age of ten and met many friends. They all lived in California, Washington, Martha's Vineyard, and Texas so it was hard to stay in touch. She never got to visit them any other time of the year. Unlike all those places whichh had large Deaf communities, her small town had a tiny Deaf church with twelve members over the age of fifty. To make matter sworse, she had made the tough decision to take the year off camp to do the internship at the Aquarium.

Everyone in her class growing up knew she wore hearing aids. At her mainstream private school, she preferred to talk with everyone, many forgotting about her invisible disability in the day-to-day.

She could catch most conversations with her hearing aids on but often struggled in louder and dimly lit settings. Even without her hearing aids, she could probably carry on a conversation in a quiet well-lit room.

But of course, she had been thrown into the worst possible scenario with no way to charge them. She tried to brush it off but began to worry about how she would do without them for a while if necessary.

Star knew enough ASL to carry on a level-two ASL conversation, but not enough for full, immersive discussions. Emily pretended that her friend's hard work to learn her language was enough, but deep down it wasn't the same.