Six Letter Word [Kaylor]

March 2017 (Part 2)

I began to think, as March wore on, that I might lose it. I was bored out of my mind, but anytime I tried to do anything more taxing than watching TV, I'd get so exhausted I had to take a nap. It was more than two weeks before Karlie would let me shower without her at least in the bedroom so I could yell if I was going to pass out or something. I went back into the music room only once those two weeks, to determine that my destructive rage had done serious damage to only one guitar, though a couple would need new strings. The patch Karlie and Jack had made in the wall looked pretty good, most people wouldn't be able to see it unless they knew where to look. I was still embarrassed that I'd freaked out like that in front of Jack, even though he claimed it was fine and no hard feelings even though I tried to murder him with a water bottle.

I'd spent some time chatting with friends, and my family had stopped in to see how I was doing. It had been nice to just spend some time the five of us. I caught them all sneaking glances, I think just confirming that I was really still there. That I was really okay. Austin struggled a lot with how I'd changed. All along, our whole lives, even though he's my younger brother, he's always been my protector. He couldn't protect me from cancer, and he couldn't protect me from the infection, and he couldn't protect me from hearing loss. My parents were the same, though they handled it better. They told me that parents always want to protect their kids from everything that might hurt them. That maybe one day Karlie and I will know what that's like. But they can't. And although it hurt to watch me struggle, and have to mourn the loss of something I used to take for granted, they were thrilled that I was around to have to mourn that loss. Nobody said it, but I knew they were all picturing the alternative. Without the antibiotics that stole my hearing, they would be mourning the loss of me, rather than it.

Austin and I had a heart to heart on the rooftop, just the two of us, Mom, Dad and Karlie giving us some space. It was hard for him to admit how scared he had been, how much he'd thought he might lose me. It was difficult to listen as he explained all the things he'd thought about at my bedside. The idea that he wasn't going to get a niece or nephew. Trying to be the strong one for Karlie and Mom and Dad if they lost me. The music the world would never get to hear. I had no idea my baby brother had such a capacity to be morbid, or such a vivid imagination, but he couldn't do much else while I hovered on the razor-thin line between life and death. I had such fuzzy memories from that time. Just snippets of conversation and crazy dreams. But I didn't have any memories of the sorts of dreams that reflect having crossed over. I hadn't seen my grandmothers, for example, or a bright white light, at least not that I remembered. There have been so few times that I've seen my baby brother cry, but he did that day on the roof, letting out the fear and relief. It was healing for both of us I think, to get to talk it out. He was curious about my hearing loss, what it was like, and I didn't really know how to describe it. On my left, it was like I was wearing a very good earplug that blocked almost everything. Really loud noises could still get through, but even those were muffled. On the right it was more like when your ears haven't popped after a particularly long flight, like to Australia. You can hear, but it sounds weird, and you sometimes have to work harder to comprehend. Except mine were never going to pop and go back to normal. I shuddered a bit to think about what a plane flight might do to me.

Karlie didn't ask what we'd talked about, but she gave me a long hug when we got back down, knowing from our faces that it had been a hard one. Dad didn't stay long. He and Mom had spent the most time together over the last few weeks that they had in years, so I wasn't surprised that now that the danger was gone, they weren't really into continuing to be in the same space. Mom and her boyfriend seemed to have quietly ended, and it wasn't a conversation I was up to have, maybe ever, with her. I wanted her to be happy, of course, and Dad too if he found someone, but even with as long as they'd been split, it still seemed weird to me to picture them with other people. They've always been good about spending time together for us, be it holidays or big events like Austin's graduation, but other than that time at Thanksgiving when they worked together on the candy turkeys, they mostly avoided each other. Still, I knew if I needed him he'd be back in a second.