I got tired of waiting for Emily's return and decided to meet her at her office. The door was open, the only one that ever is. She finished typing on her TTY and looked up at me. "He wants me to come in, now."
"Good. Did he say anything else?"
"He said to remain calm. Try not to panic."
"Hard to do. Emily, this is not something I want to say but if you are miscarrying, your doctor may want to do a D and C. You shouldn't go to your doctor alone. Not this time. If you don't want me to go with you that is fine. Call Jane."
"Jane can't come. I talked to her after the doctor. I need you."
I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for her. My heart was breaking not just because she was probably losing her baby but also because she needed me. I was nobody to her. I didn't know sign that well. She'd never thought of me as a friend. I was a student that found a box that turned out to be Pandora's box and in the process had become something I'm not sure Emily would have wanted 6 weeks earlier. I'm not sure I wanted it either. I didn't want to be her friend out of these circumstances. I wanted to be her friend, as she was mine, because that was what she wanted; however, none of this was what she wanted.
"Okay," I finally signed as I fought back tears. "I'll drive. Write the directions for me."
She wrote out the directions to her Doctor's office, which as it turned out was in the big city that Wolf Lake was a suburb of being. Then she looked at me and asked why I was crying. I hadn't realized that my tears had escaped. "You," I replied.
"You're crying for me?" she repeated seemingly surprised. "Don't cry or me. I'll be okay."
And I knew she would be okay. She'd go back to the life she'd lived before Jack, before the baby. She'd always remember and possibly regret. It would change her in some inexplicable way that she'd not be able to understand until time had passed. She would survive it all but there would be a hole, something missing that could haunt her for the rest of her life. I wanted to tell her it was okay to grieve, to mourn the loss but I didn't want to give up on the little hope that remained. Hope is always a good thing. I finally signed, "I always cry when someone I care about is hurting."
She replied, "I'm glad you're here."
For the first time I actually think she was.
I don't think I have ever mentioned Emily's hearing. It's sort of confusing for me. I always thought that if you were born deaf, got fitted with hearing aids or some other assistive device as a child that you would be able to learn speech and word recognition. I always thought that though speech would be less than perfect and have that Mickey Mouse sort of tone there would be some sort of speech learned. But Emily opened up this whole new realm of thoughts and ideas.
Emily is hereditarily deaf. Her brother was deaf also. When Emily was born she had no hearing. Her audiograms showed a profound loss in both ears. To be profoundly deaf a person must have a loss of 90-decibel to 120-decibel. My own hearing is a 95db loss in one ear to 105db loss in the other. Emily's, I think, she said was at about 110db in both ears. As a child she was fitted with hearing aids, and sent to the School of the Deaf. At the time the School for the Deaf taught Oralism as well as ASL. So like Betsy, Emily was more than likely (she has never told me this part, I'm guessing) forced to learn some speech. Unlike Betsy she wasn't abused for not being able to understand or make the sounds.
The hard part for me to understand is that while Emily probably can voice a few words she doesn't understand spoken language. She can hear people talking with her hearing aid but she doesn't have speech recognition. She can interpret some words and recognize them as being words like ice cream. But in general she can't take what she is hearing and convert it into a coherent language pattern. The most surprising aspect for me is with a hearing aid Emily hears as well as I do with my hearing aids. The difference between us is the Gulf of Mexico in that I have word recognition and she doesn't. Until I met Emily I had no clue that there was a possibility of having hearing like hers. I thought hearing loss was much more cut and dry.
This leads to the land of the Cochlear Implant and its use on children. I don't know how I feel personally about this but I thought I share some thoughts. If like Emily a child is fitted with an aid or a CI and hears sound, is there a likelihood that like Emily they will never be able to interpret the sounds they are hearing into a spoken language and recognize what they are hearing as words and not just sound? Will it actually matter then if the child is fitted with an aid or a CI as a child if it's not going to make a difference in their learning speech recognition? I'm sure my hearing surgeon, who is one of the pioneers for CI, would have a field day with my thoughts.
The deaf world is very anti-cochlear implant especially on children. Deaf (culturally deaf) people say there is nothing wrong with being deaf. They are just a different type of human same as black is a different color than white. They have lives, families, jobs and everything that their hearing counterpart does so why is there something wrong with being deaf? They believe that a child shouldn't be implanted until they themselves can make that decision. The choice should be the child's and not the parents who may be acting out only to make the child like the parent, hearing, thus indicating deafness as being bad and wrong.
At first I didn't understand this mentality. But after learning that hearing aids and CI's might not be able to make speech recognizable as words and also coming to realize that to be deaf doesn't have to mean the end of existence as a human (which is pretty much how I felt about my own hearing and life until Emily and Jane showed me that deafness doesn't have to mean squat.) I have come to at least understand the Deaf (Culturally Deaf again) point of view.
These thoughts crossed my mind as I drove into the city. I wondered if Emily had wanted her child to be deaf like her or if she had wanted it to be hearing. I remember the first time I saw Emily's hearing aid I was shocked because I had thought that all deaf who accepted their deafness wouldn't give a rats hairy backside if they heard sound or not. That was the impression I was getting at least from the reading I had to do for class. So when I saw her aid my jaw flew open. Later when I started talking to Emily I told her I was surprised by her hearing aid. Her reply was "I want to hear." Which I think shocked me even more than the hearing aid did. So much for that book! Knowing that Emily wanted to hear, what would she have wanted for her child? I don't have the answer. I never have had the courage since all this took place to ask.
After we arrived at her doctor's office. I stayed in the waiting room once she had been asked back. The nurse was to come get me when and if Emily wanted me with her. If she had been a close friend of mine I'd have not been nervous but she wasn't. I tried to go back in time to when I worked as a CNA in a nursing home. I had come to learn to detach myself from what I was doing and seeing. I loved to older people I took care of dearly but when it came to bed checks and baths I'd try and forget the things that I'm sure embarrassed them or would have if they had realized that someone they really didn't know was helping them with their daily life functions.
When the nurse came for me I tried to forget whom Emily was. I was embarrassed to tell the truth. She was supposed to be my teacher. I looked up to and respected her. But when the nurse opened the door somehow seeing her indisposed and open to pain and hurt made me really see her as a person. I realized then that I hadn't seen her as a human being. Up until I walked into see her on a table in nothing but a paper sheet and a hospital gown I hadn't thought much about her existence beyond school. That was what my problem really was. I hadn't seen her as real, having love, friends and dreams. Until I stopped putting her on this pedestal I hadn't been able to cope with seeing her as a person. This was real. The pain she was feeling, the pain I felt for her were real. It no longer mattered who Emily was to me. She needed me and I was there. I forgot about the gown and flimsy sheet not because I forced myself to but because it no longer mattered. There was nothing to be ashamed of, not as long as I was her friend.
I stood beside her and rested my hand on her arm. She smiled that wondrous big smile of hers that completely transforms her face so she doesn't even look like the same person. "It going to be okay," I signed just before the came in and applied the conducting gel on her abdomen.
I didn't look at the screen. I stayed so that it was her face I was watching. The doctor was using sign language so I didn't even feel compelled to interpret anything. I didn't watch him either. I didn't want to know all the things he was telling her. Only when her eyes lit up did I look at the ultrasound screen and saw a beating heart. Tear sprung to my eyes then. I did turn so I could see what the doctor was saying after that. It was bittersweet. What Emily hadn't known was she had been carrying twins. One baby was gone; the other lived on. Joy and sorrow mixed into one.
The tears flowed from the corners of Emily's eyes in unabashed streams. Neither of us knew if we were crying in happiness that one precious life had been spared or if we were crying for the child who'd never be.
In memory of Maggie Stephenson, Phyllis Edwards and Carol Kitchell, May they rest in peace.