Leap of Faith by Cassidy Shay (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

At first, I wasn’t sure what it was. It had been so long since I experienced anything like it, it took a long time for me to recognize what happened.

I was hearing.

It started as a low static, which fizzed out at first. I almost thought that I was imagining things, but then it happened again, and words slowly formed. Before I knew it, I heard a loud guitar through the radio.

That was almost two whole minutes ago. And it hasn't gone away. I look at my older sister in the driver’s seat, completely oblivious to what’s going on. Her thumb is playing a beat against the steering wheel, and for the first time in almost ten years, I can match the beat with the song.

“Lisa,” I say. I can’t hear my voice. But she turns her head, showing that she can hear me. “Lisa, I can hear the song.”

She turns back to the road for a second, and then her head snaps back to look over at me. “What do you mean, you can hear it?” She makes sure to face me directly, so I can see her lips move. Not really a good idea while she's driving.

“I mean I can hear the music. This song…” I pause for a minute, seeing if I can recognize the song. “Amazing Grace.” She puts her blinker on and pulls over to the side of the road. “Amia, how can you hear the music?” I shrug. “Can you hear my voice?” I shake my head.

“I can hear the song. That’s it.” She turns the radio off and I’m enveloped in silence. I strain to hear something, but nothing comes. Not even static. I watch as she presses the button, changes is to a different station. She looks at me, and I shake my head. Nothing. She flips through the rest of the stations, until we land on 104.3, the station she was originally listening to. I smile and simply nod my head.

“Is it clear? Staticy? How well can you hear it?”

“It’s like I never stopped hearing. Clear as everything used to be.” She doesn't say anything else, just stares at me, and I stare back at her. I guess neither of us knows how to react to this. I keep staring at her, and then it hits me. I can hear the radio. Not knowing what else to do, I reach over and turn the volume up. I lean back and close my eyes, and enjoy the music. Lisa shakes as she pulls back onto the road, but doesn’t say anything. We drive back to the house without saying a single word. Lisa seems to be on auto-pilot, not really seeing the road in front of her.

We get to my house a few minutes later, and Lisa turns off the car, extinguishing the notes and words. She sits there for a second, staring out the windshield. “Amia, this is a miracle.” Of all our broken family, Lisa is the only one who really has faith in God anymore. Too many things, too many people have been taken away for the rest of us to really, truly believe.

I roll my eyes. “My ears are probably just healing. It’s about time, too.” I hope she doesn’t immediately see how crazy that sounds. I know that they aren't healing. Not after ten years. But I'm not about to give credit to some "higher power" that abandoned me along with my hearing and my father. No, thank you. 

I get out of the car and go towards my room. I don’t bother going to tell my mom what happened. I figure it probably won’t happen again, so why bother with it? I shouldn't have said anything to Lisa in the first place. As I pull my door open, I notice my hands shaking violently. Once my door is closed, I chew on my hair. What if she’s right? Is this a miracle? 

A couple minutes later, my mom bursts into my room. “Come on, Amia. We’re going to the doctor.” I consider arguing with her, telling her that it's nothing, just a fluke, we can all just forget about the whole thing. But I know it's no use. So I follow her down the stairs to the kitchen, where Lisa hands her the car keys. 

We get into the car, my mom driving and Lisa in the front. I, of course, am stuck in the back seat. Lisa turns on the radio and I hear a voice talking. “…was Hero, by Skillet. Thanks for listening, everyone. Email, text, or call in your requests. Here’s Need You Now, by Plumb.” Lisa watches my face for a reaction, but I don't have much of one. At least not on the outside. How am I supposed to react? What would be a normal reaction to this? I just nod and smile, unsure of what else to do.

Once we get into the hospital, I finally let the importance of this sink in. I. Can. Hear. After ten years of being completely deaf, I can hear the music.

An hour later, I’m in a room waiting for the doctor to get back with my results. My mom is holding my hand and Lisa is flipping through a magazine. I strain to hear the pages move, but I only hear silence.

The door opens and my doctor comes in. He’s frowning as he looks at his chart. “This is certainly interesting.” He puts the chart on the counter, but still looks at it for a few more seconds before facing my mom and I. “Unfortunately, the holes in your eardrums haven’t healed any more than they had last time you were in here. It probably won’t get any better, or else it would have started healing by now.” He smiles a little. “That accident really did some damage.”

I scowl at the floor. Ten years ago, I’d been in the car with my aunt on the way to the grocery store. While we were on the bridge that cut through town, a big pick-up had tried to come over into our lane without looking to see that, yes, there was a car in his blind spot. To get out of his way, my aunt had tried braking, but seeing the car directly behind her, she knew it wouldn't work. She swerved the car to the right, and we drove off the bridge, into the freezing cold water.

Before the car hit the water, my aunt had already unbuckled my seatbelt and started rolling the window down so that I could get out. A rush of water came into the car, and in seconds, it hit the bottom. The water was deep enough that the change in pressure caused my ear drums to burst, and I went deaf. The last thing I ever heard was my aunt telling me that she loved me. Well, the last thing until now, I guess. 

My aunt died in the crash, and I don’t remember how I got out of the car. I must have blacked out, and someone rescued me. I don’t know. I never asked anyone about it. I don’t talk about that day.

Afterwards, I learned to read lips, and I learned sign language. I very rarely use sign, though, because I still know how to form the words, I just can’t hear them. Early on, the doctor told me that there was a chance that the holes would close up and I could regain my hearing. As time wore on and no progress was made, they began to lose hope. I did too. An injury doesn’t wait years to start healing.

I turn my attention back to the doctor, so I can see if he has anything more to say. “But you said you could hear the music?” I nod. “Well…” he exhaled slowly, clearly confused.

“I have no explanation for this,” he finally says. “No medical, explanation, at least.”

My mom perks up. “What do you mean, no medical explanation?” She’s talking to the doctor, but she faces me, so that I know what’s going on. It’s something that she does on instinct now, because, after a few months of being deaf, I got sick of being left out of most of the conversations. It's just one of the many ways that my family has learned to adjust over the years. 

The doctor is completely serious as he answers her, but a smile plays with his eyes. “God has big plans for you, Amia.” He looks at me for a minute, and then gets up and leaves.

We stay in the room for a few more minutes, thinking about everything that the doctor just told us. And no matter how much I think about it, none of it makes any sense.

Finally, my mom picks up her purse. “Well, let’s go. I have to get dinner ready.” She seems calm, but I know that it’s all an act. On the inside, she’s screaming. This is how she always reacts; she just doesn't. And then one day, when it finally sinks in, she'll just be a different person. Completely.

In the car, Lisa turns the radio on. I hear the ending notes of a song, and then I hear someone talking. It’s the same voice that introduced the song on the way to the hospital. It’s a beautiful sound, deep, but I know that this man is young, my age or a couple years older.

“It’s good to be back, guys. I was gone for the last three days, but I’m back in the studio to play some Christian rock for you guys. Here’s Breathe into Me by Red.”

The strange music starts, only to become the chords of a guitar. Immediately, my head starts to nod a little and my foot taps the floor of the car. The instinct, this urge to move with the music in some way, shape, or form, comes back to me even after all these years. I try to listen to lyrics, but my mind won't focus on one thing or another. The abundance of sound is too much for me to try to control my focus. So I stop trying, and just listen to the music as a whole. I can still feel the vibrations of the music, which, for so long, was the only way I knew that music was even playing. But now, I can associate each vibration with a noise, a note, a word, so that it all fits.

By the end of that song, I remember exactly what I’ve been missing all these years.

A couple more songs play before we get to our house. As soon as the car is at a stop, I run in the house and sit next to the radio on our kitchen counter. We hardly ever use it, but I’ve never been so grateful to see it there.

I turn the radio on to the right station, and I hear the beginning of a song. I lean against the counter, close my eyes, and let my hearing lead me to a new place.

I listen to the words of the song, loving every second of it. I can't believe I missed out on this for so long. The music fills my head, forces a smile onto my face. It's a smile I haven't used in a long time. Pure, complete joy.

I listen to the radio for another hour and the sound doesn’t go away, like I thought it would. After a while, the music stops and I hear the voice again. “It’s time to start winding down for the day. It’s that time of the day when I start taking calls. Give me a song request, chat a little, whatever.” He lists the phone number, and I grab the cordless phone.

My mom and sister watch me, not quite understanding what I’m doing. They don’t understand my need to thank this person.

I hand the phone to my mom after hitting send. “I won’t be able to hear if he’s on the phone with me.