“You heard the music box?” Whitney asked her intently, and Emma nodded and spoke more softly this time.
“No song…No Mom…”
“It was your mom’s favorite song, wasn’t it?” Whitney asked sadly, and Emma nodded. “No song…No Mommy.”
“Emma, you can hear me, can’t you?” Emma nodded again. Whitney suddenly wondered if Emma had been hearing for a while, or if this was new. Five months after the accident, her hearing had returned. It was huge.
Whitney led her gently upstairs back to bed and tucked her in, and then went downstairs to clean up the debris. The music box was smashed beyond repair. Whitney put what was left of it in the trash, wrestled with the tree to straighten it, and put the room back in order. And if Emma inquired why the gifts were there that night, she was going to say that Santa had already come by when Emma was asleep. But she had been so upset about the music box playing “Silent Night” that she hadn’t even noticed them.
Whitney also realized that things would be different now if Emma could hear. She would be able to communicate with her without signing. Whitney stopped to gaze at Emma sleeping when she got back upstairs. She looked peaceful and there was no night terror that night. Whitney lay in bed awake for a long time, wondering what would happen next, if Emma would be able to talk now that she could hear. But in the morning when Emma woke up, she didn’t speak. She signed to Whitney as though nothing had changed. Whitney didn’t sign to her, she spoke to her.
They opened their gifts. Emma was subdued and went back upstairs immediately, carrying as many of her presents as she could. Whitney called Bailey on his cellphone when Emma went to her room. He had gone skiing with friends over Christmas and she wanted to share the news with him.
“She can hear,” she said, sounding stunned. She described what happened the night before. “I don’t know if it just started last night when she heard the music box or if she’s been hearing for a while. She acts like she can’t hear me today, but I think she can.” Now that her hearing had returned, Whitney assumed that it would stay, and Bailey thought so too.
“It probably frightened her if it happened all at once. Did the song have any particular meaning for her?” He was excited by everything Whitney had to say.
“It was Paige’s favorite, ‘Silent Night,’ and she loved the music box. Maybe Emma was angry that Paige wasn’t there for Christmas. She seems very withdrawn today.”
“She needs time to adjust, and she obviously remembered the music box, so her memory is coming back, along with her hearing. I think speech will be next. Just let her do what she wants today. I want her hearing tested after the holiday. This is a big step, Whitney.” She knew it too, and it gave her hope for further recovery in the future. Hopefully soon.
“I know,” she said, still sounding shaken by the events of the night before. “I know it sounds crazy, but this is the first big sign of improvement we’ve had.”
“It is,” he agreed. “She may regress for a while after this. These gains are frightening for her. It’s like being carried along by a river. She has no control over the memories that come back to her. She needs to move at her own pace. How is Christmas otherwise?” he asked and Whitney sighed.
“There is no ‘otherwise,’ this is all there is in our life now, her progress and her recovery and her setbacks. Her hearing again is so huge. How’s your ski trip?” She was hungry to hear about normal life. Hers hadn’t been normal for five months, and she wondered if it ever would be again.
“Fantastic, but not as exciting as your news. ‘Silent Night’ must have reminded her of her mother in some unbearably painful way.” Whitney agreed. She wondered if it had brought back some memory of the accident, but she didn’t want to ask her and upset her again. Emma spent most of Christmas Day in her room, playing with her new toys, and seemed very quiet, which in some ways was a relief. Whitney felt drained too after the shock and emotions of the night before. She called Brett in Salt Lake to tell her about Emma’s hearing, and she was thrilled. The noise of children in the background was so loud that she could barely hear Whitney.
Whitney went to check on Emma again after she and Brett hung up. She was eager to get back to see Emma now that she could hear. Whitney stood watching Emma from the doorway, she was looking at one of the photographs of her mother, and then she glanced at Whitney.
“She loved you very much, Em,” she said softly.
“No,” Emma said harshly, her voice too loud in the room. “She went away.” She was speaking again too, Whitney tried not to look startled, and treat it as a normal event.
“She didn’t want to leave you, Emma. She never would have done that to you. She loved you.”
“No!” Emma shouted at her again. “She didn’t love me. She went away,” and then she looked at Whitney with despair and pantomimed her mother texting, just as the police had guessed about the accident. Emma kept texting to show Whitney what had happened. Emma was remembering the accident, or what had come right before. She looked broken and angry as she pretended to text again and again. But she was speaking, and she could hear, and her memory was coming back. Whitney’s heart sank as she saw Emma pretend to text with her hands. That was obviously how it had happened. It was clear now. Paige had been texting and driving, and just like Emma, Whitney felt rage at her sister wash over her again like a tsunami. How could she do something so dangerous? It had been so stupid of her, and was such an incredible waste. And now Whitney knew for sure because Emma had remembered her mother texting.
“I told her no,” Emma said as tears rolled down her cheeks. It had taken five months, but now they knew the truth.
After that, for the rest of the day, Emma didn’t speak again, and pretended not to hear Whitney when she spoke to her. She would only sign, and retreated back into her silent world. Whitney was haunted by what she had said. “She didn’t love me…I told her no.” Emma had taken giant leaps forward, and now several steps back, as she lapsed into silence again….But the words “I told her no” cut through Whitney like a knife.
Chapter 10
Bailey took them out to dinner when he got back from his ski trip, but like Whitney, he found Emma shut down. She wouldn’t look at him or talk to him. She answered none of his questions and pretended not to hear anything he said. She had retreated back to a safe place, where the memories couldn’t touch her again. He didn’t force the issue personally, but the next day he sent her for a hearing test. The technicians cajoled her into cooperating with them by playing games with her, and the results came back that her hearing was acute. She could hear everything said to her, whether she acknowledged it or not. And as soon as she got home, she chose not to again. She preferred silence to talking about painful subjects, or questions they might ask about the accident.
Bailey stayed for dinner after coming to tell Whitney the test results and neither of them was surprised. Emma was showing no signs of her newly recaptured skills, and she pointedly ignored Bailey whenever he spoke to her, so he directed his conversation at Whitney, and took no notice of Emma, on purpose, so she wouldn’t feel threatened or cornered. Now that she could hear, she had nowhere to retreat to get away from them. So they gave her space.
He brought up the subject of TV shows with Whitney, and ignored Emma while they chatted about it, and suddenly out of the blue, she spoke up with her newfound words, which had waited five months to be released, like pent-up birds.
“I was on TV,” Emma commented, and Bailey turned to her in surprise.
“Really? How interesting. Did you like it?” She thought about it for a minute and then nodded cautiously.
“Sometimes. My mom wanted me to.” He and Whitney exchanged a look.
“It must have been hard to remember all those lines,” he said in a relaxed tone, and Emma shook her head to indicate it wasn’t.
“I sing too. My mom wanted me to be in a musical.” It was more information than they’d had for five months, and Whitney hadn’t heard about the Broadway show Emma had auditioned for. Her sister hadn’t had the chance to tell her before the accident.
“I’d love to hear you sing sometime,” Bailey said casually, and Emma shrugged, and then seemed to withdraw again, and a little while later she went upstairs to her room, having communicated enough for one night. Her words were back, but using them appeared to wear her out. It seemed to be a major effort for her to speak, but at least she was able to now, when she chose.
“I wish I understood better what happened on Christmas Eve,” Whitney said thoughtfully. “Has she remembered things that have broken through the trauma, so now she can speak again, or is her brain healing physically, which allows her to speak and hear again? I never totally understand what part of this is physical, and what part is psychological,” Whitney said, musing about the changes of the past few days.
“I don’t think you can separate the two, they’re so closely connected,” Bailey responded. “I think they go hand in hand. Brain injuries aren’t just about physical damage, the trauma at the outset is intimately connected to it.” Whitney agreed with him, it was her feeling about it too.
“What happens to her memory now? Does it come back, or is everything erased by the accident?” Whitney wondered about that.
“That’s hard to predict. She already remembers some things from right before it happened. How much more comes back in the end remains to be seen. She may always have memory lapses. Or it may all come back. She can only remember what she saw before she became unconscious. And we don’t know what she remembers of her life with her mother. She may have lost memory of some of that too. It may take years for her to retrieve that, and it’ll be painful to remember,” he said quietly as Whitney thought about it. “She lost part of her history. We just don’t know how much of it, or if it’s gone forever.”
Belinda was impressed by Emma’s progress too when she came to visit her. She was still having trouble reading and said her eyes hurt, and it gave her a headache when she struggled with it for too long, which Bailey didn’t want her to do. They didn’t want to overstimulate her brain, or cause flare-ups and more memory lapses. There had been no incidents of frustration or violence since she had started to speak again. And the gibberish had disappeared. She hadn’t had a night terror since Christmas Eve and seemed much calmer now.