Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHTEEN
LUCAS
I press myself deeper into the hospital bed, as if the mattress could swallow me whole and hide me from Alex’s presence.
I keep my body curled toward the wall, away from him.
I haven’t moved since I woke from whatever heavy slumber had dragged me under.
His scent lingers in the air, slipping past my defenses and filling my lungs.
I turn my face into the pillow, pressing my head hard into it, desperate to breathe in its stale, cotton scent instead of his.
Life has never been fair to me. That isn’t self-pity — it’s fact. I’ve carried it like an unshakable truth, as if I were born to pay for my mother’s sins… or as if I were the second life of someone the universe still wanted to punish.
I remember waking up in a hospital bed five years ago.
My mother was there, slouched in the chair beside me, her eyes swollen and red.
She spoke, I saw her lips move, but I heard nothing.
Nothing at all. It was as if the world had been turned off.
The silence was absolute, and my mind was too numb even to panic.
She tried to make me speak, but I couldn’t.
My brain refused to form words and wouldn’t push sound out of my throat.
The silence… God, the silence.
At first, it swallowed me whole, suffocating me in its completeness. But somewhere within that suffocation, I found... bliss. I no longer had to hear the world. The shouting. The cruelty. The way people’s voices could stab into you like glass. All gone.
And my voice — I think I killed it myself. Even when my throat ached to clear itself, my brain wouldn’t let it. I didn’t want it to. Staying quiet was easier. Silence made me invisible. And being invisible meant I was safe.
I stayed in that silence for years. But I also remained in the dark pit that came with it, a depression so deep I didn’t function for months after the incident.
Even a year later, I was still sinking. It was Martha who quietly saved my life, who pulled me back into the world.
She was the one who took me to get hearing aids, who signed me up for ASL classes.
I learned to move my hands as if they were my new voice.
But I did it all mechanically, as if my body were just following commands without my consent.
I never went to therapy. Mom wouldn’t allow it. She said it could “complicate things.” I knew what she meant — it might unravel too much, might shine a light on things she didn’t want anyone to see. And if they saw… they might take me away.
I learned how to exist without really living.
When I finally moved out, put distance between myself and my mother, and scraped by to support myself, I quickly learned one thing: the world doesn’t slow down for a traumatized, Deaf kid. It doesn’t care. It will not reach out to you. If you want to survive, you have to keep up with it.
So I did.
I told myself I didn’t need my mother. I wanted her to know I could live without her, even if it meant breaking myself in the process.
My coping mechanism became simple: cut memories before they could take root.
Lock feelings away before they could breathe.
If they slipped through, I buried them deeper, worked extra shifts until exhaustion numbed me, kept my hands busy so my mind wouldn’t have the chance to wander.
I became skilled at avoiding anything that could wake the ghosts.
When something tried to, my brain would push it down automatically, like some twisted psychological immune system—keeping me functional without ever healing me.
It’s like I stuffed every feeling, every jagged memory into a locked box. Hidden, but never forgotten.
But I never forgot that I was worthless. That my only value was being used.
And I made peace with it.
As long as I kept my head down, as long as I stayed quiet, stayed invisible.
As long as I worked and earned enough money to gradually pay off my mother’s debts.
As long as I kept my mind far away from what happened.
And then I met him.
Alex.
The man who walked straight to the center of me and pulled out something I didn’t know I still had.
Something my brain had spent years protecting me from feeling.
My mind screamed for me to stay away from him, but my heart didn’t listen.
Maybe I didn’t really try to push him away. Maybe a part of me never wanted to.
Because he was the first person I wanted to use my voice for.
The first in years.
Even that night in the alley — I was terrified, but not of him; I was scared of what I was seeing him do, yes, but not of him.
The man with the blue eyes who looked at me like I was something sacred.
Like I was worth something.
And I’d never seen that look directed at me before.
It was intimidating.
But I liked it.
That look was the beginning. The moment something long dead inside me stirred, blooming into something I didn’t have a name for at the time.
Being with Alex became another coping mechanism for me.
But this time, a better one.
A place where I didn’t feel alone.
it felt… safe.
Not the fake kind of safety I built for myself over the years—the brittle, temporary shelters I crawled into just to survive, but a safety that felt real. Solid. The kind that made me forget how numb I was inside.
He didn’t know what had happened to me, and that was a relief. I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want him to look at me differently, to see how easily I’d been used. I didn’t want him to see the cracks, the filth beneath my skin. I didn’t want him to see how easily I had been broken.
With him, there was peace and Love—the kind I never thought I’d have, the kind my body didn’t even realize it could crave.
Even when something triggered me, my heart and mind pushed it into that locked box deep inside because I didn’t want to be an emotional burden to him. I didn’t want him to run from me.
And maybe I held onto him too tightly. I fell too deep, got too attached, I let my mind wrap around him like a lifeline, until he wasn’t just a person anymore, he was the only thing holding me up, the only thing between me and the pit.
I loved him. I still do.
And I thought… I thought that would be enough. Enough to let me feel human again. Enough to make me forget.
But now—
Now it feels like I was using him.
Using him to escape the rotting parts of me that I didn’t want to look at.
And the box… It’s shattered now. I can’t seem to fix it and shove the content back inside. My brain won’t let me. It’s like it’s done trying to protect me. Like it’s tired of carrying everything.
Maybe it couldn’t handle seeing the camera.
Or maybe it’s worse, maybe it’s because Alex knows.
He knows what happened to me.
He knows what I did.
And worst of all, he saw me being used like I was nothing. Like, I was trash.
And now I can’t stop thinking that I am not worthy to be with him.
I am not worthy of anyone.
I am nothing.
Bile burns my throat as I press my head deeper into the hospital pillow, my body rigid, my chest tight. The silence presses in on me like it’s trying to crush me alive. I can’t open my mouth. I can’t find my voice.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at him again without feeling this suffocating, skin-crawling shame.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to speak to him.
I don’t even know if I’ll be able to speak at all.
Because the memories I buried, the ones I nailed shut and buried so deep—
They’re awake again.
And they’re loud.
Louder than any sound that I can’t hear.
***
A hand moves through my hair, slow and deliberate, as if trying to coax life back into me. The strands catch between fingers, warm, grounding, yet my body refuses to react. I force my eyes open.
Tyler’s there.
His gaze is soft, but weighed down by something almost unbearable—sadness, worry, maybe a touch of helplessness. He manages a small, strained smile, the kind that’s meant to reassure but breaks halfway through. I can’t even return it. My face doesn’t know how anymore.
My room is dim. I know it’s afternoon, the heavy warmth in the air tells me, but the curtains are drawn tight.
The air feels stale. My blanket is wrapped around me like armor, and I’ve been lying here for…
I don’t know how long. Time feels elastic.
Days could have passed, or maybe it’s only been hours.
“You need to eat, Lucas,” Tyler signs, his hands moving slowly, cautiously, as if my silence might shatter him.
I’m not wearing my hearing aids. I haven’t since the hospital.
The silence presses against me from every direction, thick and suffocating, but it’s also the only place where nothing can reach me, the only place I find a weird comfort.
No voices. No sound. No demands. Just the static of my own thoughts, constant and heavy.
Even though my head is chaos, even though I feel like a ghost inside my own body, I’d rather stay here in this muted void.
I close my eyes, hoping he’ll give up.
But his hand is in my hair again, fingers curling gently, tugging just enough to make me look at him.
His eyes search mine, and I know he sees it, the emptiness sitting there, hollow and endless.
His shoulders sink, and I see it in his eyes—the flicker of distress, the deepening sadness that pulls his features down, his face twists into something more pained. I hate seeing him like this.
It’s the same look he had years ago. The night I came home from the hospital after the surgery, my world already falling apart.
I remember him hugging me so tightly it almost hurt, his silent tears soaking into my shirt.
Later, he told me that while I was gone, he felt like a piece of him had gone missing.
“It’s been two days, Lucas,” he signs now, his movements sharper, more desperate. “You haven’t eaten in two days.”