Signs (24 page)

Caleb nodded. “
It’s good
,” he signed.
“I’ve been reading up on all the information about the operation and stuff. And I can only take one person with me
.” He looked from Luc to his parents, then back again. “
I want Luc to come
.”

His mother was already shaking her head. “
No, Caleb, that’s not a good idea
.”

“
Yes it is
,” he insisted. “
Luc got me on the trial, I want him there. And it’s in New York, anyway. And I don’t want you to have to take time off work
.”

“
I’ll take it as vacation time
,” she insisted.

“
No
,” Caleb said calmly. “
Mom—I’m eighteen. I want to be allowed to do this my way
.”

Caleb watched as his dad laid a hand on his mom’s knee, something they did a lot. He guessed it was a comforting thing. Then Luc’s hand pressed against his lower back, up under his T-shirt. It was the same thing, he realized. One partner helping the other.

“Okay,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I can’t stop you.”

“Thank you,” Caleb said and flopped back against the couch, trapping Luc’s hand. Luc dropped his forehead to Caleb’s shoulder.

I
N
THE
few weeks before Caleb graduated, Luc met most of the extended Stone family. It was strange, at first, being introduced to cousins and aunts and, most importantly, Caleb’s beloved grandfather. They sat in the living room of the old man’s home, and Luc watched as the two had a long conversation in ASL. Caleb introduced Luc just as his “friend,” and Luc found he didn’t mind at all. As he watched the conversation, understanding most of it, he thought that if there was any way his relationship with Caleb would have put a strain between him and Ilse, he probably would have introduced Caleb as his “friend” too. It was okay.

They held hands in the car on the way home, and Luc kissed Caleb’s cheek when they stopped at a red light.

“I love you,” he murmured. “God, I love you.”

Caleb only had to go into school a few more times, mostly to hand assignments in or to collect things from the photography studio. He was going to miss his graduation ceremony due to the timing for his surgery prep, something Carrie-Anne was distraught about and something Luc thought Caleb seemed secretly pleased about.

It was weird, this almost living together, like they were doing a trial run of what their lives would be like in only a few months’ time. For Luc, living with two parents who were so clearly devoted to their son was a constant reminder of how often his own mother failed in her duties as a parent. Luc didn’t hate her for that, but sometimes it was hard not to resent her. Especially when he found that Caleb still had a curfew, and he wasn’t allowed to drink at all, and Caleb had said if Luc wanted to smoke he needed to do it way away from where his mom and dad might be able to see. Caleb’s parents
cared
enough to put those restrictions on him, and he respected them enough to follow their rules.

It was reassuring to know that Caleb was this loved.

At night they shared a bed, and Luc got the impression this was a privilege Caleb had fought for. In the evenings, when Caleb excused them to bed, there were pointed looks exchanged between Carrie-Anne and Mark.

They didn’t have sex, mostly to prove a point.

Well, that was almost true.

Luc bit a pillow to muffle the noises coming from his throat as Caleb sucked the head of Luc’s cock into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the most sensitive bit, then taking more into his mouth. He fondled Luc’s balls and probed in the sensitive spot just behind. He grinned up at Luc, his mouth red and swollen and shiny, and when Luc arched off the bed and came, Caleb swallowed every last drop.

They cuddled before they fell asleep and again in the morning.

Luc realized that this was what had been missing from his life. He was loved. He was so, so loved.

19. HOLE IN THE HEAD

S
INCE
C
ALEB
was a legal adult, he had to sign himself onto the trial without his parents’ involvement. It was the first thing he’d done since turning eighteen that involved taking full responsibility for his decisions. All of the other big life events—picking a college, graduating high school, when he would eventually move into his first place on his own, that was all stuff that his parents had had some influence over. This was his decision.

And it scared the crap out of him.

They sat—Caleb, Luc, and Dr. Spencer—in a small room in a private hospital on the Upper East Side. It was simply but tastefully decorated, and Caleb felt like he was in way, way over his head.

“The new implant differs from the CI’s on the market currently not in how it works but in how it’s activated,” Dr. Spencer said. “When the device is installed, it’s set at 0 percent, which means you won’t be able to hear anything with it at all. The user has full control over the device and its settings, which allows you to control what messages are sent to your brain.”

Caleb nodded, knowing most of this from the material he’d been given to read already. To his surprise, Luc was nodding too. He wondered when Luc had found the time to read it all.

“The exciting part about this model in particular is the manual override,” Dr. Spencer continued. “If you’re having a bad day or feeling nauseous or dizzy, you have the ability to turn down the amount of information the CI will send to your brain. You can change the setting depending on the situation—for example, you’d want a different setting for having dinner in a restaurant than you would at a rock concert. In theory, you could turn it off altogether, although from a recovery point of view, we discourage this.

“We’ll give you a remote when you’re discharged, and from there you’ll be able to have total control over your CI.”

They were only fitting the CI to one of Caleb’s ears, the left one, since he had the most residual hearing in his right ear. It would take time for him to adjust to how that affected his senses and depth perception.

Caleb had learned that he was the youngest person in the trial by quite a few years. That had surprised him. Mostly the doctors preferred to give younger deaf children CIs—they could adapt much more easily than adults—so this trial was unusual in taking so many older patients.

Caleb could understand the controversy around the attempts to make deaf kids hear again. Being deaf gave him a different perspective on life and a different way of seeing the world around him. If things were different, if he could express himself and communicate and make friends the way other deaf people could, if he could be part of the culture and community, then maybe he wouldn’t be seeking the cochlear implant in the first place.

He had been playing the what-ifs over in his head for the past year, almost since the idea of a CI had first been presented to him. What he wouldn’t know, not until it was all over, was if his life would actually be any better when he could hear again.

The pre-op tests and preparation took a few hours, and Caleb got bored signing his name on one release form after another. He’d read them all in painstaking detail before they’d come to the hospital, wanting to make sure he had all the information before they started. There had been ample opportunity to back out too. Dr. Spencer had met with him a few times to give him that chance.

When it was time, Caleb shuffled down on the hospital bed, IV lines already connected to the back of his hands, the open-backed gown uncomfortable under his butt. Luc leaned down and kissed him once, twice, then squeezed Caleb’s arm before stepping away.

“I’ll see you later,” Luc said.

Caleb made the “I love you” sign and felt sick.

Luc signed it back and pressed his hand to his stomach as an orderly wheeled Caleb down the hall toward the operating room. He didn’t want Caleb to know how nervous he was, how emotionally fragile. Caleb nodded and lifted a hand in a halfhearted wave.

I
T
WASN
’
T
until he was outside the unit, down the hall in the family room, that he let himself fall apart, sinking into a chair, burying his face in his hands, and sobbing until his throat was raw.

“He’ll be okay, you know,” a voice said from the door.

Luc looked up in shock and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

“I know,” he said. “Doesn’t stop me worrying, though.”

“No,” the girl said, coming in to sit down on another couch. She slipped her shoes off, revealing bright pink toenail polish, and tucked her feet up underneath herself. At a cursory glance, Luc guessed that she was probably in her late twenties. She wore a wedding ring.

“Are you here with the trial?” Luc asked as he wiped the black smudges away from his cheeks.

“Yeah,” she said. “My husband is on the list for today.”

Luc reached for a box of Kleenex, discreetly placed on a side table, and tried to use one to do a better job of cleaning the makeup running off his face than his hand was currently managing.

“How long has he had to wait for a CI?” Luc asked to make conversation. This person was going through the exact same thing as him; the least he could do was be nice to her.

“About thirty years,” she said with a wry grin. “I’m Katie, by the way.”

“Luc.”

She nodded. “Who are you here with?”

“My boyfriend,” Luc said without hesitation. “It’s weird to think that it’s not just me and him, you know? There are other people who are in the same situation.”

“Yeah. It’s too easy to get caught up in everything. You forget about everyone else on the trial. How long have you been with your boyfriend?”

“A few months. We met online.”

Katie laughed. “Yeah, me and Jeff did too. He always said it was impossible to meet women.”

“Well, you know what they say about gay men. Dating is like getting a job—you either have to do it online or by referral.”

“I’m not sure that straight dating is much different.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Katie hummed noncommittally.

“Jeff said for years that he wasn’t interested in getting a CI. It was too much hassle, and he didn’t want the operation.”

“What changed?”

“This device, I think,” she said. “The promises of an easier recovery, better control over it all, less of the side effects that can go on for years with a regular CI….”

Luc nodded. “Caleb could have gone for a regular model too. I really hope this one works as well as they’re promising. His family is from Boston, so the only person he has to help him is me….”

“Really? How old are you?”

“We’re both eighteen. I live here, in Ridgewood, Queens, but we’re going to stay in the hotel with everyone else because of monitoring for the trial.”

“Yeah. We live in Maine; had to come all the way down here.”

“Did you have to take time away from your job? We’re hoping to get it all done before we start college this fall.”

“I’m a teacher,” Katie said with a smile. “Jeff is too. The trial being over the summer is the best thing that could have happened for us, since we can both take the summer off.”

Luc blew his nose and leaned back in the chair, feeling the edges of a headache starting to creep around his eyes. He wished Ilse was there.

“What do you think it’s like for them?” he asked, his voice lower now, almost a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Katie said. “I used to think about it a lot. The only people who can sympathize are other deaf people. I guess that’s why there’s such a big deaf community.”

“Yeah, Caleb hasn’t really ever been part of a community.”

“Wow. That must make it even harder. I know Jeff says it’s one of the few places he feels like he can just be himself.”

Luc shrugged and wondered how much he should tell this almost-stranger. The fact that she understood—or seemed to understand, anyway—urged him to continue, to get all of his worries off his chest.

“Caleb’s always been pretty isolated, I think,” Luc said. “He has communication problems… he’s getting so much better, though. We’re hoping this will help even more.”

“I don’t know how much this is going to change Jeff’s life,” Katie said. “I want to think that it makes his quality of life better, rather than his life as a whole. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Luc said softly. “We haven’t been together for that long, but things have already changed so much. It’s scary. I don’t want to think about what’ll happen if this doesn’t work out the way we planned.”

Panic started to claw at his chest again, the same panic he’d been so successfully shoving down and hiding for weeks now. Being the strong one was difficult. It felt like he’d been on edge, waiting to be there in case Caleb needed to break down.

“Hey,” Katie said. “You’ll be fine. They’re not the first ones to get this. It’s version two. They’ve already made improvements from where they were a year ago.”

“I know,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t worry, though.”

She huffed a laugh and rubbed at her face, then stood and slipped her feet back into her shoes.

“Do you want to go get coffee? It’ll be hours before we know anything.”

Torn between waiting and worrying and going for a drink with his new friend… Luc decided to be brave. Caleb had always been stronger than people gave him credit for. Luc had been saying this for ages. It was time to let go, just a little bit.

“Yeah,” he said, unfolding himself from the chair. “Is, um… is my face okay?”

She looked at him carefully, clearly amused. “You’re fine.”

“Thanks.”

T
HE
OPERATION
took almost four hours, during which Katie caught Luc up on what had happened between meeting her future husband online and actually marrying the guy, and Luc filled her in on what it was like being a gay teenager in 2015.

He found out she was pregnant, but barely so. Even when she pressed her shirt flat against her stomach there wasn’t much of a bump. Trying for a family had been what gave Jeff the final push to put himself forward for the trial.