Page 94 of The Callahan Effect

I nodded.

"I know not testing your voice is easier said than done."

It certainly was. For twenty years I'd imagined hearing my own voice again, yet now that the possibility finally existed, I had to deliberately ignore it for another two days.

The following afternoon he discharged me with a folder full of postoperative instructions, another appointment already scheduled, and one final reminder that recovery depended just as much on discipline as surgery itself. I thanked him with a handshake before Caroline collected my bag and drove me back toward campus in my car, carrying the strangest mixture of anticipation and anxiety I'd ever experienced. One of the nurses she'd worked with for years, whose shift had just finished, followed us across town, and drove Caroline back to Providence Sacred Heart once she'd made certain I was safely inside.

Returning home demanded considerably more acting than I'd anticipated.

Dad wanted to know everything about the conference, asking which surgeons had presented and whether I'd learned anything worth applying during future rotations. Mason was equally interested, laughing as I typed that the sessions had been every bit as intensive as I'd expected and that medical specialists apparently possessed an endless capacity for turning two-day conferences into intellectual endurance events.

Listening to myself invent lectures and discussions that had never happened left an unpleasant taste in my mouth, but I reminded myself repeatedly why I'd chosen the deception in the first place. If the operation failed, nobody else would have endured weeks of hope only to share my disappointment. If it succeeded, then every lie would finally have an ending worth telling.

Two mornings later I returned to Providence Sacred Heart before either Mason or Dad had reason to question where I was going. The swelling had already begun subsiding, although my throat still felt tender enough to remind me that healing remained very much a work in progress. Reanna Thorpe greeted me outside the speech therapy suite with the easy confidence of someone who'd guided countless patients through the same uncertain beginning, while Caroline and Dr. Kershaw waited quietly inside, neither attempting encouragement nor pretending the next hour would somehow be easy.

Reanna explained each stage of the session before asking me to concentrate entirely on breathing. Nothing involved speaking immediately. Every exercise centered on posture, controlled airflow and allowing muscles that had remained dormant since childhood to remember movements they'd long since abandoned. Several attempts produced nothing beyond silent exhalations, yet nobody appeared discouraged. Reanna adjusted my breathing, corrected the tension building across my shoulders and calmly encouraged me to try again.

I closed my eyes, drew another slow breath, and allowed the air to leave exactly as she'd demonstrated.

The sound that emerged barely resembled a voice. It was rough, strained and little more than a hoarse vibration, yet it came from me. Not from a recording. Not from a synthesized app.

From me.

When I opened my eyes, Caroline was crying.

She crossed the room before I had time to react, wrapped both arms around me, and held me with a fierce tenderness that made the tears I'd been trying so desperately to control spill freely down my own face. Dr. Kershaw quietly looked away, giving us the privacy of a moment he'd witnessed many times but never taken for granted, while Reanna smiled through tears of her own before reminding me gently that one sound wasn't the destination. It was the beginning.

***

She proved exactly how right she was over the following three weeks.

Speech therapy became as much a part of my daily routine as attending lectures. Every weekday began with an hour alongside Reanna before classes, and I fitted the exercises she prescribed into every spare moment I could find. Some mornings I arrived at the arena early before Mason joined me. Other days I practiced quietly between lectures, or during the time he spent at physical therapy or completing his own rehabilitation exercises. Individual sounds gradually became recognizable words. Words slowly became complete sentences. My voice remained deeper and rougher than I'd imagined, occasionally cracking without warning whenever fatigue set in, but each day brought another small improvement until speaking no longer demanded conscious thought.

By the end of the third week, Reanna finally closed my file with obvious satisfaction.

"You'll keep improving through normal conversation now," she told me. "Your confidence will probably take longer than your voice."

She wasn't wrong. Learning to speak had proved easier than believing I finally could.

***

Almost seven weeks had passed since Mason's injury by the time Dr. Juneau cleared him to return to non-contact hockey practice. His rehabilitation had progressed exactly as she'd hoped, the repaired muscles around his hip had regained their strength, and although she warned both him and Dad that body contact remained completely off limits for the time being, simply stepping back onto the ice with his teammates transformed him in ways I hadn't seen since before the accident.

Watching him glide effortlessly around the rink that afternoon convinced me the time had finally come.

That evening I invited both Mason and Dad home for dinner telling them both I’d cook. Neither suspected anything unusual. Both believed we were simply celebrating Mason's return to practice. Neither had the slightest idea that by the end of the meal, silence would no longer be part of my life.

Chapter Fourteen

MASON

By the time October surrendered to November, I had become thoroughly sick of being patient.

For nearly two months my life had revolved around timetables created by other people. Dr. Juneau decided when I no longer needed the walking frame and could trust my hip to support me without it. The physical therapists decided how far I could push before stopping. Coach determined which practices I attended and which I watched from the stands, and every time I thought I was finally making meaningful progress, someone reminded me that recovery wasn't measured by how good I felt but by how well my body had actually healed.

I understood every reason but that didn't make living with them any easier.

The trainer's whistle echoed across the rink as the Red Cedars flowed through another transition drill, sticks snapping crisp passes tape-to-tape while skates carved clean arcs into the fresh ice Jack had prepared before sunrise. During the previous week Dr. Juneau had finally cleared me for full skating, although body contact remained completely off-limits until my next review in two weeks. Coach had accepted her instructions without argument and made certain every player understood them.