Chapter 16: The Right Side

The audiologist's waiting room on Exchange Street had six chairs and a fish tank.

Winslow took the chair on my right without being told.

He sat forward on the edge of it, because his back was still dressed, and he held his hat in both gloved hands.

"You don't have to be here," I said.

"You said no more secrets."

"I said I'd tell you. I didn't say you had to come."

"I wanted to see where you hear from."

The investigator had taken his statement the day before.

She had played the second file twice, and then she had told us to keep our heads down until Monday.

I had not slept much.

I had made this appointment two years ago, and I had cancelled it three times.

Each time Winslow had said the same sentence.

"You don't need surgery. You have me."

The audiologist called my name.

She was a small woman with a clipboard, and I knew her now, because I had cried in her office once over a ninety-dollar bill.

"Come on through, both of you," she said. "Mr. Wentworth, you're welcome to sit on her good side."

"Her right," said Winslow.

"He's learning," I said.

The booth was a small padded room with a window.

I put on the headphones and raised my hand every time I heard a beep.

On the right, I raised it all the way down to the quietest tone.

On the left, I raised it for nothing, and I watched my hand rest in my lap.

Winslow stood at the glass with his hat crushed in his fist.

When it was over, the audiologist turned her screen toward me.

"Here is your left ear," she said. "The nerve is intact. You're a candidate for a cochlear implant, and with your history, a good one."

I said, "How good?"

"It won't make it the ear you had before the fever. You would hear sound on that side again. You'd know where a voice came from."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Divorced, Yet He Can't Let Me Go from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.