Chapter 34
"Good evening everyone, I hope you're having a wonderful night," Matthew stood in front of everyone in the huge restaurant/ function room, "I'm going to bore you with a bit of a speech now, I hope you don't mind. My name is Alistair, I'm the on-site manager. If you're going to be working here, you'll have already met me in your interview and through training, it was a pleasure to meet you all and I'm truly excited to hopefully become very good friends with you all."
He paused and pointed to the table where the RMs were sitting, "Those lovely people sitting down there to my right are responsible for all of this. No doubt you've all heard of them and you know who they are so I won't go into that but I will point out one man, Percival, in particular, who will be helping me manage this hotel from all the way back in England. I am trying very hard to impress him because being fired by my boss on my first night on the job is not ideal."
Everyone laughed and Percival played along by giving him a stern look.
"I know many of you will be staying overnight here with us, hopefully you'll find it comfortable and won't get lost. Although, I must say, I've been navigating this building for weeks and I still couldn't find my way from room to room comfortably. I'm sure we'll get out own page in an atlas soon enough.
"The hotels and centres that we have in the UK had had an amazingly positive impact to our staff, our customers and even the people who have never so much as driven past one of the branches. We really hope to make a similar impact here. We've raised the standards of what should really have always been a basic expectation in any public space. A lot of you have travelled a very long way to be here despite only staying for one night. Our only aim for while you're here is for you to leave with a spark inside you ignited. There is a huge variety of people in this room and many of you would never have met without today. But when you leave tomorrow, you'll all have something in common and for once, not one of you will be considered above or below anyone else. We're not going to say we'll view you all the same because that's the opposite of what we're going to do. What we're going to do is treat you as individuals.
"Ok, I'm going to pass over to Merlin now so he can talk your ears off instead."
Merlin hopped over to the centre of the room. He'd purposefully left his prosthetic leg at the table and not put it on for the sake of his speech. But, to begin with, he didn't speak, he signed. 'Raise your hand if you're understand me,' he requested. Probably between two and three dozen people put their hands up and everyone else looked at them in confusion. Merlin quickly did a headcount, 'Put your hand down if you don't have any sort of hearing impairment.' He counted again and made a mental note of the numbers, 'Put your hand down if you can lip read with relatively good accuracy.'
Every single one of them put their hands down.
'Put your hand back up if you have some sort of hearing impairment, you can lip read but signing is the easiest way for you to communicate.'
"Right, sorry everyone," Merlin said, cutting through the awkward silence which had fallen over the room, "Just collecting some statistics. I have just one more question, how many people in this room would consider themselves completely abled and healthy? Physically and mentally."
"Ok, great, thank you," he took a deep breath, and glanced at Arthur briefly. His husband winked and nodded in encouragement.
"As you can see, I'm not among those who might say they're abled or healthy. Not anymore, anyway. I don't want to make any assumptions but I'm guessing there will be people who have been what's considered to be 'disabled' from the second they were born." He made eye contact with someone and asked, "Did you put your hand up just now?"
"No," the woman said.
"Do you mind me asking why?"
"The left side of my body is paralyzed."
Merlin nodded kindly, "Can I ask, how would you define the word sympathy?"
The woman thought about it, "Understanding someone else's story or point of view and taking it on board to alter your own opinions."
"Thank you," Merlin turned to look at another person, "You said you didn't consider yourself disabled at all?"
"No."
"How would you define sympathy?"
"Feeling sorry for someone."
"Because of what they've been through?"
"Yes," the man confirmed.
Merlin thanked him and addressed everyone again, "Very different answers. Since I lost my leg and consequently went through a lot of changes in my life, I've had a lot of people feeling sorry for me. Oh, if you don't mind," he looked back to the man, "I'm going to come back to you and ask you again in a few minutes. Ok, as I was saying, when something bad happens to you, people start feeling sorry for you. They stop basing their opinions on what you accomplish or don't accomplish on you, and they start basing them on what you've been through. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. If I chopped your hand off then asked you to pick up a bag with only that arm, it would be impressive if you managed it. But if I chopped your hand off and then asked you to pick up a bag with your other hand, I'm not going to be any more impressed than if you'd done it when you had two hands."
"So," he cleared his throat, "I set up a business with a group of my closest friends, to do something which we were all passionate about and to help other people. Erm," he turned to the table of his friends, "Leon," he chose, "When people congratulate you on your success or career, what do they generally say?"
Leon looked slightly surprised at being questioned, "Usually just 'well done' or 'what you've done is good'."
"Right. But what do people say to me? 'Oh, Merlin, with everything you've been through, you've done so well'. He paused again, "If Leon's done well for himself and I've done exactly the same as him, what difference does it make that I lost a leg along the way? Why does that become some sort of clause for success? No, I don't want to be misunderstood or anything, this isn't something you should apply to every single situation. All I'm trying to explain to you is that when people say things like that, they're not being sympathetic. They feel sorry for me." He looked to the man, "What do you think about sympathy now?"
"It's deeper than just looking and assuming."
Merlin grinned in relief. He'd been worried people would take what he was trying to say the wrong way. He'd only been preparing the speech since yesterday afternoon so he was aware that his explanations might not be as clear and thought out as he'd like to hope. "So why did I ramble on about this for so long? This is an opening of a hotel, right? Not a motivational school assembly. How is this relevant?
"Before I started speaking, I asked the people in this room who understood sign language a few questions. Approximately twenty percent of people here understood what I was saying. Of those, fourteen people actually had hearing impairments. Every single one of them has learnt to read lips just to be able to grasp a basic idea of what's going on around them when there's no one to translate. But every single one of them also said they prefer it when people sign to them. We don't ask our staff to learn sign language because we feel sorry for the people who can't hear as well as us. We do it because it's just as easy to learn to sign as it was to learn to talk when we were three.
"I spoke to two of the guests here before we all sat down today and they're willing to help me with this. One of them is blind, the other deaf. They're going to have a conversation."
Arthur stood up, found the person who was blind and helped them so they were standing beside Merlin. Once both the people were there, Merlin said and signed, "Why don't you tell each other about where you grew up?"
Everyone watched respectfully as they communicated. The man who was deaf spoke, annunciating as best he could. The woman who was blind listened carefully and then signed her response.
When they came to a natural stop, Merlin spoke up again, "I'm not sure I should have to explain much about that and why I asked them to do it. People with minimal struggles in their life aren't willing to learn and accept that they need to make effort in order to communicate with others. In what I asked at the start, it's the people who are deaf that learned to lip read because no one else knows how to sign. These two people as individuals have had to overcome issues when no one else was willing to help. And then, they went further still to be able to understand each other. Other's wouldn't be willing to go as far as learning a few simple words in sign language.
"I'm aware that I've babbled on for a very long time when all I'm really trying to say is that it's important for you to understand. Our company exists to make people's lives better but we can't do that if people aren't going to be willing to learn. There are multiple ways for you to understand someone. All it takes is the tiniest bit of effort and I promise, it'll make anything they've been through and any of their effort seem like nothing. You all know how good it feels when someone does something for you. Even the tiniest of favours. Hopefully, this hotel is here as a favour for you and also a lesson.
"People are people, no matter what they can do, see, hear or understand. So maybe try and be a person too."
He couldn't get back to his seat fast enough. People were clapping, just like they'd clapped for Matthew after his speech. But Merlin was scared. He didn't like public speaking, he didn't like the idea of trying to make someone change their opinion. Possibly for fear of confrontation or someone being disapproving.
"I know it's not the speech you planned," he said to Morgana quietly but she just grinned.
"That, Merls," Gwaine said, "Is why everyone loves you."
Merlin smiled sheepishly. Arthur put his hand on Merlin's thigh, conveying a thousand messages without saying a word. They were all staying in the hotel for that one night so they weren't worried about leaving early to get the kids to bed.
At one point, Merlin, Gwaine and Eira were walking around the lake outside. It was hot, stuffy and crowded inside so they'd gone out for a bit of fresh air to calm down. Gwaine had noticed Eira zoning out of conversations and staring off into space so he'd quickly found her an escape. Lancelot ran over to them and fell into step. "People are starting to get ready to go if they're not staying."
"So we have to go and do goodbyes?"
"Percy and Alistair are covering it at the moment."
"So we need to come and help clear up?"
"You guessed it."
"Come on then, Eira," Gwaine ruffled her hair, "I'll race you back."
Merlin and Lancelot grinned as they watched the two chase each other.
"Well, if the hotels flop, at least you have a career as a motivational speaker," Lancelot teased gently.
Merlin rolled his eyes.
"Seriously though, it was really good."
Merlin shrugged, "I rambled a bit."
"Take the compliment," Lancelot smirked, "Really, it was good. No one looked bored."
"Thank you."
"Arthur went up to bed, by the way."
"Is he ok?"
Lance shrugged, "Seemed to be."
"Can I go check on him or do you need me to help?"
"It's fine, go."
Merlin rushed through the hotel to find their room and let himself in. Arthur was standing by the window on the phone, looking serious. Merlin closed the door and sat on the bed to wait while Arthur finished.
"What's happened?"
"Nothing serious," Arthur assured him, sitting down.
"Arthur, we're seven hours behind, here. It's early in the morning at home."
"It was just Freya."
"Why?"
Arthur sighed, "Your mum got a bit confused when she woke up this morning. Or, tomorrow morning, or whatever."
"What did she do?" Merlin demanded.
"They think she woke up through the night and got a bit flustered. Long story short the nurses find her missing and Freya goes downstairs in her house to find her cooking breakfast."
"She walked all the way home?"
"She's ok," Arthur promised, "She's been checked over properly. But she got really upset when they told her what happened. Freya just wanted us to know in case your mum calls us for some reassurance."
Merlin nodded, "She's getting worse."
"It was bound to happen. We're lucky to have the time we did before it did."
"They don't need us downstairs. Can we just go to bed?"
"I'm going to shower quickly," Arthur said, kissing Merlin's temple.
In the middle of the night, Arthur woke to his phone ringing. He groaned and glanced at Merlin who was completely undisturbed and dead to the world. Arthur could just about see his chest rising and falling slowly and make out his features in the dark. Distracted momentarily by just how breath-taking Merlin looked while he slept, Arthur forgot all about his phone until the ringing became enough to stir Merlin slightly.
Arthur grabbed his phone, answered it quickly and then wrapped Merlin up in his arms tightly, stroking his arm and playing with his hair until he went limp again.
Arthur sighed in relief, "Hello?" he said down the phone quietly.
"Arthur, honey, it's me, Hunith. I'm not disturbing you at work, am I?"
"No, no, not at all." Freya had told Arthur earlier that they hadn't reminded Hunith that Arthur and Merlin were away. Of course, they lived far apart anyway but something about them being even further wouldn't have been good for her when she needed normality.
"Is Merlin there?"
Arthur glanced at his husband. "Not at the moment, sorry. Did you need him?"
"No, it's ok."
"How can I help you, then?" Arthur kept his voice low so he wouldn't wake Merlin but not suspiciously so. Hopefully Huntih just thought he was keeping quiet in the office so he wouldn't disturb anyone else.
"Did Freya tell you I'd moved house?"
"I think she mentioned it briefly. Do you like it?"
"I just can't think what possessed me to make such a decision. The rooms are small, there are people everywhere and they won't leave me alone for five minutes."
"I suppose something must have convinced you to go there. Are the people friendly?"
"Oh, they're lovely. Sometimes it would be nice to have a minute to myself, though."
"Everyone needs that from time to time," Arthur said patiently. He quickly checked the time and groaned. They'd gone to bed very, very late but it seemed like Arthur had only been asleep for an hour and a half before Hunith's call woke him.
"You sound tired, honey, are you ok?"
"Fine, thank you," Arthur assured her, "Just there's lots to do, we're busy at the moment."
"I should let you get on," Hunith said, "I'll talk to you later, give my love to Merlin."
Arthur said goodbye and put his phone down. He was glad Merlin hadn't had to deal with that call. He struggled sometimes with his mother's illness and found it particularly difficult when she herself was going through a bad patch. Sometimes he wasn't quite sure how to cope. Understandably, of course. Watching your own mother fade away in front of you completely oblivious to the pain she was inadvertently putting you through, wasn't easy.
Arthur chuckled affectionately as he pulled Merlin's closer into him and his head flopped onto Arthur's chest, ear finding his heartbeat unconsciously. Merlin smiled a little bit and nestled his head into Arthur's chest. Arthur nearly squirmed as his husband's hair tickled his bare skin. But soon he drifted off again comfortable in the huge hotel bed.
