Chapter 6
"Hello, how can I help you?"
"Hello, my name is Jason Morgan, my girlfriend, Samantha McCall, has a 10 o'clock appointment with Dr. Clars."
"Right, let me sign you in quickly," the young receptionist dutifully typed away at her computer before grabbing something besides her. "Ok, the doctor knows she's here. If you could have a seat and fill out these forms, that'd be great." She handed the brooding man a clipboard and simple black pen.
"Thank you." Jason turned around and grabbed Sam's hand, bringing her over to the beige, boring and generic seating area.
"How long?" Sam asked, rather loudly as was now usual, disrupting the disgruntled and nervous air of the waiting room. Jason gave her a small signal, waving his hand ever so slightly to discreetly tell her to speak softer. She understood.
"I don't know, I didn't ask," Jason spoke into his phone, handing it over to her when the transcription was complete. "Not long I think," he hoped. He was regretting drinking his several cups of coffee this morning but with Scout having been colicky the last few days from teething, it was hard to keep his eyes open. And now his bladder was protesting.
Sam reached over to the coffee table, taking one of the month-old Crimson magazines, and began casually flipping through it. She wasn't sure what to expect from this appointment. The doctor had already told her that her hearing probably wouldn't return so she certainly tried to not get her hopes up. This was simply a check-up. To ensure that she was healing well and there wasn't anything else going on. Nevertheless, it was hard to keep her hopes at bay at times.
Meanwhile Jason tried to keep his mind from his bladder but with someone getting a cup of water from the nearby water container, he knew he wouldn't last.
"I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'll be right back," he signaled to Sam and she nodded in response. He got up, giving one last glance over to Sam and then headed to the hallway.
Sam sat quietly, occasionally looking up as someone passed by her before looking back down at her magazine. There was nothing particularly amusing about the magazine. She was never one to bemuse herself with the latest fashion trends or latest celebrity news.
Soon enough, Jason returned, casually taking a seat next to Sam again. "Has anyone called you, yet?" he asked regarding the appointment. Sam shuck her shoulders. He realized his dumb question and he felt like an idiot. How would she know if someone's called her?
"I'll be right back," he said, and he got up to walk over to the nurse's desk.
"Excuse me, has anyone called for Samantha McCall?" Jason asked. The nurse looked up with an annoyed expression plastered on her face.
"Sorry, you have to be patient. We'll call you when the doctor is ready. Please wait your turn like everyone else," the nurse replied unsympathetically as she went back to looking busy. Jason's fist clenched. He was certainly to have a conversation with his mother about this receptionist.
"I'm sorry but my wife is deaf, she may not have heard if someone came out and called her name. Now," he paused for emphasis, "can you please tell me if someone called for Sam?" He was careful to keep his temper.
The receptionist rolled her eyes in reply but looked anyway. "Yes, they called. She's in exam room 4, I'll have a nurse here show you the way." She said defeatedly.
A nurse came walking behind the desk while Jason signaled for Sam to come over. They followed the nurse through double doors and into a hallway. "I'm so sorry about that. She's new here. I'll make sure that doesn't happen again."
"Thank you," Jason appreciated the gesture. He had been confused as to why there wasn't a better system of calling patients in an ENT office, but alas, perhaps, they did and no one bothered to tell the newbie.
The nurse opened an office door and allowed the couple to walk. "Make yourselves comfortable, the doctor will be right in," and she left, closing the door behind her.
"Are you okay?" Jason asked, noticing Sam rubbing the palms of her heads together.
"Yes," she answered simply. Jason gave her a small stare. "I'm a little nervous." She changed her answer. Jason thought about a way to comfort her, a way to ease her mind but that's all he's been doing for the past two weeks and he had a feeling the both were getting sick of it.
"Me too," he replied. Sam smiled, almost reassured by such a statement. She looked behind her and took a seat on the examination table while Jason sat down on the plastic chair next to the counter. Once again, the two sat idly by but this time without the company of five other patients and family members. Occasionally, one of them would look up, check the time before going back to twiddling their thumbs.
"What time are we picking up Scout from my mom's place?" Sam asked, hoping to fill the opaque awkwardness within the room.
"Alexis said she'd drop her off before lunch," he answered. Sam held her phone out.
"Are you sure she doesn't want us to pick her up? It's along the way anyway."
Jason laughed, "not really. She lives on the other side of the city."
"Yeah, I know." Sam laughed alongside. "But still, maybe we can pick up Scout and take her out to the park or something. My mom can tow along."
"Okay, let me text her." And he typed away at his phone.
"Hello, good morning. I'm sorry for the wait," Dr. Clars walked in, shaking Jason's hand as he stood up. "Hi Sam."
"Hi," Sam waved.
"Alright," the doctor took a seat on the rolling stool and opened a file on the computer beside her. "Well, I'll start with some questions and then we can go into a physical exam. I can answer any questions you have along the way and at the end, we'll have a discussion on future steps. Sounds good?"
Jason nodded first and Sam followed, after reading the text. Sam liked the doctor. She was straight to the point. None of the flowery language that would overcomplicate matters, both on her iPad and for her increasingly irritable nerves.
"So Sam, the first question I'll ask and it may seem like the stupidest one of them all…"
"No," Sam already knew the question.
"Nothing at all?"
"No."
Dr. Clars turned to Jason, "have you noticed her responding to sound at all. Sometimes patients may not be aware that they're actually experiencing sensory input."
He shook his head.
"Okay," Dr. Clars turned back to face Sam. "And are we still feeling dizzy?"
"Sometimes, but it's getting better," Sam replied truthfully. The vertigo had improved significantly since the fainting spell but there were certainly times when she stood up from the dinner table or sat up on the couch that she could feel her head spin.
"That's to be expected and it'll probably persist a couple more months till your ear drums completely heal up," the doctor explained and then moved onto the next question, "any headaches?"
"Yes. At night, after dinner they usually come on," she replied. Jason added, "they can be pretty intense sometimes. She'll have the lights off and she'll ask that the kids are not on the top floor of the penthouse."
The doctor nodded and quickly jotted this down in her notes before looking back up at her patient, "I believe this is still residual effects from the concussion. I can prescribe you something to take the edge off if you'd like."
"Will they go away?"
"Yes, they should eventually," she answered Sam, "if in a month's time, they're not improving then I think we might want to talk to Dr. Drake but let's not concern ourselves with it. Okay, final question, are there any other symptoms you've experienced that we haven't talked about or noted?"
Sam shook her head.
"Great," Dr. Clars swiveled in her chair and grabbed a BP cuff. "Let me start with the basics of blood pressure and pulse and then I'll have a look in your ears."
After several minutes, Dr. Clars had finished her exam and went to sit down. She jotted down a few notes before looking up again. "So, your temporal membranes, the ear drums, are healing nicely, but, as I said before, it's going to take at least two months for them to completely heal up."
"And when they heal, will her hearing return?"
"It's hard to say or even predict. Sam suffered nerve damage in the blast. To what extent, we don't know. It may be possible that when her ear drums heal up, some of her hearing will return. But, it's also possible that it might," she explained. Jason sighed in disappointment though he had already known that that was going to be the answer. "I'm sorry I'm being blunt. I don't want to give you false hope."
"It's okay. I appreciate the honesty," Sam replied, clearly disappointed as well.
"And what about cochlear implants? I was doing looking it up the internet and saw that people who were born with no nerves or those who's nerves were damaged could get cochlear implants and be able to hear again?" Jason asked. Sam looked up after reading the message, not aware that Jason had done all this research. He had never brought it up to her.
"Right, well, it's a complicated situation. We don't know exactly where Sam's hearing damage occurred. The cochlear implant works by bypassing the cochlea and stimulating the auditory nerve directly. The cochlea is the part of the ear where there's a bunch of tiny hairs that can transmit sound waves into a message sent to the auditory nerve where eventually the brain is able to understand the sound waves. If the nerve hairs in Sam's cochlea were damaged, then certainly, cochlear implants may be an option later, down the line. However, if there was damage done to her auditory nerve itself, the implant isn't able to surpass that."
"Is there a way to find out what kind of hearing damage Sam has?"
"Yes, certainly. We'd need to run further tests, all of which are painless and noninvasive. I was hoping to hold off on these until Sam's ear drums healed, in the event that some of Sam's hearing returns but there's no harm in performing them now. Just be warned that they can take up quite a bit of time. Expect to be in the hospital for a few hours. Considering that, if you'd like, I can order these tests for you, Sam," the doctor explained.
"Sam?" Jason turned towards her.
"Yes, I want the tests," she didn't give it much of a second thought. Spending a few hours in the hospital wasn't much of a drag for her as she didn't do much these days anyways. Besides, she couldn't simply sit around not knowing. If there was something to be done, then it needed to be done.
"Okay, I'll have them ordered then. You can set up an appointment at the front desk on your way out," she explained and jotted down a few more things in the file. "Do you have any other questions?"
"What are the chances my hearing will come back, if it comes back at all?" Another question that both Sam and Jason knew the answer to but, maybe, just maybe, there was a different this time.
The doctor took a deep breath.
"Sam, it's impossible to know. I'd love to give you an exact answer but from experience, nerve damage is hard to recover from. I think at most you'll recover a certain percentage of your hearing, but you probably won't ever have your full hearing return," she answered honestly in a soft compassionate voice. Sam looked away, biting her lip. "I will say though that, with hearing aids, even if you have a small increment amount of your hearing return, we can always amplify the sound. And like Jason brought up, cochlear implants are always an option" she added, not wanting to sound completely pessimistic and wanting to add some hope to the equation. Either way, a long pause ensued with neither knowing exactly what to do. Jason stood up from his chair and walked over to hold Sam's hand.
"I'm okay," she replied unconvincingly.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't give out better news," Dr. Clars apologized and stood up, walking over to Sam. "We'll figure this out either way, alright."
Sam looked up, trying to keep a grip on any semblance of composure. Her cheeks were burning as the tears threatened to pour out.
"Thank you," Sam and smiled.
Soon enough all three of them walked out of the room. The doctor headed one way and the couple headed towards the elevators to go down to the parking garage.
"Sam?"
"Jason, I can't cry. It's all I've been doing these past two weeks. I don't want to cry. Besides, it's not like the doctor didn't already tell us all of this two weeks ago."
"It's okay to cry. No one is going to judge you." He said as they stood alone in the elevator.
"Let's just go to my mom's, pick up Scout and enjoy a nice day in the park."
"She's so sticking adorable," Alexis cooed at her grandchild as the little girl sat in her stroller. Sam smiled as she stood next to her mother, both staring over the sleeping angel. "Yeah, she is."
Jason had left to go pick up food at Kelly's and meanwhile the three women were having a casual afternoon in the park, watching the runners go by and skateboarders ride all the railings in the small skating park. Sam was enjoying the feeling of sun on her face, after of course, having put a ton of sunscreen on her face at her mom's directive. "If you burn, those scabs are going to scar!" she had said. Sam rolled her eyes but did it anyway.
"Was Scout fussy this morning?" Sam asked.
"Scout! Fussy? No never, she was the perfect angel," Alexis replied sarcastically.
"Ugh! I want for this teething phase to be over," she said, knowing what her mother had to go through this morning.
"Ah, give it a couple of weeks and you'll forget it ever happened," Alexis said, rubbing her hands over Sam's shoulders and giving her daughter a kiss on the top of her head. The two of them left Scout to sleep and took a seat on a bench besides the stroller.
"Have you heard anything about the situation with Brenda? Jason isn't giving me any details and just changes the subject every time I ask." Sam asked.
"Well, Sonny called me the other day to ask if Italy had an extradition agreement with the USA, so I'm presuming that perhaps the Balkan has taken Brenda to Italy."
"Italy!?" Sam was shocked when she finished reading the message, "how did Theo manage that?"
"Who knows. All I care about is that all my girls are safe and sound. Speaking of, how did your appointment go this morning?"
"Hm, it was fine. The doctor said my ear drums are healing but she didn't say anything new beyond that," she explained.
"She didn't say anything else?" Alexis try to pry further. Sam didn't appreciate the pry.
"No, she didn't," Sam said matter of fact and she wasn't necessarily lying. "The doctors still aren't sure if my hearing is ever going to return. I'm going back to the hospital next week to have some more tests run to see more in depth how I became deaf."
"Are you nervous about the tests? I can come with you."
"No mom, I'm not nervous," Sam said, again matter of fact and she was beginning to become frustrated.
"Okay. And what about the results. Are you nervous about those?"
"Mom!"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry," she immediately apologized and threw her hands up in retreat, realizing she'd gone a step too far.
"No, I'm sorry for snapping," Sam took a deep breath. "Can we just forget about all of this? It seems like I spend every conversation with everybody talking about my hearing and if it will return, or if I want to start sign language classes, or if my headaches are getting better. I just want to have a conversation that isn't about my hearing or the accident, please?"
"Yes, yes of course. I completely understand."
"Thank you," she took another deep breath, more of relief this time though.
"I love you," Alexis replied, opening her arms, inviting Sam. Sam leaned over and placed her head on her mother's shoulders while Alexis wrapped her arms around her daughter.