If it weren't for Jack's hand tightly clasping hers, Sue would have sworn that she had been kidnapped and was being tormented by her captors. As it was, she was merely sitting on the examining table of her own doctor's office and trying to bear with the thousands of sounds his little instrument was playing into her ear.
At last, the man in the white coat stopped. Shaking his head in disbelief, he finally stated,
"This is the first time that anything like this has happened in the twenty years I have been practicing medicine, but I believe that your fiancé here is correct – you have regained the ability to hear, Ms. Thomas."
"How?" Sue whispered, wide-eyed.
"Sometimes, when the brain is injured, it rewires itself as it is healing. In your case, it probably found a circuit around whatever problem arose when you were eighteen months old."
"So," Jack inserted, "from now on she will be able to hear? As if she were never deaf?"
"Her hearing appears to be perfect," the doctor confirmed. "And all the indications are that the change will be permanent."
Sue, for some reason, did not smile at this piece of news. She slowly got down from the examining table, shook hands with the doctor, and bid him farewell quietly.