Polyhymnia, the muse of sacred poetry, geometry and eloquence
Inspiration: Getting a letter through the post from Jane, my speech therapist from when I was little. Yep, I had a stammer.
Seigaku: I'll admit, I struggled to match Polyhymnia with any of the team but geometry immediately made me think of Inui. And beyond that, the structured language of Inui and the way he helps the other members of the team when he's their trainer he struck me as an eloquent person. And teaching is said to be the most sacred profession.
Note: I wrote this before the King's Speech (Weinstein Co. I do not own) came out but I realised that it was very similar afterwards. I was influenced by my experiences with speech therapy but I suppose they are pretty universal, barring the fact that I am not part of the British Monarchy. Also, with Melpomene's Tragedy, it was not my intent to dissuade anyone from persuing a career in the medical field. Some don't realise just how depressing it can be before they go into it though. Think of it as a head's up about one of the lesser known aspects of a medical job.
Inui Sadaharu didn't know why he'd decided to become a speech therapist. It came out of nowhere; one moment, he'd been thinking of going to university to do sports medicine and the next moment, he was receiving his speech therapy qualification. It wasn't that he didn't want to help people, it was just he wasn't sure speech therapy was the best way he could do it. But, nevertheless, he joined a local hospital and began to help patients recovering from strokes and surgery to help them communicate again. People often commented that it was odd for him to be a speech therapist as he was always carrying a notebook around with him but it was perfectly obvious to him.
If you couldn't speak it, write it and then he could help with the rest.
His career began working in a hospital but, after years of working, he'd branched out into private care as well. He kept his options open after all, that was the most logical option. He still worked with the patients in the hospital but he also took on patients outside hospital.
He still wasn't sure this was the job for him but he did it anyway and he did it well. He succeeded where others had failed and he worked hard. When he wasn't working in the hospital, he took on patients in his private clinic. It was just a small area with a waiting room tastefully decorated, and a room he could "work his magic in". It was just a large room, with high ceilings and some recording equipment to check progress. Most of his equipment was kept in the drawers of his wooden desk, a feature of the room he liked immensely. There were a couple of softly padded chairs for sitting and that was all. He had visited a few other speech therapist's offices and found them to be very sterile and clinical. As much as he enjoyed the clinical side of the job, it was something he'd found his patients didn't like.
He had a couple of appointments today with his established patients, one new consultation and then he was free for the meeting he had tonight with some of his school friends. At bang on nine am, there was a knock at his door from his secretary.
"Inui, your nine am is here," came the timid voice through the door.
"Thank you Ryuuzaki. Please send him in," was his reply and he watched the door open and his nine am slouch in. "Good morning Kaidoh, how are you today?"
"Fine," Kaidoh muttered.
"Well, let's see what we can do today for your lisp (1)."
It was a long, hard day by the time Inui clocked out. He had spent at least three hours with Kaidoh trying to repair the damage his schoolmates had done to their previous weeks' work. Kaidoh had had a lisp for as long as he could remember and it wasn't too bad until he went to secondary school. There, he was teased intensely and as a result, his lisp had become more pronounced and worse until he stopped talking one day. His parents, not wealthy but incredibly concerned, brought him to Inui to see if speech therapy could help. Inui had been working with Kaidoh for a few months now and he'd noticed a definite trend in his progress. He would get better throughout the sessions on Wednesday, go back to school and then come back on Saturday, regressed and they would have to start from the beginning.
He was going to recommend changing schools if this continued.
His second patient wasn't much better. Momoshiro was a tall, imposing secondary schooler who had only come to Inui because his mother had threatened to stop his allowance if he didn't. When the patient didn't want to be there, it showed in their progress. Momoshiro was slow to progress, his utter lack of motivation was frustrating. It wasn't as if Momoshiro's impediment was difficult to tackle. He had a curious speech where he repeated words unnecessarily. Redundancy it was called, repetition of a phrase with different words needlessly. All he needed to do was implement a redundancy check into Momoshiro, a time where he would pause prior to speaking to establish whether the next bit was needed.
If only it were that simple. Momoshiro didn't think he needed to be there so he didn't try very much. It was irritating.
But the day was over now and Inui could go and relax with those he grew up with. He had left his office and was walking to the restaurant where they would meet tonight. It was a fine evening and promised to be a tepid night when he would be walking back.
He arrived at the sushi restaurant they were to eat at and ducked under the curtained pole to enter. He briefly glanced around the room from behind his severely thick glasses and noticed that aside from himself and the staff, there were only five other people there. Two were dressed in suits and looked like they had also just come from work. Office work he would say if he were to hazard a guess.
The other three, two males and a single female, were sat around a table and eating in silence. They had the appearance of a family to Inui, who noticed the similarities between parents and child. He paid no more attention to them and walked to the table marked "reserved". That was one of the reasons they liked to come here; they could always reserve a table when they wanted to. The fact that they all liked the food was a rather moot point. The head cook was Kawamura Takashi, one of their school friends, so they were all slightly biased in opinion.
Inui had resigned himself to a long wait as he was, as usual, the first to arrive but it was barely ten minutes later that the door slid open once more to reveal two of his dining companions. The tall, stern looking brunet walked through, followed by a smaller, smiling brunet. Tezuka and Fuji had been metaphorically joined at the hip since Kindergarten and Inui had once suspected they were a little more than friends.
He raised a hand in greeting and began the benign pleasantries of conversation, inquiring about their lives since their last meeting. Knowing the intricacies of language, Inui often found himself unconsciously diagnosing his friends with different conditions. Tezuka, he decided, was flat and he had little variation in tone. Fuji had, well, Inui wasn't sure what Fuji had but he had to have something. Fuji was not normal.
As he was busy mentally dissecting his friends, the other members of their little party arrived. Eiji, an excitable redhead with a tendency for neologisms and echolalia of cats (2). Oishi, the worrier with raven hair, had cluttering and when he was worrying about someone or something, it was impossible to understand him (3). Kawamura approached their table to have a quick chat with them whilst depositing their water glasses on the table. He was a tall brunet, kind and shy who had taken over the family restaurant when his father retired. At school, Inui remembered that Kawamura was always shy and quiet and when he spoke it was a near silent whisper. Now, he'd gotten louder but he had two voices: his shy voice and his kitchen voice. He was truly a sight to behold in the kitchen, brandishing his knife with overwhelming enthusiasm and energy.
Inui shook himself out of these thoughts; he always did this. Whenever he was off work or gathering with his friends, his thoughts always drifted back to his profession. He unconsciously diagnosed people on the train, in shops or in the street. His profession ruled his life.
He felt a hand touch his shoulder and he turned to see Kawamura, smiling softly with a questioning look. Everyone else had ordered and they were looking at him expectantly. Muttering his apologies, he ordered and Kawamura went back to his kitchen to control, or contribute, to the madness contained within.
He watched, as he usually did when they got together, as everyone else contributed to the conversation. Even Tezuka was interacting tonight, discussing the finer points of Oishi's medical career with him. Tezuka had gone into sports physiotherapy so their fields crossed over a great deal. Fuji was a freelance photographer and Eiji had become a kindergarten teacher. They had all laughed at that, given that Eiji acted more like a child than his students did at times, but they all loved him. They had all gone to support him during a festival and saw all the children hanging off him, begging for attention from Eiji-sensei.
Kawamura came back with their food and spared them thirty minutes to sit with them and eat, trusting his other chefs. They sat, talking about small, inane things, enjoying their meals. Eiji had just engaged Fuji in a conversation about apples when Tezuka cleared his throat. Inui looked over to him, an act that was often hidden by his thick lenses, and the other motioned to the family seated at the table near them. Inui turned and saw it was the three people he'd seen on the way in; the mother, father and son. He looked back to Tezuka, who had caught Oishi's attention as well.
"Isn't that Samurai Nanjiroh?" he questioned, causing Oishi to stare at the family and stopped the apple conversing trio –the combined powers of Fuji and Eiji had dragged Kawamura into the conversation a long time ago- in their tracks. The combined heavy gazes of the five seated males were quickly noticed by the family, causing the mother to giggle and look away, the son to duck his head and shrink in his chair and the father to glare at them in response. As one, Inui and the rest bowed their heads in apology and went back to their meals.
When they had been in middle school, they had all been quite fervent tennis players and fans and so they were all familiar with Samurai Nanjiroh and his tennis career. If they had been in the restaurant ten years earlier, they would have swarmed over him in admiration with little care for his meal. As such, they were adults now and Oishi had a firm grip on the back of Eiji's shirt, so they didn't have to worry about flustering the retired tennis player.
That didn't stop Eiji pestering him once he'd put down his chopsticks.
After the enjoyment of seeing his friends again, the exclamations that it had been too long and the promises to meet up again sooner than before that they would all break, they went their separate ways and Inui went back to his flat. It may have been the end of the week for everyone else, but he, Tezuka and Oishi all worked weekends as well. Most of Inui's patients were seen on weekends. He sat at the desk in his flat and booted up his computer, ready to look at his schedule for tomorrow. He had a few follow up patients, Kaidoh was one, but he had a new patient booked out for four hours that afternoon. There was no name in the slot, just "new" written there. Inui knew he hadn't booked them in, as he always wrote the patient's name there to keep track of how many appointments they had had to ensure they were progressing correctly.
It must have been his receptionist one day. She was a nice girl, but sometimes her organisation skills left something to be desired. Inui sighed, closed the desktop down and got ready for bed.
It would be a surprise tomorrow then.
His Saturday began like many of the previous Saturdays. He spent an hour with Kaidoh repairing the damage his classmates had done over the past few days and re teaching him his techniques. He formally requested that Kaidoh's parents changed his school and quickly if they ever wanted to see an improvement. He sat listening to his other patients as their lisps sounded less pronounced as their dictation improved.
Time went quickly between patients until his afternoon session came and he would meet the elusive new patient of his. He had finished tidying his work space after the last patient as his intercom rang.
"Yes?" he asked, pushing his button also.
"Your appointment is here sir," Ryuuzaki's voice came through the line. Working with speech all day had led Inui to discovering the intonations of voices expertly and he could tell Ryuuzaki was excited about something but trying not to let it show.
As soon as his patient entered the room, he could see why she would be excited. He was a boy, approximately twelve years old with black hair and piercing golden brown eyes. He was accompanied by an adult, his father, as most of Inui's child patients were on their first consultation. Inui supposed the boy was someone Ryuuzaki would have found attractive were they the same age but he looked familiar somehow.
It was when he looked at the adult to introduce himself that it clicked, for looking back at him was Samurai Nanjiroh, arching a brow in his direction. It was then that Inui realised he had been staring for a long time and his cheeks reddened slightly.
"Ah, forgive me. I'm Inui and I am the speech therapist here. I understand you're here for my help."
Twenty minutes later, Inui was sat behind his desk with the two Echizens sat before him. His patient, Ryoma, had yet to speak but his father was very vocal it seemed.
"We've been to therapists in America but we had to move back to Japan for my wife's work. I heard from my old coach that you were one of the best, so I booked an appointment on the old hag's advice."
"I thank you for your confidence. Why do you need speech therapy?" he asked, directing his question to Ryoma. The boy remained silent and after a few minutes of prolonged tenseness, Nanjiroh opened his mouth once more.
"It's becau-" he didn't have a chance to finish before Inui raised his hand calmly.
"With all due respect Echizen-san, I want to hear from your son." Ryoma looked up, making eye contact for the first time that day and he looked very small, in Inui's large squishy armchairs and dwarfed by his father. He looked a little shocked that Inui wanted to talk to him and not his father.
"Because I stammer," he said, prolonging the words unnecessarily in the middle, struggling with his consonants (4). His statement was no more than a whisper but Inui had heard enough.
Admission that someone needed his help was the first step.
Echizen became one of his more regular patients. He came every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and unlike many others, he had a completely understanding household. Too understanding. He attended his session once with his mother and Inui watched as Echizen remained silent for the entire hour as his mother did everything for him with nary a word.
Sometimes, parents could be part of the problem. They didn't want to embarrass or upset their son, so they didn't make him talk. This meant that Echizen didn't improve at home and didn't like the way he spoke. So he spoke less. It was a vicious cycle.
And Inui had to break it. It wasn't easy. In these situations, Inui found the parents reacted one of two ways. Either they were guilty that they had been exacerbating their child's problem, or they were angry that Inui thought they weren't helping.
The Echizen's had to break the mould though.
"Oh," Echizen Rinko said, looking upset but understanding, "I had thought that maybe it wasn't helping but I suppose I was just blinded. He's my son after all."
"I'll try to stop."
Echizen came to his next session, glaring horribly at Inui. The heavily bespectacled speech therapist suspected that he had just spent the past four days speaking more than he had in the past four years. And he didn't look thankful for it.
Inui had a lot of trouble with him that day. He had tried all his usual methods for relieving a stammer but nothing had had any effect so far. Usually, teaching people to roll their words and bouncing the syllables helped but Echizen was as stubborn vocally as he was in every other aspect of his life. Inui knew he'd been practicing –with parents like that, it would be impossible not to- but there didn't seem to be any progress.
He was musing over his problem as he went out to get a cup of coffee. As he returned to his office, Echizen was inside, as he customarily was. Unusually, he wasn't sat in the overly large armchair but stood by his desk, looking over the few things upon it. Inui knew he didn't keep anything of value on there, just a few pens, papers and two photos from his younger years.
It was the photographs Echizen was staring at. From the shape of the frame –one Eiji had given him, so it was brightly coloured and oddly shaped, two things everyone knew Inui disliked- it was the one of the middle school tennis team at nationals. The young boy was staring at it with intensity and desire, something Inui had never seen in his face before.
"Do you like tennis?" the words were out of his mouth before he had chance to stop them. Echizen jerked his head up and looked like a startled rabbit for a moment, then nodded. Inui smiled.
"Let's have this session on the court then."
Ryuuzaki-san looked a little shocked that Inui and Echizen were leaving the room together before their session finished but said nothing. They walked in silence to the nearby tennis courts, where they borrowed two racquets from some teenagers sitting on the bleachers. From there, they began to play.
Echizen had certainly inherited his father's talent for tennis as he slammed the ball back and forth with the energy of a ravenous wolf. He was hitting the fuzzy yellow ball, a smirk plastered on his face when the most amazing thing happened.
He spoke, with nary a stammer or a pause.
"Come on Inui-sensei. You've got a lot to work on."
They returned to the building, hot, sweaty and tired but Inui felt they had made more progress today than they had since Echizen started attending his practice. He had been thoroughly decimated, losing spectacularly to this small twelve year old boy. He had noticed that Echizen spoke as fluidly as he did when he held a racquet and smashed a ball. It was intriguing.
Inui could somewhat understand this; when someone was concentrating on something else, they lost many of the constraints that hold them back; a proven distraction technique. Inui knew the literature stated that stammering was a learned condition and so, distraction could works well on its severity, however, one could not be distracted twenty four hours a day. At some point, focus would return to the speech and thus, it was a temporary solution at best.
He took an unopened bottle of water from the drawer of his desk and handed it to the fatigued teenager. The black haired boy opened it gratefully and gulped down two thirds of the bottle. This made Inui smile a little inside; he may have been destroyed on the court but at least he managed to give the son of the world's first seed a run for his money (5).
"Well, that was enlightening," Inui said, sitting behind his desk and steepling his fingers together. Echizen was once again, sat before him, the sparkle in his eye gained from the tennis match dimming slightly as he knew they were returning to the topic of his voice. "You spoke wonderfully on the court, why so there and not in here?"
Echizen mumbled something into his chest that Inui stood no chance of hearing. When he was asked to repeat it, Echizen looked up and spoke, looking Inui in the eye with a distressed stare.
"Because on the court, no one is listening. They're too busy being crushed to listen to me talk." Echizen's issues clearly ran much deeper than just concentration. Here was someone who was stubborn and confident, but couldn't stand the thought of people listening to him so much that it caused him to stammer uncomfortably. Looking back, Inui could see that Echizen's vocal problem always seemed much worse when he was the centre of attention or expected to speak alone. When he was in a crowd or doing something that meant his speech wasn't focussed upon, his stammer was much more subdued.
Finally, they had something to work with. Hidden by his arched fingers, Inui smiled (6).
They worked relentlessly, practicing in darkened rooms or with blindfolds. They perfected conversations between themselves and invited Echizen's family to participate in sessions. They built dialogue up as though it were children's blocks and they succeeded.
Sometimes, Echizen reverted; they encountered their fair share of roadblocks and pitfalls, but they continued onwards to tackle them all.
Eventually, Echizen didn't need him anymore and their sessions ended.
Ten years later, Inui received a letter in the post, along with six tickets to Wimbledon. He sat in the stands, along with his friends, and watched as his small, stammering student took the world's first seed from his father and stood on the podium.
And he listened as he delivered his piece into the microphone to millions of spectators and viewers with nary a pause.
And Inui knew; this was why he had become a speech therapist. He was a healer and a teacher at the same time.
(1) I have only one thing to say: "Fshuu"
(2) Neologisms: making up new words, echolalia: mimicry of other people's words etc. Like babies learning to talk, except Eiji does it with the cat noise "nya".
(3) Cluttering: where people talk so fast because their thoughts are racing, they are nearly unintelligible.
(4) I could type this phonetically, but there would be an awful lot of hyphens in the sentence. Basically, a stammer is like a stutter but people tend to think stuttering is limited to starting words. Stammering is not. My stammer was horrible. I paused at the beginning of words, the middle if they had a consonant and I had difficultly pronouncing words with lots of consonant. If you want to hear a stammer, watch The King's Speech; I shan't type one as I already abuse English in many ways, I won't type it incorrectly.
(5) Yes, Nanjiroh is first seed. My story, my rules. The author has spoken!
(6) Gendo Ikari anyone?
Next up: Terpsichore's Dance
R&R
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