Jason Mott - Ava's Gift

Macon had brought her into the house and sat her at the kitchen table, looking at the wound and the splint of wood protruding from it like a crude arrow. He had the same expression he wore at her bedside now, an expression that told her there was a hard task to be done before the healing could begin.

Around the room Ava could see other people standing, waiting. Most of them were doctors, but there were others, too. People with cameras and microphones. Everyone in the room, including Macon, wore security badges. Each time someone opened the door to enter the room, the sound of shouting and the flashing of camera lights poured in from the hallway. Ava could see a trio of policemen standing outside.

“Ava?” Macon called out. She did not realize it, but she had drifted off to sleep again. Her body felt far away and floating, like a balloon resting on the surface of a lake, and she struggled to keep her eyes open. “Ava, can you hear me?” Macon said. “I’m going to ask you a couple of questions for these nice people, okay? You just look at me and pretend it’s just the two of us. I promise it’ll be quick.”

A man that had been standing nearby with a video camera stepped forward and made an adjustment to a microphone that was sitting on the edge of Ava’s bed between her and her father. He checked something on his equipment and gave Macon a nod of affirmation. Another man snapped photographs. He moved around the bed, alternating between squatting and standing, sometimes photographing Ava, sometimes Macon and, in turn, the two of them together.

Macon squeezed Ava’s hand again to get her attention. “Has this ever happened before?” he asked. The photographer’s camera shutter clicked. Then Macon asked another question, and Ava was not certain whether or not she had answered the first. Time was not linear for her. It bubbled up like air through water. She was never sure of her depth in it. “How long have you been able to do this?” Macon asked. “When was the first time?”

Again there was a foggy, confusing passage of time and then everyone in the room was suddenly talking at once, shouting questions at Macon, yelling for better answers. “You had to have known,” Ava heard someone shout. The accusation was followed by several flashes from the photographer’s camera, capturing the expression on Macon’s face for posterity.

Macon withstood it as best he could, Ava could see. He was wearing the only suit he owned—charcoal-gray with a light blue shirt. The suit was frayed in places and there was a stain on the back of it from the time he’d attended a funeral and, on the way back, caught a ride with a friend who owned a pickup truck with greasy seats. But in spite of all that, Ava always loved the sight of her father in that suit.

“That’s enough for now,” Macon said to everyone. His voice was deep and booming. It was the voice of a man who was not only a father, but also the sheriff. “She’s barely conscious and I won’t keep harassing my daughter just because you want answers. You and everyone else will just have to wait.”

“Ask her more,” one of the doctors said. His name was Eldrich—Ava often heard her father yelling the man’s name as they argued—and he was a thin, short man with a poor comb-over. His face was red with frustration. “We haven’t learned anything yet,” he barked. “Nothing about how all of this started, about how long she’s been able to do it, about how she does it. And you, Sheriff, you’ve known about this all along. We have to do more tests.” There was resentment in his voice. “Why did you think you could keep something like this, something like her, from the rest of the world? What made you think you had that right?”

Again the photographer snapped his photos. Again the man behind the video camera adjusted the audio on his microphone, recording it all, readying himself for the time when he would cut and edit and, finally, transmit it to the rest of the world. It was important that everyone see that here, in this small North Carolina town, there was a sheriff who had kept from the world a daughter who could do the impossible.

There was more yelling and arguing to follow, but Ava was not awake for it. Everything began to feel distant again. Darkness returned. Time jumped forward.

When she next opened her eyes she saw only the off-white tiles of the hospital ceiling. The smell of antiseptic was like a cloth draped across her face. She was cold, very cold. Somewhere, someone was talking. She began to panic and tried to sit up in the bed, but she felt a pain in her head that radiated outward in waves so sharp they halted her breath. She could not have screamed if she wanted.

And then the pain was lessened, like lightning arcing in the night, leaving only the shudder of thunder behind. Still, somewhere, someone was talking. The voice was low, garbled, like a song played underwater. She wondered if this was how deafness began. The sound of the voice stretched out, held a single, long note, then rose and fell slowly. It wasn’t someone talking; it was a voice singing. Ava caught words and the tone and timbre of the voice behind them. And then, as if a switch were thrown, she knew the voice and she could hear it clearly, and the comfort of it helped her push the pain away.

“Wash?” she called, raising her head from the pillow.

The boy sat in a small metal-framed chair next to the wall at the foot of her bed with his eyes closed. He had one hand suspended in the air before him—with his thumb and forefinger touching, making an “okay” sign. It was the position his body always took when he was struggling with the pitch of a song...which was nearly always. Wash didn’t have a voice especially suited to singing, and he was well aware of it. His voice was better suited to reading aloud, something he often did for Ava.

When Ava spoke, Wash stopped singing and smiled widely. “I knew it,” he said.

“You knew what?” Ava replied. Her voice was thin and raspy. She sat forward, trying to ease up onto her elbows so that she could see him better, but her body was not ready for that. So she settled back down onto the bed, keeping her eyes on Wash. He was still the gangly thirteen-year-old bookworm he had always been. There was comfort in that for Ava.

“I knew you’d wake up if I sang to you,” Wash said.

“What are you talking about?” Ava asked. Her voice was a hollow cone.

“It was ‘Banks of the Ohio,’” Wash said. He straightened his back—sitting erect and looking both confident and proud of himself. “It’s a fact that people can hear things when they’re asleep, even if they’re in a coma. I don’t know that you were in a coma—at least, the doctors never really called it that—but I knew that if I sang something, you’d wake up.” He reached around awkwardly and patted himself on the back. Then he pointed at Ava and said, “You’re welcome!”

“I hate that song,” Ava said. Everything was sore and she was freezing. Her bones felt like they were filled with concrete. When she lifted her arm, it responded slowly and clumsily, doing only half of what she told it to. She closed her eyes and focused on breathing deeply and slowly. It helped, but only slightly. “I really hate that song,” she managed finally.

“I know,” Wash said. “But if I picked one you liked, you’d never want to wake up and tell me to shut up.”

In spite of the pain, Ava laughed.

“How do you feel?” Wash asked.

“Usually with my hands,” Ava said.

“Jerk,” Wash replied in a low voice. He got out of his chair and walked over to Ava’s side. “Really,” he said, “how do you feel?”

“I’m cold,” Ava replied. “I’m cold and everything hurts.” The boy went to a large cabinet in the corner of the hospital room and came back with a blanket. Ava watched him closely as he walked. There was something important she needed to remember, something that had happened. But when she tried to recall whatever it was, there was only grayness in her mind, like a fog that hugs a lake under moonlight.