How can I describe what I heard when the doctor turned on my hearing aids? Or what I didn’t hear? It’s too hard to think of words. The ocean just wasn’t living inside my head anymore. It was gone. I could hear sounds like shiny lights in my brain. It was like when you’re in a room where one of the lightbulbs on the ceiling isn’t working, but you don’t realize how dark it is until someone changes the lightbulb and then you’re like, whoa, it’s so bright in here! I don’t know if there’s a word that means the same as “bright” in terms of hearing, but I wish I knew one, because my ears were hearing brightly now.
“How does it sound, Auggie?” said the ear doctor. “Can you hear me okay, buddy?”
I looked at him and smiled but I didn’t answer. “Sweetie, do you hear anything different?” said Mom. “You don’t have to shout, Mom.” I nodded happily. “Are you hearing better?” asked the ear doctor.
“I don’t hear that noise anymore,” I answered. “It’s so quiet in my ears.”
“The white noise is gone,” he said, nodding. He looked at me and winked. “I told you you’d like what you heard, August.” He made more adjustments on the left hearing aid.
“Does it sound very different, love?” Mom asked. “Yeah.” I nodded. “It sounds … lighter.”
“That’s because you have bionic hearing now, buddy,” said the ear doctor, adjusting the right side. “Now touch here.” He put my hand behind the hearing aid. “Do you feel that? That’s the volume. You have to find the volume that works for you. We’re going to do that next. Well, what do you think?” He picked up a small mirror and had me look in the big mirror at how the hearing aids looked in the back. My hair covered most of the headband. The only part that peeked out was the tubing.
“Are you okay with your new bionic Lobot hearing aids?” the ear
doctor asked, looking in the mirror at me. “Yeah,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you so much, Dr. James,” said Mom.
The first day I showed up at school with the hearing aids, I thought kids would make a big deal about it. But no one did. Summer was glad I could hear better, and Jack said it made me look like an FBI agent or something. But that was it. Mr. Browne asked me about it in English class, but it wasn’t like, what the heck is that thing on your head?! It was more like, “If you ever need me to repeat something, Auggie, make sure you tell me, okay?”
Now that I look back, I don’t know why I was so stressed about it all this time. Funny how sometimes you worry a lot about something and it turns out to be nothing.
