Page 29 of Miguel

I held my breath watching as they put the aids in his ears. They were in bright colors with lights on the side. The doctor adjusted them, making comments on how to do so. I watched everything he did with rapt attention so I could do it myself for Zeke in the future.

Then he turned the thing on and stepped forward, lowering so his gaze was level with Zeke’s.

“Hey, buddy,” the doctor said.

And the damndest fucking thing happened.

Zeke gasped, a broken giggle coming out of his throat. As if… as if he’d heard.

“Can you tell me your name?” the doctor went on.

It took a moment for Zeke to decipher the sounds that composed the words. And he replied, “Zeke.” The word was hoarse, choppy. He spoke it as if he wasn’t used to it, making my chest ache, but who the fuck cared?

He was talking.

He wasresponding.

“Zeke…”

And he heard me. He turned in my direction, albeit slowly, and blinked at me.

I wasn’t a man who gave into tears, but fuck. I wanted to.

“Seems to be working.” The doctor stood. “Now, remember that he won’t be able to hear everything with those. Sometimes he might not even be able to hear you at all. Sometimes sound can be overstimulating when you’ve spent most of your life in silence, so don’t be surprised if he doesn’t want to use them or gets overwhelmed. Take him to speech therapy and you and everyone else close to him should learn beside him to communicate.”

I nodded. It was the least we could fucking do.

The doctor gave me a few more instructions before we went up front to pay. Once we were in the car, I turned, making sure I was facing him. “How about some helado?”

His lips twitched and I figured he was fighting back a smile. He’d only said one word, and that had been to the doctor. Maybe he didn’t trust me yet, but that was okay. We would work our way around the situation we both found ourselves in. We would learn each other. And maybe one day, he would grow to trust again.

I wanted to mend the wounds his mother had left behind. I wanted to be better, do better. Because he deserved better.

But then his lips twisted into a very small smile and he nodded once.

“Alright.” I turned back and drove out of the hospital’s parking lot. On the way I wondered how he perceived sound. If it was muffled, if it was like listening to voices while under water. The doctor had explained it, but it was one thing to understand from a medical perspective and another entirely to actually live through it.

One thing was clear, he knew how to speak. He probably had before he’d gotten sick. Before the constant infections hurt the nerves in his ears. But since it happened, his development had delayed.

That was changing.

Zeke was going to get the education he fucking deserved.

But first, ice cream.

I stopped at La Michoacana, parking on the side of the street. Before we exited the vehicle, I was careful to turn off Zeke’s aid to preserve the battery–as per doctor’s orders–and protect his ears from the bustling noises of the city.

Inside the ice cream shop, I ordered a regular vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles and let Zeke choose his own. He picked a banana split and when the waitress set it in front of him, his eyes lit up like it was Christmas.

He dug in quietly, making humming noises of satisfaction. In between bites, his fingers reached up to tug on his hearing aids, tapping the sides before yanking them out and shoving them back in.

I reached across the table to halt his experimental movements. “You’re gonna get them sticky, kid.” Before he could destroy them completely, I took them out of his ears and slipped them into their containers for safe-keeping. We could put them on in the car or at the compound to get him used to them. I made a mental note to put them away when they were turned off next time.

He smiled tentatively at me before he dug into his helado. It grew entertaining to watch his little body devour the whole treat within moments. When he finished, all but licking the bowl clean, his dark, wide eyes looked up at me.

It hit me then. How much he looked like…us. Like Cami and I. The features and coloring were so obvious. Brown skin, dark curls, and deep set brown eyes. The tilt of his mouth, the wide set of his nose. If Cubano and Chema weren’t already running the DNA test, I would have told them to call it off. It was obvious he was mine. Perhaps I’d been a fucking pendejo before like Cami said, asking for one in the first place. I’d been scrambling, out of my own fucking mind. Desperate for the truth.

But in this moment, I knew what he was.

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