Page 47 of Lust in Translation

Kendall shakes her head, and immediately looks to the door. Relief washes over me. The doctor comes in, dressed in uniform. I didn’t hear him coming and she did. He looks at me and says something to Kendall. Watching her mouth, I can make out some of the words she says. Lip reading is hard as fuck. You don’t really move your mouth too much when you’re speaking quickly.

“Are you here to fix my fucking hearing?” I ask, tilting my head left and right. There’s a weird fullness in my ears that won’t seem to go away.

The doctor looks embarrassed and then speaks to Kendall. Kendall walks closer to me, until she gets close enough to grab my hand. Kendall releases me and points at her lips.

I smirk. Doesn’t she know how much I love her lips? She doesn’t need to point them out. “Do you know sign language? A little?” As she speaks very slowly, her hands are moving in front of her.

I shake my head. I contort one hand into the okay sign and put my forefinger from my other hand through the hole. The universal sign for fucking.

She shakes her head, frustrated with my joke. The doctor is grinning and they make a quick exchange I can’t understand, and he leaves the room. “I’ll be fine any second. I know it. It was a big explosion. Can they get me into the ear doctor soon?”

Kendall’s face is a mask of worry. I hate that I’m the reason. I tell her the story from the last time I was deployed overseas and we were heading to visit a diplomat. The bad guys discovered our plans and they laid an IED along our usual route. All of our trucks and vehicles are armored and we had our dogs with us that day. They located the explosive device, and set it off. It wasn’t a direct hit, but the explosion was at a decibel that made our ears ring for a few minutes. I tell her this is just like that. “Maybe I fucked them up a little worse this time and they’ll have to recover a bit.”

The doctor comes back in with a white board and a marker and pushes it into Kendall’s waiting hand. She scribbles a note. Her handwriting is sloppy. “What else hurts?”

“Nothing,” I reply. “I’m just a little wobbly.” I meet the doctor’s eyes and he nods. He says something and Kendall erases and begins writing again.

“What can you hear?”

I clear my throat and meet her eyes. “The usual ringing. Tinnitus. It happens after shooting sometimes, or when we’re out by the planes without ear pro. No big deal.”

The doctor nods. Kendall writes down, “No noises other than that?”

The urge to lie arises because Kendall’s panicked. “Nothing yet. Silence. My ears feel a little full.” The doctor comes over with his otoscope and looks in both ears. He’s careful not to make a face to indicate good or bad.

“How is your head?” Kendall scrawls on the board.

I cock it side to side. “A little fucked up, but you already knew that.”

She rolls her eyes. “Come on,” she says. I read her lips.

“A bit of a headache. Earache. I’m telling you, I feel fine. When can they get me in for testing?”

Kendall is already writing. “They need you to heal a bit before they test your hearing. It just happened. You ear drums are perforated on both sides. The fact you hear nothing might mean you have acoustic nerve damage. It’s a waiting game.”

“Fuck,” I say. “How long?”

Kendall shakes her head—eyes slanting down. The doctor says something else and Kendall writes. A nurse comes in and hooks me up to monitors and inserts an IV into my arm. “You need to rest.” The doctor draws the shade and speaks to the nurse. Her back is to me so I can’t attempt to read her lips. Kendall keeps writing, her handwriting smaller now as she has more to say.

“You’ve said a lot today.” She told me she loves me.

Her gaze flicks to mine and she presses her lips together. Kendall casts a glance over her shoulder. “Wish I could have heard it. Raincheck? It’s been a hell of a day.”

The doctor and nurse leave the room and pull my curtain shut on their way out. She flips the board toward me. “The blast on the water side of the building was calculated at decibels far more than five hundred. They think the one on our side of the building was greater. You were really close. It’s a miracle you’re in one piece. Also, you saved me. Again.”

I’ll ignore the bad parts in favor of Kendall. “Again?” I ask, quirking a brow. Kendall grabs a tissue and wipes at my face. When she’s finished, it comes away black stained. The marker is already moving the second she’s finished with my face.

“You saved me from myself and then you physically saved me from the explosion. Another fire. I’m starting to think I’m cursed. I will die by fire if God has any say in this.” She rubs at her own forehead while I read.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Did they check you out?”

She nods. “I’m fine,” she mouths, or says, I can’t be sure.

“I’ll hear again soon. Don’t worry about me, okay? Who else was injured?” I can’t see into the hall or listen for conversations, so I’m completely in the dark.

Kendall scribbles down a few names I don’t recognize and erases the board once more. Employees in the civilian building. “I’m so happy you’re okay.” I rest a hand on her leg. She still feels cold.

I’m not okay. “Go call your mom and let her know you’re in one piece. I bet this is already ricocheting on every news channel.” Panic strikes. “It was an isolated incident, right? It wasn’t something worse, was it?” When WWIII began, it was a series of organized terrorist attacks that spanned across the world, at almost the exact same time. There has never been more death and destruction than there was on that day. Every single person on the planet felt the sting in some way or another.

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