Silent Tears

Two years. Two years, seven months, and nineteen days I had been stuck in this body, but this body that was not mine. While my mind controlled my thoughts, a stronger force controlled my actions. Daily, I asked myself…why? Why did I continue holding on after everything that I had been through. I was hurting the people around me every day, every night, every second…

If I hadn’t tried to change the radio station and if my brother hadn’t tried to change it back, none of this would have happened. I was a selfish girl! I simply couldn’t allow him to listen to Bob Marley, instead I wanted to hear my own music. Selfish. If that hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t have lost control of the wheel. If that hadn’t happened, then he would still be alive and I would be able to move.

The doctors had told my parents for months that they didn’t know what happened to somebody in a coma. They had told my parents that I might not be able to hear anything, feel anything, see anything. They were right about the last two. I suppose that this was God’s way of punishing me. He had left me to hear my family and friends as they cried and wept over the tragedy that I had caused. I heard everything.

At first, it astonished me what people would say when they thought that you could not hear them. My parents had installed a two-way baby monitor in my hospital room so that they could hear me if I woke up, even if they were at home. I knew that it was stationed in our living room from the crackling of the only fireplace in our house and the sound of my sister constantly playing on the piano.
Over the past two years, I had heard everything. At first, I heard the weeping. While my mother, father and two younger sisters cried and talked about my brother and me, I wept inside. Later, I began to hear the arguments. There were so many. They were about money, and doctor bills, and what to do with me if I didn’t wake up.
“Charlie!” My mother would yell at my dad, “We cannot give up hope. After everything that we-and she- have been through, we simply can’t!”
My dad had always been a quiet one and did not say a single word.
After a year or so, I began to hear my sister moving out of the house after a long argument with my parents. She went to live with her boyfriend in a little apartment above a bar. Her exact words were “I can’t take this anymore. We all have lives to live. What has happened to our family is horrific but mom, dad…I can’t take it anymore! I need to leave.” They hadn’t heard from her since.
Now, I only heard the constant daily strum of papers being written, bills being checked, dinners being cooked, and the crying. With three children having left her, my mother cried…constantly. My father tried to comfort her, but that only made her cry more. Weeks passed, and I continued to listen.
Sometimes they would come visit me, and those were the best of times. My family and friends would speak to me as if they I could hear them, and then I felt alive. They would tell me about their lives, tell me they missed me, sigh, and leave. And then somebody else would do the same, like clockwork. And then they’d go home, and because I couldn’t hear them, they would cry, and they would type, and they would talk, and they would yell. And again. And again. And again.
My favorite memory was of my sister coming to visit me about seven weeks ago. She had come in so quietly that I could hardly hear her. “Hey,” she whispered, “Mom and Dad don’t know that I am here, so please don’t tell them.” For some reason, she chuckled that. “Life has been pretty good nowadays, don’t you think? The leaves are changing color and everywhere you walk you can hear the birds. Maybe later we can go for a walk together, I’d like that.” She spoke to me for a little longer and then left. It was the best conversation that I had ever had with anybody. She has talked as if I was really there. She didn’t say that she missed me or remind me of the good times we had had together, she only thought about the future.
But then weeks passed, and nothing changed. I slept, I thought, and I listened.
Then, it was Thursday. My mother always came to visit me on Thursdays. And she would talk, and she would cry, and I would listen. This time though, she only cried. She asked me to come back to her and she told me that they needed me. And as usual, I began crying on the inside. All of the sudden, she screamed! And she ran outside and yelled “Doctor! Doctor!” over and over again. I did not know what was going on. The doctor ran in and he gasped.
“Doctor,” my mother screamed, “she’s crying! My daughter is crying! Do you see that? That is a tear doctor. A tear!” And I was laughing on the inside, my mother had seen me cry! It was amazing! Nobody ever saw me cry anymore. I heard the doctor tell my mother that they were going to do a few tests on me, to see what was happening. I heard her ask what that “thing” was and he told her that it was a needle filled with anesthesia pain medication in case I felt pain. For some reason, that made her laugh and cry and I could even tell that she was smiling. I put my mind at ease and did not expect anything. I was always having tests being done on me and this was nothing out of the ordinary.
Then I laughed again. Ordinary. This is what I thought ordinary was. What my life had come to was beyond me. And once again, my mother screamed, and the doctor gasped, and I was confused.
“Doctor! Doctor! Did you hear that? She laughed!” My mother shrieked. And more tests were done and more drugs were pumped into me, and I began falling asleep and dreaming. I dreamt about running, and smiling, and yelling, and throwing things...anything!

After a while, I woke up and felt a horrible cramp in my shoulder, so I moved to the side and stretched it. I froze…did I just stretch my shoulder? And then slowly, extremely slowly, I sat up. And then my mother screamed, and the doctor gasped, and I smiled. It was the happiest smile that the world had ever seen.