Only Uni (33 page)

The meeting with the director went swimmingly.

The meeting with Deborah, not so much.

Maybe because her hearing was so far gone, the old woman refused to talk to Trish and kept glaring and frowning. Trish thought she even growled once, but she wasn’t sure. Deborah snatched her hands away when Trish tried to get her up to walk her out.

“DOCTOR!” Her voice was starting to go hoarse from shouting. “I’M GOING TO TAKE YOU TO THE DOCTOR!”

Deborah finally raised her sparking eyes to Trish’s mouth as she said that last sentence. Then comprehension dawned and her mouth formed an O. She nodded and stood.

Trish heaved a sigh and got Deborah to the SUV without incident. She’d made an appointment for today with the primary care doctor listed in Deborah’s chart, which hung conveniently on the door to her room.

However, in the doctor’s office, the nurse said she needed Deborah’s actual insurance card.

“Why? Hasn’t she been here before?”

“It was years ago, and we need a new card.”

Trish called the nursing home and had to wait while the nurse — the irate one she had argued with earlier, unfortunately — looked for Deborah’s insurance information and faxed it to the office. The nurse had to get the insurance company on the line to verify Deborah was still covered.

Then the nurse said she needed a credit card.

“What? Doesn’t she have some kind of Medicare or Medicaid or whatever old people have that pays for everything?”

The nurse gave her a look that said,
Come back when you have a clue what you’re talking about.

“How were her past doctor’s visits paid for?”

The nurse looked at the file. “Her nephew gave his credit card.”

“Is it on file?”

“Yeeeess . . .” The nurse tensed, not liking where this was going.

“Well, if I get him to approve the charges, then it’s fine, right?”

She visibly relaxed in her seat behind the counter. “Oh. Yes, if he approves the charges.”

“Fine, do you have his phone number?”

The nurse’s eyes shifted away. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to do that . . .”

“If I cancel this appointment, I’m sure he won’t be happy to be charged the cancellation fee.” Trish stabbed a finger at the sign on the counter stating a forty-dollar charge if any appointments were cancelled less than twenty-four hours ahead of time.

The nurse bit her lip, then rattled off the phone number from Deborah’s file.

“Hello?”

“Hi, my name is Trish Sakai. I’m a volunteer at Katsu Towers and I’m with your aunt Deborah.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. I’m here at the doctor’s office for a hearing test, but I need you to approve charges to your credit card for the appointment.”

“Why does she need a hearing test?”

“Uh . . . because her hearing is completely
gone
?” What a moron. He’d have known that if he’d visited her more often.

“How much is it going to cost?”

“Does it matter?” Her voice was starting to climb an octave. She took a deep breath. “Your aunt couldn’t hear a fire alarm. Or a plane about to crash on her head. Or a mugger following her on a deserted street.” Not that Deborah would be out at night, but still.

“She’s perfectly safe at that facility.”

“The facility said she could be a legal liability because she couldn’t hear a nurse’s instructions. And did I mention she can’t hear a fire alarm?”

Trish could almost hear him pouting. “Fine. But don’t go buying the most expensive hearing aid — ”

“I won’t. Here’s the nurse.” She handed the phone to her.

After some nodding and murmurs, the nurse closed Trish’s phone. “He said he wants to approve any hearing aid you get her.”

“That’s fine. He’s paying the bill, after all.”

They only had to wait a few minutes before a nurse took Deborah and Trish in back. But when the nurse led her to the room where she’d get her hearing tested, Deborah took one look at the equipment and started backpedaling.

“What’s wrong?” Trish tried to pull her into the room, but Deborah snatched her arm away and dug her feet in. She shook her head angrily, then crossed her arms over her chest.

“Oh, great. This is wonderful. Do you know what I’ve had to go through to get this test for you? Don’t you want to hear again? People would talk to you.” Trish flung her arms around in frustration. “God told me to serve you — well, I can’t say He actually spoke but it was pretty clear because it was in the middle of a great worship set and I felt really close to Him — and you’re not making this easy for me to help you.”

Deborah stuck her hands on her hips and her chin in the air.

The nurse tactfully interjected. “Why don’t I leave you two in an examination room for a few minutes?”

Once ensconced in the room, Trish seated Deborah and herself. What good was this? It wasn’t as if Deborah could hear her. Maybe she could write it down? She picked through her purse and unearthed a few old gas receipts. She wrote “hearing test” on one of them and held it in front of the old woman.

Deborah grabbed the paper and brought it to within three inches of her face.

Oh, man. She needed an eye test, too.

“No.”

Trish started. That wasn’t her. That was . . .

“No.” Deborah’s voice rasped with disuse and sounded a few hundred decibels louder than normal people — even normal old people. She held the gas receipt back to Trish. “No hearing test.”

“Why not?” She grabbed another receipt and wrote the question down.

“I like not being able to hear.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t want to have to listen to them talk, talk, talk. I
see
them talk, talk, talk, all day.” Deborah sighed. She looked tired just thinking about those women talking to her.

All that hassle, and Trish needn’t have bothered. No hearing test, although the deaf old woman obviously needed it. Trish looked at the floor. She heaved herself to her feet and stuck a thumb toward the door. “Well, let’s go, then.”

But Deborah snapped out and grabbed her wrist. “No, I don’t want to go yet.”

“Why not?”

“I came with you because you were going to take me to the doctor.”

Trish gestured to her ears. “You said you didn’t want — ”

“I don’t want a hearing aid. I want glasses.”

Oh, right.

Deborah smiled then, for the first time since Trish had met her. “I want to be able to read the subtitles to that show they’re always watching.”

TWENTY-SIX

T
rish hoped she wouldn’t pass out.

She’d never been behind a mic before. She also had never been in front of an audience before, if she didn’t count those times she made a fool of herself at karaoke.

She fidgeted as Spenser adjusted her mic stand in relation to the monitors edging the stage. Thankfully the stage was only a foot or two off the ground, since her fear of heights probably would have reared up to make her day even worse. Of course, the first row of pews was within a few feet of the stage, so if she got dizzy and fell, it would only be into the arms of whoever sat there. Probably some grumpy old man. Or if she was lucky, it would be Blondie and her posse . . .

“Relax.” Olivia stood next to her, tuning her electric guitar. “You did fine at rehearsal on Friday night.”

She’d done better than she’d ever expected. Since she couldn’t play an instrument with much proficiency but enjoyed singing, they’d put her on second mic. She’d warned the rest of the team — probably fifty times — that she didn’t sing well, but when they set up the sound and started rehearsal, it hadn’t sounded bad at all. She could barely hear herself, actually.

She shuffled the papers on her music stand in front of her, but she knew all the songs already. The lyrics were only there for moral support.

“Okay, gang. Let’s pray.” Ed set his acoustic guitar in the stand and the team gathered around him in a circle on the side of the stage.

Ed started, and they each prayed in turn. Trish’s heartbeat ramped up from a cool samba to pounding hip-hop. She
hated
praying out loud in front of people, and she was perfectly atrocious at it. The rest of the team offered up prayers for the pastor, for the congregation as they gathered for service, for the music and how God could use it for His glory. Eloquent prayers. Prayers God wouldn’t cringe to hear.

Finally it was her turn. For a second, she couldn’t breathe. But something in her nose saved her by making her sneeze — a loud, rousing
A-choo!
that hopefully didn’t mist the others too much.

She took a deep breath, tried to ignore the shaking of her hands. “Dear Lord . . . uh . . . help me not mess up. Amen.”

She thought she heard Olivia stifle a giggle. Well, at least Trish was entertaining. She was done, that’s all she cared about.

They took their places and Ed greeted the congregation to give them a few minutes to get to their seats. Personally, Trish would have yelled, “Sit down, people!” but she supposed that wouldn’t be very polite. Ed opened up the worship service with a prayer.

She stood there behind her mic, staring down at the floor because she couldn’t look out at the congregation. She didn’t even listen to the prayer, just kept herself aware of the cadence of his voice. Her hands had frozen. She could barely open her fingers. At the same time, ants crawled up and down her legs and she couldn’t make her feet stop shuffling. Finally Olivia took a discreet step sideways and pressed her shoe over Trish’s tapping toe. She only removed it when Ed was closing up the prayer.

“ . . . Amen.” Ed opened with a full chord from his 12-string acoustic guitar.

Oh my gosh, they’d started! She had to look up, because obviously the mic couldn’t pick her up if she didn’t look up and put her mouth in front of it. But did she want to be heard? She didn’t want to look up.

Then Ed started singing, and the words filtered through her racing thoughts. “I leave my baggage at the door . . . I surrender it all . . .This is a time to worship you alone.”

Suddenly she opened her mouth and put her chin up, although she closed her eyes. She supposed people would think she was into the worship, which she was, versus scared to look out, which was also true. But then the words came to her and she forgot everything else.

“I surrender it all . . . You alone deserve this part of me . . . You alone deserve all praise . . .”

Hey, this wasn’t so bad. She hadn’t messed up any words in that song. She had a hard time hearing herself, though — must be the combination of the other instruments and the congregation singing too. She wondered if next time she could ask Spenser to up her volume in the monitors.

The song flowed into the next, and again Trish gave herself into worship. She didn’t feel brave enough to raise her hands, but the words flowed out of her as an offering to lay before His throne. She forgot — almost — where she was, and instead focused on praising Him.

“Help us to live in you . . . Until the day you make all things new . . .”

She found the courage to open her eyes.

Her heart crashed in her chest. People stared at the words projected on the large screen above and behind the worship team, but their faces were so
dead.
Some sang. Some didn’t even bother to open their mouths to try. Several people had pinched looks on their faces as if they were simply tolerating this noise until the pastor would come up to speak.

Her eyes squeezed shut. She couldn’t look at them — she could barely keep singing. Their expressions shoved concrete blocks into her heart, pulling it deeper into a cold ocean of despair. Why did the worship team play up here, when the congregation could care less? Why sing?

Wait, what was she saying,
Why sing?
Just because she stood up here in front didn’t mean it was any different from other Sundays. She had no problems singing on any other Sunday (or Wednesday night Singles Group, she added spitefully) no matter what anyone else was or wasn’t doing around her.

She flung her arms up and belted out the chorus with all the earnestness she could wring from her lungs.

“Your mercy comes to me now . . . I lose myself when I come before you . . . You are everlasting . . .”

Then she really did forget where she was. She finished the song and opened her eyes, startled to see the mic at her nose and the congregation behind that.

Except this time she saw a few people scattered here and there — some sitting with hands raised and eyes closed, others standing with their entire bodies worshipping. The sight made her smile so broadly, her cheeks stretched and ached. Her chest filled with air and she almost felt as if she’d float away.

Maybe God really had spoken to Spenser about her being on the worship team. Maybe she had a purpose here.

It was the last song before the pastor’s sermon. Trish closed her eyes and gave it her all.

“You are the only place I’ll ever go . . . And one day I’ll arrive where you are . . . For now I’ll fall before you . . .”

Her hands reached for Him, and the words came from her gut. The darkness behind her eyes helped her to focus on Him, only on Him . . .

Bonk!