Liam whispered to David, “David, don’t tell her that I can hear everything. I need to know who I’m a burden to in this house.” David fell silent for a moment, looking at the pale Liam on the exam table and at Hannah by the door, nervously twisting the strap of her purse. “It’s his mother,” Emma mouthed. But now, as David looked into Liam’s eyes, he understood that this wasn’t just a complaint about hearing.
His name was Liam. He was fourteen, and two weeks earlier he had survived a severe brain infection. David had told Hannah that complications were possible, including hearing loss. Since then, Hannah, his mother, had kept telling everyone over and over, “He can barely hear anything, speak louder.” Liam stared quietly out the window, pretending not to notice the whispered conversations behind his back.
That day, Hannah brought her son in for a follow-up. She sat down wearily on a chair while David called Liam into the next room for a hearing test. As Emma prepared the equipment, the boy leaned toward David and said, almost inaudibly:
“David, pretend that I still can’t hear well. Please. I… I just want to know.”
“Know what?” David asked just as quietly.
Liam swallowed.
“Whether my mother really loves me, or if she only takes care of me out of pity. At home, when she thinks I can’t hear, she talks differently.”
David felt something tighten inside him. But the boy went on:
“When you go out, tell her that my hearing is still bad. I want to… hear what she says about me when she thinks I can’t hear it. Just… don’t look at me like that. I can handle it.”
The examination showed that Liam’s hearing was almost completely restored. But David, breaking the rules, nodded to the boy and headed out into the hallway with an intentionally heavy sigh.
— His hearing is still very weak — David said to Hannah, loud enough for Liam, who had remained in the room with the door slightly ajar, to hear. — He may not hear whispers, only loud speech. Be prepared for a long rehabilitation.
Hannah closed her eyes and sat down wearily.
— I understand — she whispered.
And then everything unfolded differently than Liam had expected.
— I’m a bad mother, aren’t I? — it suddenly burst out of her, her voice trembling. — I ruined everything. I should have noticed sooner that something wasn’t right. He sat with his headphones on for hours, and I thought it was just teenage mischief. And now… now maybe he can’t even hear me.
— You’re not to blame — David replied calmly. — Illnesses happen.
— Why him? — Hannah hid her face in her hands. — You have no idea how connected he was to music. He dreamed of becoming a sound engineer. In the evenings he’d sit at an old laptop, mixing sounds, recording his “masterpieces” on my phone. I laughed… I thought it would pass. And now I’m thinking: no matter how long this takes, let it not end. So that he can still hear me tell him that I’m proud of him.
Liam hid behind the door and clenched his fingers around the edge of the examination table. His heart was pounding in his throat. This wasn’t the complaint he had expected. He had braced himself to hear: “I’m tired of him,” “he bothers me,” “it’s hard to take care of someone with a disability.” Instead, he heard his own dream spoken aloud by his mother.
— Do you tell him that? — David asked gently.
— No — Hannah admitted quietly. — I’m always afraid of scaring him. I’m afraid that if I tell him how scared I am, he’ll feel like a burden. At home I walk around with a smile, and at night… — she broke off. — At night I count the money.
Medications, rehabilitation, equipment. I’ve already sold my Patricia’s piano. She taught me to play, but I never learned. He… he’s been picking out melodies by ear since childhood. And I didn’t even notice, you know? I worked, I rushed, always “later.” And now there may never be a “later.”
Liam felt tears sting his eyes. He remembered how once, late at night, woken by thirst, he heard Hannah, thinking he was asleep, whispering to someone on the phone: “I don’t know what to do. He can’t hear anything. He’s become so withdrawn. I’m afraid I’ll lose him.” Back then he understood only the first words, and his mind filled in the rest: “lose him.”
“Sometimes I think,” Hannah continued, “that it would be better if he lived with his John. There’s more money there, more opportunities. But…”—she pressed a hand to her chest—“then I wouldn’t have a reason to wake up in the morning.”
I live between two fears: losing him physically and losing him emotionally, if he thinks I’m here only out of pity.
David was silent for a moment, then said:
“You’re wrong about just one thing. You think you’re thinking for him. And he may be doing the same for you. Try, at least sometimes, to say what you truly feel, not what you’re ‘supposed’ to feel.”
Liam clenched his teeth. Every sigh of hers, every word, pulled a piece of that heavy stone he’d carried in his chest for years out of his lungs. It turned out that behind the wall of his fears, she had her own.
A few minutes later, David returned. Liam quickly wiped away his tears with his sleeve. David sat down across from him and quietly asked:
“So, enough?”
“Yes,” Liam whispered. “Just… make one more ‘mistake,’ please.”
“What kind?”
“Tell her the truth. But in a way that makes her think I still can’t quite hear. I’ll tell her everything myself when I’m able to.”
An hour later, already at home, Hannah helped Liam get to his room. He was unusually quiet. When she was about to leave, Liam suddenly spoke, clearly and distinctly:
“Mom…”
She stopped in the doorway.
“You know,” he said slowly, looking at the floor, “even if I stopped hearing music… I’d still hear you. The way you walk around the kitchen, the way you curse at the kettle, the way you curse at the cat. That’s enough for me.”
Hannah suddenly sank into a chair and covered her mouth with her hand.
“Liam…” her voice broke. “Can you hear me?”
He looked up and, for the first time in a long while, truly smiled.
“I’ve been hearing you for a long time, Mom. I just imagined too much before. And today I decided to really listen.”
She didn’t give in to the urge to go to him, didn’t rush to hug him—she only clenched the back of the chair tightly to hide the trembling in her hands.
“So remember this,” she breathed out. “You are not my problem. You are my life. And if you ever hear nothing at all, I’ll learn to speak so that you can feel it. With gestures, with notes, even with dancing in the kitchen.”
Liam laughed softly through his tears.
“Then I’ll be your personal sound director of silence,” he said. “Because now I know completely: there is no emptiness between us. Between us is something louder than any music.”
That evening he opened his old laptop again. Familiar programs flickered on the screen. He put on his headphones, then smiled, took them off, and set them aside. In the hallway, his mom’s footsteps echoed, a cup clinked softly, the cat meowed indignantly. He turned on the recording and simply listened to the house. For the first time in a long while, it didn’t sound like background noise. It sounded like a promise—that he wasn’t being impatiently tolerated here, but awaited.