Breaking The Silence

The sound of water running woke Braelyn Summers up with a start on a Friday morning. Her eyes slowly flickered open, and found herself staring at an elderly nurse. Braelyn would have jumped in shock, but since she was so used to having people staring at her for the past two months, she learned to ignore them.

“Oh good, you’re up, sweetie,” the nurse smiled.

Braelyn smiled back weakly.

“Dr Grayson would like a word with you about your uh… progression on your speech,” she explained, trying her very best efforts to not insult the patient. “He’ll be with you in a minute, he’s just held up by another client.”

Braelyn nodded slowly, letting the information sink in. From the age of fourteen, Braelyn had suddenly decided to stop speaking. She used to be all smiles and bubbles until one day, that all disappeared. It was after her parent’s messy divorce, and everyone assumed that, that was the reason why she had stopped speaking. Soon, Braelyn started believing it herself.

It was only two months ago when Braelyn’s mother had finally decided emitting her daughter into a ward for mutes. It was after she had given up on her daughter’s eerie silence at home. Mrs Summers just didn’t know what to do anymore, and hoped professionals could help Braelyn out.

The elderly nurse finally walked out of the room, after cleaning her sheets. Braelyn looked around and finally realized where the running sound came from. She got out of her bed and walked over to the sink to turn it off.

“Braelyn,” Dr Grayson’s voice came from the door. “How are you?”
Translation: Are you speaking yet?

Braelyn smiled weakly at him and walked over to her bed and climbed in.

“I’ve had a talk with some of the therapist around here who are experts on speech loss,” he explained. “Since there has been no progression on your speech, they think it’s best that we change the environment around you.”

Braelyn’s eyes filled with fear. She didn’t want to move to another hospital, again. She had only begun to make subtle gestures to the patients around her. Braelyn quickly grabbed the notepad on her bedside table and a pen, then began scribbling on it. She was rather quick to write, ever since she had resorted to writing after she had stopped speaking.

She showed the doctor the notepad. It read,

Where are you going to take me?

“It might take a while for you to adjust to the surroundings, but we’re thinking to take you to a local church – not far from here so you can come back if you don’t like it,” he answered.

Braelyn looked down at her lap. Church. That was where she was going. She would have never of guessed it. She tried to think on the bright side, that she wouldn’t be stuck in another hospital for another six months with no improvement on her speech. But why were they even sending her there? Heck, she didn’t even believe in Jesus or God!

When am I leaving? she wrote.

“When you’re ready,” Dr Grayson said. “Just notify the nurse when you’re ready. I’ll leave you to your thoughts.” Then he walked out.

Braelyn quietly sighed to herself as she climbed down from the bed. She walked over to the cupboard where her casual clothes laid, looking for her favourite pair of denim jeans. But it was only when she pulled out a black coloured t-shirt, the information had finally sunken in.

They were moving her because she was helpless. Perhaps they had thought being under the eye of Jesus would help her. Like he would send some sort of miracle down to her. To her it was just like any other time she had moved from hospital to hospital.

But little did she know that this was going to be so different for her. Something that she would have never of expected. And that was just what she needed.