The Sound of Silence

After a lifetime of being deaf, my best friend had just received cochlear implants. When he woke up from the surgery, we all stood around him. His wife was the first one to say anything. He heard her voice and at once began to cry. We all took our turn speaking, letting him hear our voices and our names that he only knew in sign language. With each word we said Khine became more emotional. When we were all finished, silence hugged the room.

Khine looked up at me and asked what that sound was. It took me a moment to understand what he was hearing, and when i understood, I told him he was hearing silence.

He shook his head. "This isn't silence", he said slowly, hearing his own voice for the first time. "I've been hearing silence all my life, and this is not it at all this is different".

A sound came from outside the hospital room, and he perked up immediately. "Isn't that silence?"

We all exchanged looks of trepidation around the room before I spoke. "No," I said slowly. "That was the sound of someone screaming". Khine was deaf but he heard screaming back to back.