Who's Fault?

Chapter Twenty-Five

"She has to get more testing done," I spoke into the phone; Max was on the other end listening eagerly. "They said she definitely has some hearing loss, which I already knew from how she's been reacting to things, but they have to do more testing to know the extent of it. I made another appointment for her. It's next week."

"How are you taking it, really?" He asked me.

"It hurts. I mean this all is happening because a part of me hurt her. I had no clue that it was going on and I couldn't stop it. Can you imagine what that must've been like for her? The first couple minutes of life in the world and not being able to breathe."

"Wren, you couldn't have known. How were you supposed to stop it if you didn't know it was happening?"

"But I should have known! I should have known something was wrong sooner. How could I not have?"

"Don't torture yourself with what-ifs. You'll go crazy."

"I know, I know. It's just hard to see this happening to her. I want her to be able to experience the world the same as everyone else, but she won't be able to. She might not even be able to hear my voice..." The thought made me gasp at a realization, "Oh my God! Maxie, I sing to her all the time, what if she can't hear me?!"

"That's probably a good thing," he joked.

"I'm serious, Max!" I was starting to freak myself out. It was difficult to wrap my head around it. Something that most people can do without even thinking about, she might not be able to. How was that fair to anybody? Especially a baby.

"Relax, Wren. The chances of her having total hearing loss are probably super low. There's no way she can't hear your voice."

"I don't know Max. She wasn't breathing for 169 seconds, that's a long time; almost three minutes! 11 more seconds and she could've had severe brain damage. I don't think complete hearing loss is such a far-fetched worry."

"I understand, but you're spending too much time being worried about it. You should be focusing on spending your time with her."

"You're right. It's just hard." I said, feeling defeated.

"I get it, but you're gonna miss out on something and then how upset would you be?"

"I know, I know." I sighed, "thanks Max."

"Anytime, sunshine!"

I asked Max how work was going, and we talked about all the fun things he was doing and planning for the kids first week back to school. He was really excited. He had a fun game planned they were going to play and activities for them to do. He was teaching second grade this year; he said it was the perfect age group because they were still kind of cute and would be getting into learning the fun stuff. I took that as, he was getting to teach them things he was more excited about and it wasn't so frustrating for them to learn.

He said he had met up with some coworker friends last night after work, they went out for some drinks and did some "team building," whatever that means.

I was glad he was finally doing things for him again, it made me feel so relieved. He wasn't constantly worrying about me and Callie. He didn't have to feel obligated to take care of me anymore. He could go out and meet people, maybe finally get a girlfriend. I hated that I was holding him back, it made me happy that wasn't the case anymore.

Callie and I had another audiologist appointment so they could finish her testing. They requested that she be asleep for the testing, so I had to wait to feed her until after I got there; she usually fell asleep when she was full. When I walked back into a room, I had to wait a few minutes before her doctor came in. But when he did, he got right to it.