Dead Air

A consistent beeping calls me back to consciousness. I slowly open my eyes, staring up at bright lights that blind me, and I snap them shut again.

"East?" My mother's worried voice reaches me. "Easton, open your eyes."

I blink against the light. I try to swallow but it burns. I try to move my arm to rub my neck, but it won't move. My heart starts pounding, panic creeping up my chest.

My mother's hand grasps my arm. "Deep breaths, baby," she whispers.

I take a staggered breath and try to calm myself. I open my mouth to ask what happened, but when I do, nothing comes out. No vibration in my throat. No sound. Nothing. Why can't I move? Why can't I speak? I look up at my mother, her face pale and eyes wide. She's not telling me something.

"Easton, you're okay," she simply says.

I shake my head slightly. The door opens and a nurse walks in.

"It's good to see you awake," she smiles.

My mother steps back as the nurse checks my vitals. The room falls silent except for the rhythmic beats of my heart through the monitor. The nurse places a notepad on the table next to me with a black pen.

"Good afternoon, Miss Chase. The doctor will be in shortly."

They're not saying something. Something important. I scan the white hospital room. The TV is on, but the volume is turned down all the way. My father sits in the chair beneath it, staring at his hands, his knee bouncing. My sister's hand rests on his shoulder like she's trying to comfort him. I drag my gaze to meet hers and she looks away immediately. Her face is puffy, her eyes red.

I open my mouth to try to speak again but nothing comes out. My throat feels like it's on fire.

The door opens and a man in a white coat walks in with a tight smile. He greets my family first, then turns to me.

"Miss Chase, I'm Dr. Nikolov. Do you remember what happened?"

I shake my head.

"Your sister brought you in this morning after you showed signs of a stroke."

Stroke? I'm only twenty-three. I'm healthy. How is this possible?

"Strokes can be caused by many different things. We've run tests..." He continues talking, but I stop hearing him. The ringing in my ears grows louder with every breath. This still doesn't answer my question about my voice or my inability to move. I don't smoke. I only drink on special occasions. I don't have diabetes or high blood pressure.

"We believe you'll get your mobility back with physical therapy." He looks down at his chart with a worried brow. "How's your throat? Sore?"

I nod.

"Have you tried using your voice?"

I nod again.

"In most cases, speech therapy can help you regain the ability to communicate. Your scans don't show cognitive impairment that would suggest this is permanent." He says all of this looking down at his papers. "Your parents have decided to place you in a rehabilitation facility for your physical therapy and speech therapy treatments."

The sooner I get into therapy, the sooner I can get back to my life. Dr. Nikolov leaves and I turn my head slightly to scan the room again. Someone is missing.

"Kyle will be here as soon as possible," my mother says, reading my mind. "He's getting out of work early. Your brother was so worried."

Good, I think. He'll know what's going on. He'll be able to help.

On the first day in the rehabilitation facility, I'm wheeled around in my new wheelchair that I hope to be out of by the end of the week.

It's been a week since my stroke and I'm able to write on the notepad the doctor gave me. It's not always legible, but it works—for now.

"Recovery isn't the same for everyone," the nurse says when I ask when I'll be out of this chair. "Tomorrow when we begin, we'll assess where you're at and establish a plan."

I nod. We're ushered back to my room and my parents say their goodbyes, but Kyle and my sister, Olivia, stay. Kyle sits at the foot of the bed, biting his lip like he wants to say something.

"How do you feel?" Olivia asks, breaking the silence.

I grab the pad and pen. My hand shakes as I write. Feel fine.

"How's your throat? Have you tried—" I cut her off by lifting my hand. She knows I haven't. When I tried continuously that first day, no sound would come through. I wouldn't even feel a faint vibration of my vocal cords trying to work. I'm beginning to think I'll never be able to speak again.

"Have you talked to your boss? You're not gonna be able to work for the foreseeable future," she says.

"Olivia," Kyle flashes her a warning glance.

Texted him this morning, I write.

I wish there was an easier way to communicate than writing on this stupid notepad. Now that writing is my only way of communication, I realize how long it takes—for me to write and for them to read it—and my wrist hurts after writing five words.

The more Olivia talks, the more I think about how different my life will be once I get home. My family will still get together every Saturday. My coworkers will still tell groundbreaking stories every morning. But when I get out of here, I'll be stuck in my pre-stroke life. Who knows if I'll even have a job to go back to. My boss told me he'll temporarily replace me, but temporary can become permanent.

"Olivia," Kyle says, cutting her off. "It's getting late."

After they leave, I'm engulfed by sudden silence. The TV hanging on the wall across from my bed is off. The black screen reflects the room I now call home and the woman I don't recognize. Her hair is dry and sticking out at odd angles. Her eyes are pink and puffy with purple smudges. White, plain walls with fluorescent lights highlighting the scuffs.

I look down at the notepad. The shaky handwriting stares up at me, haunting me. Tomorrow can't come soon enough.

"Patience is key here, Easton," my PT nurse, Abby, says.

I nod but silently curse her out. I don't want to go slow. I want to get walking and get out of this place. It's day four of my new physical therapy regimen. They assessed my ability to hold weights and lift my legs from my wheelchair leg rests. I didn't get my legs more than half a centimeter off the rests and I almost dropped the one-pound weight. Abby decided starting with weight exercises was best. "Strengthen your arms so you can help support your weight when you get to the next step," she said.

I watch another patient walking between parallel bars with a noticeable limp. I envy her for being able to walk while I'm stuck in this chair.

An hour later, my speech therapist, Renee, wheels me back to my room.

"I have your scans back," she says. "You have vocal cord paralysis. There are treatments you can talk to your doctor about, and with time you may be able to use your voice, but never speak the way you used to."

I shake my head, not wanting to hear anything else. I grab the notepad and pen. How communicate now?

"There are other ways to communicate. American Sign Language is the most ideal. You have the ability to move your hands and arms."

I shake my head again. Not only will I have to learn, but my family too. No one will understand what I have to say, and I'll be back to pen and paper.

"We don't have to discuss all this now. We can come back to this another time," she says.

I nod. I don't want to think about never being able to speak again. In one moment, my life went off the rails and everything I saw for my future has disappeared. I'm twenty-three with my whole life ahead of me, but I don't see how I can have a normal life now.

My family comes to visit after my session and I tell them the latest news. Kyle sits down next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling my head onto his shoulder.

"You can do it, East," he whispers.

The tears I've been holding back since Renee told me about my paralysis stream down my face. Of course Kyle thinks I can learn sign language—he's never failed at anything.

Can I learn sign language? I write.

He chuckles. I elbow him and he groans.

"You've got a boney elbow." He feigns a wince. "But you can. There's ASL teachers, right?"

My mother nods while my father shrugs.

"We'll hire someone to help us all learn," Kyle says.

All?

"Yeah," he says.

I glance around the room at my family, each one nodding in agreement. My mom sits at my feet and squeezes my shin sympathetically.

"We'll look into it and start as soon as possible," she says.

I nod. Learning a new language is hard, but maybe with my family learning alongside me, we can accomplish it together.

The next week my mother hired an ASL teacher with Renee's help. It's been a month since my stroke and I can already feel my arms getting stronger. My family arrives for my first lesson with Millie.

"It's nice to meet all of you," she says as she signs. "I know you don't understand what I'm signing, but like any language, repetition is key."

She hands me a paper with eight small squares, each filled with illustrations and the word below.

"Like every language, you start at the beginning. Let's start with these."

She goes over each of the eight words, encouraging us to try signing them with her. No surprise when Kyle gets most of them correct on the first try. Olivia and my mom do better than my dad and me.

"Mistakes are an important step in learning," she says. "Did you learn Spanish or French in school?"

I nod.

"I'm sure you made mistakes when you learned something new."

I nod again.

The first lesson doesn't go as well as I expected. Everyone wants me to be patient and go slow, but I just want my life back.

It's really hard, Kyle, I write after everyone leaves.

"East, it's like you're in dead air. Your show has gone silent, and you don't know how to get it back," he says. "Fill the silence with something."

Dead air. The words repeat in my mind. Our news station would go into dead air when breaking news came across our desks and they were changing the teleprompter. Or when there was no audio program transmitted for an extended period.

He leans in and kisses my temple. "I got to get going. Love you, East."

After he leaves, I turn my TV on and immediately regret it. There's a reason I haven't been watching TV, and there it is. My news station with some redhead sitting in my chair with a big fake smile. It's not official that I lost my job, but come on—how can they have a mute broadcaster? They can't.

My eyes start to burn with unshed tears as I continue to torture myself by watching this new woman interact with my co-broadcaster. Getting home doesn't seem as rewarding with no job to go back to.

"How do you feel about going home Friday?" Abby asks.

I've been in this hell for a month, and I finally got the news yesterday that I'm going home. I nod, giving her a thumbs up. She laughs and signs good. I roll my eyes.

"You've been ready to go home since the moment you came through those doors," she teases.

I nod. They didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. It'll be difficult to go back to my life. "Life doesn't stand still," they said.

The next day Kyle and I are preparing for dinner.

"I read that Isa has become a permanent replacement," he says.

I nod. It's not official, but I doubt they'll welcome me back now.

"I'm sorry, East," he says.

I shrug. I have to find a way to accept my new normal. Kyle has been trying to help me think of different employment options, but nothing stands out.

"Maybe you can work the nightshift at the grocery store so you don't have to talk to anyone," he says.

I hate you, I write and crumble the paper to throw it at him. He reads it with a humorous smile.

"Well, I still love you and I was only joking." He pauses. "You stopped the ASL lessons. Your options are more limited now."

I shrug, which frustrates him.

"God, East. Come on," he groans. "Fill that silence. Don't live in dead air forever."

An hour later our family sits around the dinner table. The tension is thick.

What? I write on my notepad.

"We're just worried about you," Dad says.

"You stopped your lessons with Millie," Mom adds.

I can't do it anymore.

Kyle shakes his head in disappointment and my heart cracks. I don't want to disappoint anyone.

"You know what I've been thinking," Olivia says, smiling warmly at me. "What if you become the interpreter for the news station?"

Kyle whips his head in her direction. "That's a great idea."

I'd have to know it fluently.

"Exactly. So text Millie and tell her you changed your mind."

I nod. It's not a bad idea.

"Fill the silence," Kyle winks.

I roll my eyes. Five weeks isn't long enough to learn a new language, but maybe Olivia is onto something. I glance over at her and feel a sudden wave of gratitude—gratitude that she took me to the hospital, that she saw what I couldn't see in myself.

I've spent the last month believing I was broken. That without my voice and my broadcasting career, I was nothing. But sitting here with my family, I realize I was wrong about what matters most. My voice was never what made me valuable. It was never what defined me. It was always them—their unwavering support, their willingness to learn alongside me, their refusal to let me disappear into dead air.

A news interpreter isn't a consolation prize. It's a bridge. It's a way to tell stories that matter, to give voice to the voiceless, to communicate across the silence. Maybe that's more meaningful than sitting behind a desk ever was.

I smile at each of my family members sitting around the table. Each one helped me through the toughest challenge of my life. And now, I'm ready to help myself. I pick up my phone and text Millie: I changed my mind. I'm ready to fill the silence.