Chapter Seven
Three weeks after Annie got out of the hospital, an approaching storm threw dark clouds into the skies over Phoenix. Strong winds and spotty rain smacked against her windows, shaking them in their frames. She realized it because a dull rattling sound interrupted her reading, and it wasn’t until she looked up from the book at the wet glass that she understood that she had heard the noise.
She set the book carefully on her coffee table and listened. Mostly, she heard the tinnitus crashing around inside her head. But she could faintly make out the patter of raindrops on the window, the rush of wind, the steady hum of her forced-air furnace.
Running down her stairs, Annie threw the front door open and ran into the street. A car pulled out of a garage, and she was certain she could hear its engine and the low rumble of the garage door closing. The wind was louder here, howling between the condo buildings, and even though the sound was as muffled as if she had a couple of pillows lashed around her head, it was real.
I can hear!
She stood outside listening until she was soaked through, then went back in (stomping on the stairs as she climbed, her footsteps coming to her as dull thumps), opened her kitchen cabinet, and with both hands, scooped all her pots and pans onto the floor. Their clanging was like the miniature cymbals of a wind-up monkey, but it was audible. Next she turned on the big TV in her living room, punching the button on the remote and watching the volume bar slide across the screen until she could make out the gentle murmur of voices.
I can hear! The certainty delighted her. I’m getting better!
She booted up her laptop and sent cheerful emails to Dr. Ganz, Nanci, and Dale Carson. Only after the messages were gone did it occur to her that her progress might be a fluke, temporary, that any second the silence might envelop her again.
She decided she wouldn’t accept that possibility. Why should she? This was her first real sign of recovery, it was good news, and sharing it wouldn’t cancel it out.
Annie had been living like a hermit, leaving her home only when absolutely necessary. The city’s emotional noise was far worse than the aural kind. Everyplace she went there were people, people who were glad or afraid, depressed or aroused, suicidal or nervous or high. Pushing a cart through a supermarket was a journey through dozens of emotional states, and the briefest shopping trip left her exhausted. Annie was a fiend for chocolate chip cookies, so not only did she need real food at home, but she also had to keep flour, sugar, chocolate, vanilla, eggs, and baking soda on hand at all times. That necessitated the occasional trip out into the world, like it or not.
When the rain slackened a bit, she went out on purpose. She had been nervous about driving since she got out of the hospital, because of the deafness and the sling on her left arm. But this time she left the sling off and drove to a nearby mall with a big chain bookstore in it. There were always people in the store, and she suspected that the range of topics covered by the books would provoke a variety of emotional responses. She had always been a careful driver, with only one minor parking lot fender-bender fouling her record, and she made it over the wet streets without incident.
At the bookstore, she roamed the aisles slowly, moving in close to people as they browsed the shelves or read in the overstuffed fake leather chairs. The improvement in her hearing hadn’t changed—everything was still faraway, voices coming to her as if carried by two cans and a piece of string. But it hadn’t disappeared, either. Something was better than nothing.
It didn’t take Annie long to discover that the clairsentience hadn’t gone away either, although it seemed a little less pronounced. In the past, when she was in a place with a lot of people, she picked up on the emotions of those to whom she was physically nearest. The same rule seemed to apply now, but she had to be closer than ever to get any emotional input. She bumped up against a woman skimming a Peanuts book in the Humor section. The woman was laughing softly, but even before they made physical contact, Annie felt sorrow flowing off her like rain off the roof of her car. She was mourning someone and had picked up Peanuts hoping to ease her pain. But Charlie Brown and Snoopy could only dissipate her sadness briefly. Annie had to hurry away before she broke into tears.
In the Business section, a young couple looking at books on real estate was easier to approach. They were about to start shopping for their first home, and their eager anticipation helped ease the pain of the Peanuts lady. A gay man flipping the pages of a sailing magazine had just had a lunch date that he believed could turn out to be a long-term relationship. Three tween girls in the Teen Paranormal section were crushing on the skinny salesclerk with long dark hair and a tattooed neck.
Annie couldn’t “see” details, but some people’s emotions were so strong, so directed, that she might as well have been inside their heads. The idea that she had a supernatural ability embarrassed her, and she felt like a thief, slipping up to people and snatching traces of their emotions.
She stayed less than twenty minutes, just long enough to determine that the improvement in her hearing seemed to have come with an associated decrease in empathy, but not a complete loss of it.
Her mood soured by the discovery, she went back outside, where the rain had returned, a fierce wind stinging her with it. She felt that the lash of wind and water was somehow deserved, and she stood in it for a long time before getting into her car.