Hey, Valerie!

If you could say only one word for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Months after the car accident, Martha came up with a story to help explain my condition. She said that the day I fell into a coma, Death announced itself to me in dreams. Death stood up close to my face. His hollow eyes stared right into my soul and said “Beg for your pathetic life, human,” to which I replied with a shivering voice:

“Hey”

A greeting, afraid of causing the wrong first impression on such an esteemed, omnipotent being. Death, frustrated by my politeness towards him, decided it was no use convincing a people-pleasing mortal to challenge him. He took a step back and said “Your humanity has saved you, but it has also damned you. From now on you will only be able to speak what you have said to me.” So I woke up with a rare case of “broca's aphasia”. I can only pronounce the word “hey” in a somewhat comprehensible way. Otherwise, I am pretty much nonverbal. My older sister has never been the best at offering comfort, and I like that about her. I receive enough pity from others to compensate for her lack of it.

Martha mockingly calls me “Saint Marcus” for a reason. She says I am too kind for my good, that I have to bite back once in a while. Perhaps I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had shown some teeth to the universe.

Mom has not heard this story, she would burst into tears immediately. Martha and I know this too well, that when our mom begins shedding tears there is no stopping her for the rest of the day. During my late afternoon drives to my speech therapy sessions, as I glance at my mother resting her head on the window, guilt overpowers me. There are times at which I cannot tell what it is that hurts more, seeing my mother cry because of my condition, or not being able to speak more than one word. It’s just the two of us, alone with our thoughts, and I torture myself trying to come up with a million ways I can breach this silence. I could say “pretty,” “sunshine,” “smile,” “love,” “thanks,” “day,” “light,” or “hope” and so much more. If only I could.

If I could say only one word for the rest of my life, what would it be?

I still don’t know. Surely not “hey.” Screw that. It’s like setting up a door in the middle of a room. An introduction to nothing. Welcome to nowhere, ladies and gentlemen! Hardly anyone sticks around to find out what this “hey” is introducing them to when they realize that’s it. That’s all you’ll ever get. And yet, that is the magic trick I pull from my sleeve.

“Hey,” I mutter softly to my mother beside me, hands steady on the wheel. A chuckle escapes me towards the end. It’s okay, I mean to say, It will all be fine.

It achieves the desired effect. I sense my mother smile beside me, as I fix my gaze on the road ahead. She stretches a hand out to the back of my neck and squeezes gently.

“My sweet boy. You can do this, let’s take it one step at a time.”

***

Craig places all the music sheets together in a pile and taps them lightly onto the piano’s lid in front of him. He reaches for the binder beside him and binds the sheets together inside of it.

“Good work today, Marcus, it was fun wasn’t it?” said Craig, my speech therapist. He’s more of a music teacher, but his official title at the center is “speech therapist” for simplicity. He used to be a music director for a reputable conservatory until a former child piano prodigy who had just graduated from Berklee stole his job.

I pull out my phone and open my speech-to-text application. By now, I had perfected the art of typing fast to not let the awkward silence of someone waiting for my reply stick around for too long. Sometimes I have to hold in my laughter from hearing the plain AI-generated voice speak my thoughts to others.

“If you make me hum to one more aria by Puccini I’ll make sure your binder mysteriously goes missing.” Craig snorts and looks up at me.

“Whoa, chill out Siri’s Wingman, this is the last you’ll see of Puccini this week anyway.”

I throw punches in the air in celebration, and a high-pitched “hey” escapes me without meaning to. No wonder people mistake my condition for Tourette’s every once in a while. It often feels like I am lying through my teeth, as my mind forms a word and my lips blurt out another. It is an arduous task to constantly remind myself that my vocal cords are stubborn and will only be able to mutter a single word. This is why the work I do with Craig is important. Most of the time I don’t sing the lyrics out loud, instead I hum along to the melody. I hope that someday I will trick my brain into believing it can pronounce more than just the phonetic composition of “hey.” I often wonder if Craig believes his methods will work on me. So far we haven’t seen any progress.

“You know what Marcus, I’ll give you a treat, why don’t you tell me a song you like and we can practice it in our next session?”

I hesitate for a moment. There is one song I am thinking of, but I’m not sure if I should. Finally, after a couple of seconds pass, as if letting myself browse through a mental repertoire, I type out my answer for Craig.

“Maybe we can try Valerie, the one by Amy Winehouse.” The AI-generated voice gives away more confidence than I would over this song choice. Secretly I hope Craig doesn’t dig in on my answer, but his eyes lay on me for longer than they should.

“Valerie? I mean good choice but I didn’t think you were a Winehouse fan at all.”

My gaze fixes on the floor beneath me for a moment, just enough for Craig to raise his eyebrows at me and smirk. After all, my frequent visits to the center have brought us closer. As much as Craig wants to put on the “good pal” role, I see him as a fatherly figure almost, someone I can truly trust and who doesn’t pity me.

“Aha! I see, there is a girl… ”

“Screw you, Craig.” I type out before he pushes the subject. He chuckles and I know he will do it anyway.

“Is it her favorite song or what? Are you trying to sing it to her?” He grins as he speaks, with a hint of genuine curiosity.

“Her name is Valerie.” The AI’s voice says for me, and the smile vanishes off Craig’s face. He realizes my intentions and regains seriousness; his speech therapist mask remerges. A hesitant “maybe” spins around the room and hangs onto our tongues. We choose to hope, despite everything else.

“You may be onto something Marcus, I think it could work, you could manage to pronounce her name.” He pulls out his phone from his pocket and starts typing stuff out, it is almost as if a light bulb lights up above his head.

“Yes, I can see it happening. The chord progression is fairly straightforward and repetitive… expressive phrasing, and vibrato, great because we need to work on your vibrato, dude.”

“Do you think it’s a good choice?” I type out and again, I wish the AI’s voice could match my hesitation. Craig’s eyes are still glued to his phone, as if Amy Winehouse herself was texting him in real-time.

“Yeah, of course. It would be an interesting experiment for sure, I just need to transpose the original sheets to match your vocal range but that shouldn’t be too hard.”

I say goodbye to Craig and head out of his office into the main lobby. I say hi to Mom, who is sitting with her phone in the waiting area. As we make our way to the parking lot, I cannot help but wonder if I made the right choice by hoping for too much. Am I delusional by thinking I could have this small triumph, to be able to greet my friend like a decent human being?

***

Valerie moved into our neighborhood two months after I had woken up from the coma. It was January, arguably the coldest month of winter, and the darkest time of my life. I was happy to be alive, and yet, I was grieving what I had lost. I think I am still grieving, not to the degree I was that winter, but still. I can’t even bring myself to remember what exactly happened during the car accident. I’m not ready yet, and it’s useless now. Well then obviously this event hit me really hard, not being able to say goodbye to my voice or attend a funeral for it, because who cares for lost senses and abilities when you are alive? Then it got even worse having to get used to life again, finding out all the friends I had made slowly began to pull away from your life. Not that they didn’t try to stay in it, but it just wasn’t the same after a while. I grew to resent them, to resent the way they tried so hard to please me and be there for me when it had come so easily to them before. All these factors played into an atrocious recipe for depression and anxiety. I started going to therapy on top of my medical checks and speech therapy. Amidst this confusion and loneliness, there she was.

We met by chance, it truly was, our high school is big enough for us to go through life without even knowing about each other’s existence. We met because the day she moved into her house, she pulled up to my house in her father’s car by accident. I remember she almost scared Martha, who was watching a show on TV in the living room. Valerie was ready to knock down our main door, while she struggled to make her key open it. I opened up the main door and she almost stumbled over me. I remember her face, flushed from embarrassment.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I thought I lived here… I am moving in today and I’ve been bringing stuff down from the storage place.”

“Hey,” I blurted out. My cheeks flushed to match the color of hers. Valerie’s eyebrows frowned slightly, and she tilted her head like a puppy who did not understand what was being said. I froze in place, trying to think of what to do. Back then, it was still the early stages of my life after the accident, I rarely met new people who did not know who I was, and who had not read my story on the news.

A moment passed, and Valerie smiled at me. “Hey,” she said, and I didn’t know if she understood that I was not trying to be mean, or weird. Regardless of what she knew or not, she chose to be kind, to be warm. She always is.

Shortly after, Martha emerged behind me. She introduced herself and went on to offer an explanation to Valerie about my behavior. We have been inseparable since then.

***

On our bike ride back from school, Valerie said to me she was leaving for two weeks as soon as summer vacation started. She would be touring universities with her parents, starting with Virginia, then north to Washington D.C., New York City, perhaps Pennsylvania if there was still time in their road trip.

I let my bike crash down onto the lawn next to my doorstep. I open the door and let it crash behind me as it closes. I could only nod as Valerie explained her summer plans to me with excitement. She spoke about the biology department at Johns Hopkins and the rising rental costs in New York City. Sometimes it escapes me that there is a whole world beyond our small, suburban hometown. I am happy for her, but also terrified. High school graduation seemed too far for me until that moment. After all, we would be graduating seniors in a couple of months. Mom wants me to take a gap year and stay home with her, to see if my condition improves a little. Deep down I know that if I don’t leave for college shortly after graduation, I will never leave this town.

I crash onto my bed, resting a closed fist on my forehead as I stare at the ceiling. The inevitability of her absence, although only temporary for now, sends a shiver down my spine. I begin to envision another Valerie, one who is beyond my reach. She is out of bed by 7:00 am each morning, ready to seize the day. She skips breakfast (she was never a breakfast person anyway), and orders a strawberry smoothie to go as she runs to her morning class. She sits in the middle of the room for every lecture, and scribbles on a battered notebook with the only pen she carries around with her. To her peers, it would seem like she is unprepared and doesn’t know what the lecturer is rambling about, but oh she does. She outsmarts them and devises a mental road map about whatever it is they teach you about as a Biology major. She doesn’t need to gloat or be an overachieving ass and participate constantly, she sits back and observes. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t speak her mind (god she talks so much) and she mocks you in a joking way so that you don’t feel diminished by her. Instead, it is almost like she challenges you to a duel. She shows teeth and you take the bait, the conversation becomes a nonsensical argument filled with banter; a battle of the minds. Then she cracks out a joke to seal the argument that throws you off, there is no winner or loser, and she gives you a taste of her goofiness. She speaks her mind so intently and openly that it draws other people in. In no time she is part of a big group of like-minded people, and they go out every weekend to the local bars. Actually, maybe not EVERY weekend, because Valerie values a slower pace of life too. Sometimes she and her friends stay in to watch a movie or play those strategy board games she always beats me at, or they check out an undiscovered hiking spot outside of town (even though she’s more of a gym person than a sports person, she loves a good walk outside).

All these beautiful things comprise Valerie’s future, and I am not in it… Oh my god I think I am in love with her, and I can’t say it. Is nobody going to say it? Will no one say it out loud for me?

***

The most dreaded day has come. Valerie texted me an hour ago that she was pulling over to my house to say goodbye. I hear the doorbell ring and I know it is her behind the door. I rush down, and I feel my head pounding, and my throat dry. I feel words swimming inside my head. A million ways to say it flooding my vision, there are so many ways I could say I care for her. The song I’ve been practicing with Craig for days plays nonstop. I savor the melody and try to recall how the song tastes, how I have sung it at Craig’s office. I open the door, and we are face to face like we once were so long ago.

“Hey, Marcus,” she says with tenderness. I wish no one else but her would know how to pronounce my name. I wish saying each other’s names were our secret language.

My phone is in my pocket. I breathe in. This is it, time to gather courage, and show fear some of my teeth for once.

“Hey, Valerie!” I almost scream. The word feels wrong, it tastes like stale cookies, pulled out from an ancient tin box. I say it with such force, it knocks me over. Craig would be so proud.

Slowly she realizes she just heard her name escape from my lips. She blinks, startled by what just happened. She opens her mouth to say something but seems to hesitate and closes it. I search for her eyes, silently begging her to find me. Does she understand? Will she get the truth I am trying to disguise through two simple words? She sets her bag down on the floor, without diverting her gaze from me. Valerie smiles, and the silent motion of her lips is enough to drown out any other sounds around us as if every fiber of her being was made to rule over the wind and its resonance. Then I know. I know she knows. I feel the truth escaping me, it whistles as it runs away. I showed mercy for once, I opened up the gates. My lips obey her, and I smile back at her.

She holds out her arms, waiting for my arms to find her. I pull her into an embrace. She knows. One after the other, words come alive, and that is the order of things. I know now.

THE END.