FicWad

Authors Note: This should've been posted a long while ago but I realized that I'd hadn't posted this on this account because, I think, last time I tried to FicWad was having problems. So here it is now.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Suzannah's POV



I could see Hannah talking to him over by the counter. She was warning him off, like she did to all the other guys that stopped to speak to me. That's what she always did. Somehow I think she thought she was looking out for me but I wish Icould find a way to tell her that I can look out for myself but I can't. Saying something like that to a person comes out worse on paper then it ever could when you speak it.



Hannah had grabbed him by the arm now and she had an anxious look on her face. Icouldn't see Pete's face, only the back of him. Then his posture changed and Iknew she had told him I was mute. He was more alert now, leaning into the conversation. He wanted to know how I came to be mute and I knew that she would spin the story she always told.



Suzannah had throat cancer. They got rid of the tumor but now she's unable to talk. They tried vocal therapy but it doesn't seem to be changing her situation. They're still trying though and they hope that maybe one day in the future she'll be able to talk.



Those were the lies that Hannah told all the guys.



I could see her telling him. I couldn't hear her but I could read her lips.



Although I wasn't deaf, being silent for awhile allowed me to gain new skills, like lip reading for example. Whenever I went somewhere I would sit and watch the people talking around me. How their lips moved. What movement accompanied which sound. I never bothered to learn sign language even though my vocal therapist and psychiatrist both thought it would be good for me. I learnt to read lips instead.



I turned my attention away from Pete and Hannah's conversation and picked my clipboard up off the table. I didn't want Hannah to tell Pete my 'story'. /I/wanted to tell Pete my story.



------



The girl from the coffee shop, Hannah, had told Pete what happened to Suzannah and now as much as he wanted to talk to her he knew that was near impossible, not just because of her lack of voice but also because Hannah was looking out for her and Pete wouldn't get a word in before Hannah came and told him to leave her alone.



So he left.



As much as he wanted to know Suzannah, he couldn't. Some days he wished he could be mute, just not talk and only observe. Now this girl was able to do that, even if it was tragic how she came to be as such.



Pete had almost reached his car when all of a sudden he felt a something hit his back. He whirled around and came face-to-face with Suzannah.



"Oh."He could only manage to choke out.



She didn't have her clipboard in her hand anymore but Pete could see the silver clip of it sticking out of her handbag. In her hand she had several sheets of paper. She thrust them at him and nodded expectantly. She wanted him to read it.



He glanced down at the pages. They were filled by small, meticulous writing. Her writing.



Pete turned to her where she now sat, on the back of his car. Her legs were hanging off the edge and the scuffed white soles of her shoes were tapping gently on the back tyre of his car. She widened her eyes and gestured at the papers in his hand, indicating for him to read them.



"You want me to read it?"



She nodded.



Pete jumped up onto the back of the car next to her and let his legs hang over the side, as hers were.



He began to read the writing that was contained on the page.



Hannah told you that I lost my voice because of cancer and I didn't. I'm tired of having her tell my story and not tell it myself. So instead I'm going to tell you now what really happened.



I lost my voice from a trauma, that wasn't cancer. My last boyfriend was pretty out of control. He wasn't like that at first though. We'd been together for months, I think we were coming up on our one year anniversary when he turned and everything started to get a bit crazy. We both even considered getting married; we just loved each other that much. We thought we did. Or I thought we did.



Last year sometime we'd been having some issues. My parents didn't approve of him at all and at first I thought he wasn't bothered by it but then he started getting angry whenever someone mentioned my parents and he blamed me for them not liking him. He said I was the one who turned them against him. But I hadn't been and when I tried to tell him otherwise, he would hit me. So I stopped trying to protest and I just hoped that he would stop.



But he never did. He began to find other things to blame on me. Like when I didn't fold his clothes properly or I placed a shirt in the wrong place, or if Istacked the dishwasher wrong. Things like that.



And I would just put up with it when he yelled at me because somehow I still thought it was something that I had done to make him angry.



He stopped hitting me when he got angry for awhile but then it all started again and this time it was so much worse.



When it all began to get too much for me and I was turning up to work with bruises that I'd tried to cover up, or with stitches and broken fingers that I'd had to go to the emergency room for, I promised myself I'd leave him and just get away because anywhere seemed safer then home.



Then the night I actually did get the nerve up to leave him, he came home early and caught me as I was putting my suitcase in the back of my car.



He hit me and told me that if I wanted to leave him then he'd take me somewhere that I could leave to.



We drove for what seemed like forever and I was too scared to say a word. He was just casually telling me about his day at work. I remember, he said that he'd missed out on the promotion again.



When he had finally stopped the sky was pitch black and there was hardly any light except for the headlights of the car. He got out of the car and then came around and pulled me out too.



I'd skinned my knees on the road because I hadn't changed out of my work clothes that night and was still wearing my skirt. I hadn't bothered because all I was really worried about had been leaving him.



He pulled me up by my hair and was yelling at me to stand up. I remember that I'd been so terrified. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears and I'd tried to focus on my pulse to stop from thinking about him dragging me by my hair to the edge of the bridge.



He'd taken us to a bridge that had been closed for road works and I thought that he had every intention of throwing me off.



He used to hit me but then I never thought he'd murder me or try to.



He ended up beating me and I fell, hitting my neck on the wooden railing of the bridge and then I remember feeling a strong pain in my neck and down my spine. I remember laying there gasping and choking when he tried to pull me to my feet. I was hyperventilating but I couldn't breathe.



Then thankfully a guard had turned up. That torchlight beam had given me hope. People say you see a bright light when you're dying but I was seeing a bright light when I was being saved.



He ran though and I don't think the guy caught him. All I remember thinking about was the fact that he was gone and he wasn't near me anymore, his hands weren't touching me and creating more bruises.



I blacked out almost straight after. I still couldn't breathe and the pain was spreading from my spine to what seemed like every bone in my body.



I woke up alone in hospital a week later. A part of me expected my parents to be there at my bedside but another part scolded me for being so hopeful, since they had disowned me when I made the choice to leave college because I had been their golden girl, a straight A student who had never even considered doing anything to upset them. They thought if they kicked me out then I'd rethink my choice and go back but I never did and I never intended to.



I wasn't really prepared for them to kick me out so I was living on the streets for a while before I made a few friends in the right places and got a job as asecretary for a prestigious modeling agency and made enough money to pay for my own apartment.



So, I woke up in that hospital bed numb and alone. Soon after they realized I had woken up a doctor came in and told me the news. He told me they'd stitched up the lacerations and the bruises would need time to heal. He told me not only had they removed shards of wood that had been embedded in my neck when I hit the railing but the impact of the fall on my neck had caused my spine to shift and crush my larynx slightly, but so much that I was no longer able to speak.



At first I was so angry. I hated him for doing this to me and I hated the doctors for not being able to help and I holed myself up in my apartment and wouldn't come out. My colleagues would come and see me and pretend as if they cared. It was only pity in their eyes though. Eventually, after months, I got used to the idea of not speaking. I left my apartment and I went back to work. I used to be able to answer the phones but now I can't. I just type up the documents and sort through the files. Everyone seemed so happy for me to be back at work but people seemed to talk slower around me or louder, as if I couldn't still understand regular speech.



People act differently around you when you've got no voice or as they like to call it, a disability, although I hardly think of it like that. If anything it's helped me notice the small things in life.



I don't know why I want you, of all people, to know the truth. Maybe I hope you'll be the one to understand it the best.



Hannah means well but this is the truth. This is why my voice ceased. I never had cancer.