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1.
It’s her first birthday, and as far as parties for one-year olds go, it’s pretty chaotic. Hadley’s all set up in her highchair with a piece of cake in front of her, eyes wide and hands twitching like all she wants to do is attack it.
“Hadley, look at mama!” Jemma calls from a few feet away, camera held up. “Look up here, darling!”
Grant laughs when Hadley’s head lifts just a bit, like she’s recognized her name but can’t stand to look away from what’s in front of her.
They just let her go at the cake, taking pictures and not thinking anything of it.
2.
Grant has a couple of days off of work, and he’s thrilled to spend Thursday morning helping Gracie and Simon get ready before Jemma takes them to school and then heads to her classes. He gets to spend the rest of the day with their wildly energetic youngest child.
“Where’s Hadley?” He croons as he crawls around on the living room floor. “Where’s my baby girl?” He can hear the grippies on the soles of her footie pajamas sticking and unsticking to the hardwood floor, beside the far end of the couch. He crawls closer, calling her name.
She doesn’t move out of her hiding place, doesn’t peek around the corner. (She’s a very good hider.) When he can finally see her where she’s crouched down, her back is to him, waiting for him to come from the other way. (He’s a good seeker.)
Grant makes a terribly fake growling sound, wraps his arms around her little frame, and swoops her up into the air. Not a moment later, he nearly drops her to the floor when she screams loudly, her tiny hands pushing against his forearms until she manages to get a look at his face. She twists in his grip until she can snuggle close to his chest, tears streaming down her face while she hiccups.
“Hey, it’s okay, H, it’s okay. I’m sorry. Daddy didn’t mean to scare you, baby.”
He feels like shit for the rest of the day, even though Hadley forgives and forgets within ten minutes. Grant’s so wrapped up in guilt, he doesn’t give much thought to why she hadn’t heard him coming.
3.
When Hadley’s three, Grace is nine and fully capable of playing the Mulan soundtrack on loop at any and all hours of the day. And she does. Simon has gone to play in the backyard, fed up with his sisters and their singing. Grant is making dinner while Jemma grades papers.
“Girls, turn it down, please!” She calls in the general direction of the stairs. After a moment, the music only turns up louder. “Grace Ward, that is too loud!”
Their oldest daughter comes around the corner from the front hall. “I’m right here. I was looking for my dancing shoes.” She winces visibly when she gets closer to the stairs. “Hadley’s turning it up.”
Frowning slightly in Grant’s direction, Jemma gets up from the table and makes her way up the stairs to Grace’s room. Opening the door all the way, she covers her ears with her hands before locating Hadley where she lies on the floor, coloring.
“Hadley!” Edging over to the CD player, Jemma hits the stop button and sighs when it goes quiet. Her daughter looks up with raised eyebrows. “Sweetheart, that was much too loud.”
Hadley sits up and squints at her mother for a moment. “Sorry, mama.”
Jemma takes her downstairs to dinner, making a note to talk to Grant later.
4.
A few months before Hadley’s fourth birthday, Jemma’s all but certain something is wrong with her daughter’s hearing. It doesn’t comfort her or Grant when they notice Hadley seems to be teaching herself to read lips.
So they sit in the waiting room, watching Hadley build a block tower while they wait for the ENT doctor.
“We should have been more careful when she was still a baby. When she had all those ear infections.” Grant murmurs quietly as he smoothes a hand over Hadley’s hair, fingertip barely ghosting over the shell of her ear. She turns her head to smile up at him.
“Grant,” Jemma begins softly. “There’s nothing we could have done. It’s the way she was born. She’ll be just fine.”
“I shouldn’t have pushed when we were having such a hard time getting pregnant.” The words seem like they should be angry, firm. They just sound quiet. Guilty.
Jemma doesn’t look him in the eye. “You’d rather not have her at all than have her hearing-impaired?”
Suddenly Grant has reached down and scooped Hadley up, holding her close to his chest with an enormous frown. “Of course not.” Hadley just cuddles close to her father, little fingers tapping out the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Their daughter is diagnosed with moderate deafness, though the doctors predict it might get worse as she gets older. When they try to explain it to the little girl, she only gets parts of it. She just shrugs, bright smile still on her face.
+1.
Jemma asks Hadley if she wants to learn sign language while they go over other options, and she’s thrilled when her youngest nods enthusiastically.
By the time her fourth birthday rolls around, she’s picked up lots of words and phrases, excelling at a rate that impresses just about everybody. The whole family is learning together, Gracie and Simon trying to sign with each other instead of speaking half the time.
When Fitz and Skye knock at the door, Eli and Emery dash into the house (stopping briefly to hug Coulson and May) to find the birthday girl and show off the sign language they’ve learned. Jemma and Grant look up from preparing dinner when Fitz slides a little purple box across the counter toward them.
Grant’s heart races a little quicker and he feels Jemma’s fingers digging into his side. He swallows slowly and looks up at Fitz’s small smile. “That was fast.”
Fitz shrugs a little, resituating himself when Skye loops her arms around his middle, her chin perched on his shoulder with a giddy grin in place. “I got them built and running, then sent them off to New York for a little ramping up.” He raises an eyebrow and taps at the closed lid of the box. “You guys, these are nearly the most advanced option that exists right now, between me and the guys. I promise, they’ll work.”
Jemma nods slowly, pressing both hands to her cheeks for a moment before moving around to the other side of the island counter to hug Fitz tightly. “Thank you.”
“Hey, anything for you guys.” He says quietly.
They’d sort of intended to go about the entire birthday dinner as though that little purple box wasn’t sitting on the counter, but Grant is fidgeting like he wasn’t a specialist in a secret organization for over a decade, and Jemma’s sort of worried about a breakdown. She calls for all the kids to come downstairs into the living room.
Coulson and May take up seats on the couch, Gracie wedging herself between them. Fitz sits in the armchair while Skye situates herself on the floor against his legs.
Hadley plops down on the floor. “Do I get to open presents?” She asks softly, looking up at Jemma and trying the sign for ‘presents’.
Grant nods, doing the sign as well. “We have one that we want to go first, H.” He keeps his voice loud so she can hear his words.
Presents are presents, really, so Hadley just sits up on her knees and claps her hands together.
Jemma has the box on her lap, fingertips smoothing over the lid. Taking a breath, she holds it out to Hadley, who takes it in careful hands and opens it up. When she’s obviously unsure about what it is she’s looking at, she sets the box against her legs and looks around the room at the adults, waiting for someone to assist her.
With no further prompting, Fitz stands from the chair and untangles his fingers from Skye’s hair. He sits cross-legged behind Hadley, reaching forward to pull her back onto his lap. “Alright, sweet pea, let’s take a look, okay?”
Hadley slips her fingers around the box again, lifting it up towards Fitz.
“That’s right, I’m gonna show you how they work.” Jemma wonders how they all learned to read Hadley in body language and facial expressions, and somehow never really figured out that she was having hearing problems. Fitz balances the box on his knee, then reaches in and pulls one of the little devices out and holds it in the palm of his hand. “They’re called hearing aids, love, and they sit in your ears to help you hear things better.”
She furrows her eyebrows and looks to her parents for a moment. Grant smiles softly. “It’s okay, H. Uncle Fitz makes all kinds of cool things, doesn’t he? These are going to help you.”
“Only if you want them.” Jemma adds, leaning forward until she’s about to tip off the loveseat. “If you don’t like them, you don’t have to use them.”
Hadley’s face smoothes out a little, and she turns to look up at Fitz again, nodding her head. Her uncle takes that as his cue and starts to brush her brown hair away from her ears. The aids are tiny, smaller than Jemma had been expecting, sitting on the tip of Fitz’s index finger. “They’re gonna sit right inside your ear, Hadley, and you won’t even feel them. And your mum or your dad can take them out anytime you want to. Ready?”
She nods and tips her head.
Fitz fusses about with the aids for a moment, then begins to settle them in. He glances up at Grant and Jemma quickly so they know he’s talking to them. “They won’t fall out, but they detach easy when you want them to. They’re waterproof, she can wear them swimming or in the bath.”
“You’ll show us how to take them out?” Jemma asks softly in the quiet of the room.
Hadley’s head whips around suddenly, eyes wide as she looks right at her mother. Jemma’s already got tears in her eyes when Hadley whispers, “I heard you, Mama.”
“They work?”
Her head turns again. “And Daddy!”
“How about this?” Comes a whisper from across the room.
Grant starts to fear his daughter is going to get whiplash with how quickly she turns. “That was Gracie!”
Jemma says they can open the rest of the presents, but all Hadley wants to do is sit in front of each person in the room and listen to them talk to her. (She spends an extra ten minutes with Uncle Fitz, because “he says words different than everybody else”.)
Eventually they sit down to eat, and Jemma watches as Melinda whispers things as quietly as possible while Hadley, sitting across from her, grins wildly.
Grant knows they have strong children. Hadley would’ve handled her hearing loss just fine without the hearing aids. She still might, in the future. But when Simon and Emery start singing ‘Hey Jude’ from the other end of the dinner table, and Hadley can hear it and begin to sing along, Jemma isn’t the only one in tears.