Chapter Text
Regina knew before the doctor even entered the room that the surgery had failed. Even if she hadn’t, it would have been obvious by the look on his face as he tried to avoid her eyes.
“I’m sorry Regina,” he said, taking care to speak slowly and carefully so that she could read his lips.
Regina didn’t answer. For the first few weeks after the explosion on the Navy ship she was deployed on that cost her the ability to hear, she had learned that the most disconcerting part of not being able to hear was not being able to hear the sound of your own voice.
At first, she had instinctively assumed it was an issue of volume and she had unconsciously spoken louder and louder in an attempt to hear what she was saying. It wasn’t until her 5 year old son burst into tears because she was yelling at him for no reason that she realized what she was doing.
“Why are you shouting at me? You could have just told me to get into pajamas.”
She had stared at him, stunned, because she had thought her voice had been barely above a whisper. Since that day, she had kept her speaking to the bare minimum.
“Regina?”
She nodded to indicate that she understood what he had said and that she was listening to him.
“We attempted to put an implant in that would amplify what little hearing you have left in your right ear. We found far too much scar tissue, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be successful in the future.”
She nodded again, though she had only understood some of what he said this time. Learning to lip read, particularly in a world where everyone wore masks all the time, was going to be damn near impossible. She tuned him out as he began to ramble on about future surgeries and learning sign language.
None of it mattered.
Her attention was caught by the sight of the door opening. Quickly, she smoothed out the blanket that covered her to ensure her visitor would not see her in her hospital gown and sat up in anticipation of their arrival.
Chief Petty Officer Mary Margaret Blanchard stepped into the room and the doctor took the excuse to duck out quickly after asking Regina if she had any questions for him. She shook her head to indicate that she did not and he left with a promise to return later that evening,
“Hello, Mills.”
Even though she could not hear her Chief’s voice, she could tell by the shape of her lips that the woman was shouting. That was something else she had had to get used to once people caught on to the fact that she was deaf.
Sighing, she resigned herself to speaking to the woman, loathsome as she found her. “You can stop screaming.”
“What did you say?” Her Chief’s face scrunched up in confusion.
So, she had been whispering again. Damn it. Screwing up her own face in concentration, she tried again, attempting to pay attention to how the vibration of her voice felt coming from her throat at different volumes.
“I said, you can stop screaming. I won’t be able to hear you anyway.”
Chief Blanchard’s face flushed, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She had a feeling that she knew exactly why her Chief was visiting her and it was more important than making either of them feel more comfortable in the moment.
Sure enough, Mary Margaret sat down, looking as though she would rather be anywhere but that hospital bed. A wave of resentment washed over her and she stubbornly refused to do anything to ease the awkwardness, instead staring directly at the woman that was studiously avoiding her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mills.”
“I can’t understand you if you don’t look at me,” she said irritably.
“Oh….right,” Mary Margaret said, face flushing again. Regina still said nothing, just waited for her pathetic excuse of a leader to find the courage to make eye contact.
“Your medical review board results came back today. I’m sorry, Mills, but your request for permanent limited duty was denied.”
Though it wasn’t a surprise, Regina felt a twinge of disappointment at the news. Permanent limited duty would have allowed her to finish out the remaining three years of her career on desk duty. Instead, she would be processed for administrative separation, with her retirement date so close she could practically taste it, and while she would be entitled to disability pay, she would lose all the benefits that she had come to depend on to support her son and his unique needs.
Mary Margaret mumbled out another apology and Regina sighed again, suddenly exhausted with the game she had been playing of making this as difficult as humanly possible.
“Thank you for coming to tell me.” The wince on her Chief’s face told her that her volume was once again too loud, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “I am getting pretty tired. Maybe it would be best if you left now.”
Chief Blanchard jumped up so quickly that she nearly knocked over the chair she was sitting in. Under almost any other circumstance, it would have been amusing.
“Just so you know, there won’t be disciplinary action taken against either one of us.”
Regina scoffed in response, but the relief was there, nonetheless. The mistakes they had both made that day had had devastating consequences and she knew, all things considered, she was probably getting off easy with a medical discharge.
“I’ll be back soon,” Mary Margaret promised, as she made her way to the door. Regina nodded, knowing perfectly well that she would never see the other woman again. That was all right, though. It was exactly the silver lining this particular cloud needed.
She turned just before she reached the door, eyes troubled. “If there was anything I could do, Mills, I would have.”
Distaste filled Regina’s mouth again as she struggled to reply. Her mind screamed at her to shout that that just wasn’t good enough, but she just didn’t have the energy for it.
“It’s not your fault,” she said at last, staring directly up at the ceiling. She didn’t have to look down again to read her reply, because she already knew what her Chief was going to say.
“We both know that’s not true.”
She shrugged in answer to the response she hadn’t heard. “What’s done is done,” she said lightly. “I really am tired, Chief, so if you don’t mind…” she let her voice trail off and continued to look at the ceiling until she saw the door close out of the corner of her eye. Despite warning herself not to, she found herself once again thinking of that day several weeks earlier.
“I need you to make sure that the maintenance in the number three boiler room happens this afternoon. I have a meeting to get to.”
“That maintenance was supposed to happen last night Chief. We don’t have the manpower on the day shift to do it safely.”
“It didn’t happen last night, and the boiler is getting inspected first thing in the morning. Make it happen, Mills, whatever you have to do.”
Regina gritted her teeth in frustration and made a mental note to talk to the night shift supervisor when she came in that evening. The two of them shared a mutual distaste for Mary Margaret’s lackadaisical approach to leadership, but at least she recognized that she was here to do a job whether she liked it or not. Her counterpart, on the other hand, routinely defied orders and left tasks unfinished, knowing that their Chief would do absolutely nothing about it. It wasn’t the first time Regina had found herself having to pick up night shift’s slack and she was getting sick of it.
Strapped as she was for the necessary personnel, she found herself in the unenviable position of having only one other person available to do the job. Boiler maintenance was dangerous, but it didn’t look like there was another choice.
“Come on, Cassidy. We have a job to do.”
She tried to pull herself from her thoughts, having no desire to go where they would lead her next.
Concentrating on the task before her, trying to do the work of two people.
Not paying close enough attention to the job Cassidy was doing.
Seeing him turn the wrong valve before she could stop him.
Shouting at him to get down.
Leaping from where she had been working to pull him to safety and landing on top of him a fraction of a second before the boiler exploded from the pressure of the oxygen he had accidentally turned back on.
The look of awe in his eyes when he realized that he was still alive and unharmed.
She had passed out from the pain of her burns moments later as Cassidy turned to shout for help and when she had woken up in the sick bay, the terrible ringing in her ears hadn’t stopped. She had been medically evacuated from the ship and taken to a nearby hospital, where she had been forced to face the grim truth.
The burns on her skin were miraculously relatively superficial and would heal, but the scars would always be there. The scar on her upper lip that she had carried since childhood had made her face more interesting, more beautiful in the mystery it created. The scars that now marred the rest of her face and arms made for nothing more than a horror story stamped out on her skin.
Worse, the ringing was never going to go away.
She had been too close, the noise of the boiler exploding just too loud.
The damage to her inner ears too extensive from the bleeding to put in an implant.
So now, here she was, faced with her new reality.
Cassidy was alive and she was eternally grateful for that.
She was alive and every time she thought of little Henry, waiting patiently with her sister for her to return home, she was beyond grateful for that as well.
But she was about to be a 36-year-old single mother, with no steady source of income and no real marketable skills.
And, oh yes.
She was deaf.