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There was nothing more frightening than waking up into a world that was once full of music…
Suddenly being silent.
Or maybe it’s the process of it all which can be even more frightening. The thoughts that something could’ve been different, something could have changed. Maybe you could have done something to prevent this, but in the end it was too late, and you were left to think over the consequences of your actions.
You wanted more than anything to believe it wasn’t your fault, the evidence clearly showed it wasn’t. It was simply a horrifying accident that could’ve happened to anyone, but simply happened to you. The consequences of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Why were you so unlucky?
It had started off as an average day, waking up early in the morning to get yourself ready to meet with some friends downtown. The bus ride to the city was an hours worth of sitting around with complete strangers in varieties of smells and fragrances that definitely didn’t mix together, but you always managed to cope with your music. After having dressed yourself up in some comfortable clothes, you pressed your earbuds into your ears and headed for the bus stop, waited for who knows how long, and then finally got on the bus when it had arrived. Thankfully the bus was close to empty, and you found a pretty nice seat in the back beside a window. The music that played through your ears made the drive almost dream like, but it had only been about thirty minutes into the transport that suddenly your mind had been distracted from your tunes to notice a familiar figure climbing on.
You don’t remember much, you just mostly remember his smile, and how happy you were to see him. Giving you such corny and terrible jokes that, as bad as they were made you laugh so hard you were ready to collapse. And the remaining few minutes more bearable and enjoyable.
And you remember him wanting to say something… you were straining yourself just trying to remember what it was, but you couldn’t.
Suddenly everything hit like a wave, the music in your ears blared like sirens, choking down your own screams as the few passengers in the bus toppled over, and your friend falling along with it. A horrible and terrible, rather unlucky accident that lead to your music scratching your eardrums, drowning out the horrible noises as the bus flew, slammed, and the world getting fuzzy and dark.
And you remembered a blue light, the colors around you swirled and turned into a rather fantastic bluish hue, and in the screeching of your earbuds you thought you heard something small…
Maybe an apology?
But then in the blink of an eye here you were. Waking up to a nightmare that would surely never go away.
The last thing you heard was regret, you had gone deaf from the accident, and you’d never hear music again. The sirens, the screams, your last memories of any sound would be terrible and horrible ones, and an apology from someone you couldn’t make out in your clouded mind.
There was nothing more frightening than waking up into a world that was once full of music… suddenly being silent.
The hospital setting, you expected beeping from machines. You expected to hear the bustling of nurses and doctors in the halls, you expected phones to ring and the television to blare and so many noises to surround you but…
There was only the sound of silence. You were going to forever suffocate in nothing more than your own thoughts and the millions of wordless mouths trying to communicate with you. You would never hear music again, all because you were so unlucky and wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that thought alone made you scream. A soundless scream you couldn’t even hear, gripping your hair and trying to shriek so that you could let your eardrums explode and fix themselves. Trying and hoping that you could hear yourself or, at the very least, have someone hear you.
Someone, anyone…
Your eyes filled with tears as people rushed to your aid, but you couldn’t hear them. You couldn’t hear anything, you weren’t even sure what you were yelling out was a scream at all. For all you knew it could have been some disturbing wail or some terribly remixed version of a siren’s song.
But a few hours later, you realized there was no use fretting over something that couldn’t be fixed.
This was it, you would be like this forever. And nothing would change that.
Even after a few hours no one had shown up to check and see how you were, perhaps not realizing or knowing what had happened just yet. And the fact that you couldn’t hear your own voice anymore made you unsure of how you sounded or if you were speaking correctly, giving you no sure way of calling someone to talk or inform them of your safety. Soon enough though, word spread about your accident, and thankfully people started appearing after your breakdown or else they all would have been forced to watch you scream at no one.
Your parents were the first to show up, like a silent movie all you saw were tearful faces and what you could imagine to be heavy and loud sobbing from your mother. So many tight hugs, comforting embraces, and you thanked god that at LEAST you could still feel. Their warm hold around you was much needed, and even as more visitors showed up to hug you, you only wanted more. Comfort was very necessary, but by the late evening you started to feel the dark thoughts cave in on you. After the last hug of the night you were at the verge of tears, and you were thankful that they were the last visitor… because soon enough, once you were alone… you cried again.
And once again, you couldn’t hear it.
Just a permanent reminder that things would always be like this. How would you get to talk to anyone ever again?
As a nurse came in to prepare you for bed, having informed you on a small white board that you would be staying for possibly a longer while than you expected, another nurse had showed up and asked you(on yet another handy dandy white board) if it was alright for one more visitor.
You were confused, you were trying to recall who you hadn’t seen yet, but you allowed it either way as you pondered. It wasn’t until he actually peeked in through the doorway that your mind flashed back to the moment he had walked onto the bus and took the rest of the ride with you… or at least, the remainder of it before the accident.
Sans himself didn’t look so great… a white patch over his left eye socket, a missing tooth, however even with the damage it had caused he still showed up in his signature blue hoodie, baggy white shirt and sport-themed shorts. Whether he was wearing sneakers or slippers you didn’t catch before he hurried to your bedside. You wanted more than anything to hear his voice… How he was doing, what had happened, you wanted to hear him talk. And as if he hadn’t known what happened, he was speaking to you so fast and you could feel his voice vibrating through his skeletal form because he held your hands into both of his. The look of concern all over his face, anguish, dread, but he wasn’t the one even going through everything you were. He didn’t know…
And then suddenly, perhaps he realized it from your confused and disheartened expression, because the vibrations of his voice stopped, and you couldn’t feel them in his hands anymore. He looked shocked, as if having been slapped so hard the air was forced out of his system, and then he gave a hurtful smile. He spoke again, but this time you shook your head, and as best as you could, you mouthed out as tears filled your eyes--
“I C a n ‘t H e a r Y o u A n y m o r e .”
Sans was always a jokester. You were so done with being depressed over all this, crying every few minutes, and trying to figure out what comes next. You hoped that he would try and find a way to make light of all this, even if it was such a horrible tragedy.
He looked away with his one good eye, probably trying to figure something out, before he suddenly let go one of your hands so that he could do something… weird with it. His one hand started to make, what you figured was sign language (ASL), but obviously you never needed to know something like that until… the current circumstances. You stared at the hand gestures for a moment, and even stared as he repeated them over and over, but eventually you looked back to him and gave up, shaking your head.
He seemed to look around quickly, letting go of your other hand and releasing you as he tried to figure out something else. Sans reached for the white board that the nurse had left for you on your little nightstand. Obviously it was your only way to communicate with anyone, so it was necessary to keep it close by at all times. The skeleton scribbled down a few words on it, and then finally when he was finished he turned it around to show you what he had written:
“Can you hear me now?”
Wow, the SANsational Sans.
The joke was so funny you seriously forgot to laugh.
You furrowed your brows at him, even as he expressed laughter. To be honest, you knew you’d miss his laugh. And his terrible jokes, no matter how hard faced you were trying to be.
Who could blame you though for what had happened all in one day. One moment you were ready to meet with friends, the next the two of you got into a horrible accident leaving you deaf and him… half blind?
You cracked a smile at his own joy, and he turned it back around to face himself as he continued to write. Back and forth he would write something, and you would respond on it, like a regular conversation. And for once in this entire day, you felt somewhat… normal. He wasn’t crying over you, wasn’t hugging you or petting you or making you feel pitiful or more miserable than you already were. He came in concerned, but immediately cracked a joke and broke the ice, and now here you two were, sharing a whiteboard.
“How are you feeling?”
“I could be worse.”
“True, you could’ve lost your eye. Far worse than your hearing.”
“Well I could’ve been dead?”
“Being dead ain’t so bad.”
You snorted, at least you thought you did. But supposedly so considering Sans smiled a bit more at your reaction. Suddenly he didn’t hand it back to you though, he quickly erased your conversation and wrote down something before hanging it over for you to read:
“I’m sorry about this… I could’ve done something to save you.”
“ This is all my fault.”
As your grip on the whiteboard tightened, you looked up to him with sorrowful eyes, his own eye lowering to glance away from you and down at his lap in shame. You did recall a bright blue light surrounding you before everything had faded to black… you even recalled someone’s faint voice of an apology. The last sounds you would ever hear; screams, pain, blaring music, and someone saying sorry.
Was that Sans? Even during the crash he had tried to save you?
You simply leaned forward to hug him tightly, your arms carefully wrapped around his neck. You didn’t know how many injuries he received, but you knew you were sore and didn’t want him to feel any more pain than the two of you already were. He didn’t hesitate to return the hug, you both embraced each other, and you tried to say “It’s not your fault, it’s okay,” But you couldn’t be sure what you were saying.
As you slowly let go, he took the whiteboard off your hands again, a sad smile on as he wrote out:
“I’mma make it up to ya.”
“Time for Professor Sans to teach you “Sans Language.”
You grimaced, and he quickly erased and fixed it up to “Sign Language.”
You knew this was coming, you seriously were too lazy for all this, but then again you knew that you’d be in the hospital for a long while, and not only that, but you needed to find a way to communicate with people other than carrying around a whiteboard. Sans noticed your discomfort, but he quickly touched your hand as a sign of reassurance, his signature grin. As you smiled back you realized that, so long as Sans was with you every step of the way, you’d probably be a master in no time at all.
You were definitely wrong.
The first week went by rather quickly.
Because you were pretty sure you were failing miserably. Sans would sign you a sentence and then tell you which meant what letter of the alphabet, how the word would be formed, and after that failed he would slim it down to simple vowels and casual phrases that you could actually remember. By the end of the week you only knew perhaps a few letters and one phrase. And for some reason he made certain you knew the word “I’ve”, and you could naturally tell when he would try to wink because he would wince from the pain of attempting to wink with his bad eye. After the two of you survived a week of these injuries, it was pretty alright to mock one another, and you chuckled at him lightly.
The second week went by more slowly, you were actually starting to comprehend what he was teaching you. The hand gestures felt more easier to handle and make, and though there were a few words that apparently you signed so poorly that he was mocking you, you managed fairly well. And like last week with the word “I’ve”, he made certain that you knew how to sign “Been” and “In”. You were noticing some weird pattern, but tried to brush it off.
The third week was mostly about expressing feelings and emotions, love, happiness, joy, sorrows and sadness, and that week definitely touched you the most. You found yourself trying not to get emotional over the events, it had been a whole month since you had become deaf, and his eye hadn’t gotten any better(but you figured it would eventually). The only permanent fracture to Sans’ appearance was his missing tooth, but you figured him of all people would try and use it as the butt of a joke. You could imagine him whistling through it, sipping drinks through it and poking his tongue out through it as well. But what could you do with your hearing. Learning “In Love” felt harder during the third week, because for some reason you felt… well, loveless. Loveless and hopeless, and you felt unmotivated. You were forced to watch Sans heal even though you were unable to. You truly wanted to feel happy for him, but you wondered to yourself… who would love someone that couldn’t hear?
Sans had to reassure you to keep going, which of course with his optimism it worked. You weren’t sure if anything anyone else would have done could keep you as motivated as he had. But then again you and him were always closer to one another than you with anyone else, whether he felt the same way or not. Out of all your friends, you always felt he was… well… the best.
After all, the two of you had gone through hell together, and he stuck with you teaching you sign language when no one else had. And you took comfort in this, and if anything made you happier, it was that Sans was with you through thick and thin.
It wasn’t until the end of the second month you were at the hospital that you were actually able to speak in normal sentences almost fluently. “How are you today?” “What’s up?” “I’d much rather have chicken than beef.” and so on. And of course with this came the terrible puns. Sans was far too excited to now teach you how to tell jokes through sign language. Especially when the two of you signed back and forth and he would suddenly sign out “No yelling in the hospital.” which resulted in laughter. And after having spent so much time with him, even if you weren’t looking you could feel his laugh. The vibrations in the bed that gave you a glimpse of the happiness you had lost. You were slowly starting to feel, well, normal again. Perhaps you would never fully feel normal but… Sans was helping you at least get closer to it than you would have by yourself.
It would probably take more than just a few months to understand the whole vocabulary of ASL, but at the end of the third month you were finally permitted to leave. A bit more optimistic about your departure, Sans was there to help you pack the few things your parents had helped bring to your hospital room during your stay. Clothes, a DVD’s, and your laptop of course. Sans had even gotten you a few books on sign language to help you study in your downtime. The two of you would be, of course, back to your normal schedules. It almost felt like you and Sans lived together after him having visited every day for the whole three months, but now things would revert back to their old ways. Texting, a few calls, and then meeting up with him and a few other people every now and then.
As your things were taken out of the bedroom and set off to the side, he had taken your trusty whiteboard out with him, causing you to laugh and ask through hand gesturing “I don’t think I need that anymore.”
He looked it over almost confusedly, before looking to you and signing “For some reason it won’t wipe off this thing.”
Sans handed the board to you, and you took it in both your hands and looked down to the drawings. All it was were multiple doodles of hands doing a few bits of sign language, and you looked back to him. He stood there as if waiting for something to happen, but then he laughed and simply signed “I’ll pull the car around and take you home, okay?” And with a little wave he turned around with a few of your things and headed down the long pristine hallway. He took most of the heavy luggage, leaving you with your backpack, an extra bag, and the white board covered in hand drawings.
You looked back down to it, licking your thumb to try and wipe it, but to no prevail. You figured that it was probably Sans who wrote on it in permanent marker on accident. But as you looked over the hand signs drawn on the board, you started to sign them out to yourself with one hand. Reading it slowly; “I’ve been…. In love….” and as you slowly realized what had been drawn out for you, your eyes widened.
You felt your heart skip a beat, and almost too easily things came together.
Why Sans tried to save you, why he had stayed with you not just as a friend each and every day for three months…
Why he made certain that you weren’t terrified and alone…
“I ‘ v e b e e n i n l o v e . . . “
“W i t h y o u f o r e v e r . “
Suddenly you felt a tap on your shoulder, causing you to jump from your trance-like state and almost drop the whiteboard. Looking up, Sans was smiling at you, with the eye patch gone, his wink was there. Arms spread out, a faint blue blush across his cheeks, and rather quickly he signed “So, can I take you home, sweetheart?”
You knew you’ve cried too much since the accident. It felt like the tears would never end. No matter how much you two would laugh, it would lead you to crying at one point. It just got smaller and smaller, and it wasn’t until recently you finally stopped your tears and held them down for the sake of moving forward. But this, this was the first time in what felt like forever that when you cried, they were tears of joy.
Sans was here, and through it all he had done nothing more than try to help you through such a hard time in your life.
He had been there, through the accident, through the hardship, and in the aftermath he wanted more than anything to still be there. And as you cried and hugged him, taking his open armed invitation to let him hold you, he lifted you up in the hug and the two of you were twirling in place. You could feel him laugh just as you tried to laugh in between happy tears. And when the twirl had subsided and he carefully set you down, you closed your eyes as Sans brushed away your tears with his thumbs. You could feel his breath dance against your forehead as he kissed your skin, and though he hesitated, you suddenly found yourself more than eager to lift up and press your lips onto his. Well, he lacked a pair of lips, but you found yourself kissing him anyway. His arms around your waist, and yours suddenly cupping his face to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere.
And maybe this feeling would last forever, maybe it would only be in this moment.
But for now, you felt that the two of you would last for a very long time.
Because, well…
The signs were all there.