chapter three: Owen

     Owen's Pov

  I wasn't a healthy child. I was born with chronic asthma which apparently no one in our family ever had. It started from me. When I was two years old, I developed meningitis and I spent two years in the hospital. The day I was to be discharged, dad sent my nanny to pick me up and on our way back home, we had an accident. It was a collision with an oncoming vehicle. I was back at the hospital again.

   I was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, unfortunately my nanny didn't make it. She died on the spot.  When I came to, I realised that the doctor's lips were moving. Like, he was talking to me but I couldn't hear a thing. I wanted to tell him that I couldn't hear what he was saying but when I opened my mouth to talk, nothing came out. The doctors were alarmed. They ran some tests and they discovered that my auditory nerve had been damaged. The impact of the  crash led to a temporal bone fracture which resulted in permanent hearing loss in both ears.

    After several months of rehabilitation and audiological evaluation, I received cochlear implants which improved my ability to hear and communicate. I finally summoned the courage to ask the doctor why I spent sixteen years of my life in the hospital. He told me everything. I wondered where my parents and brothers were. Maybe they didn't want to see me or maybe they think I'm dead. Or they don't want to associate themselves with me.

Is it my fault that I'm like this. I hated myself so much. Every year on my birthday I try to jump down from the hospital's rooftop. I just couldn't do it. Whenever I wanted to my chest tightens and it gets really hard to breathe. Sometimes, I even black out.

The doctor told me that I could finally go home. He told me that Grandma called and wanted me to come back home. I didn't even know that I had a Grandma. I wanted to yell at her , ask her why she abandoned me, tell her that I'm not leaving with her. When she came to see me, I couldn't say anything. She looked so fragile, I ran into her arms and I wept profusely. The doctor told me that several years ago, Grandma was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer and she has been receiving treatment abroad. I felt guilty of blaming her. She probably didn't even know that I existed. She told me that she wanted me and my brothers to live together.

"It's time for you to be happy." Grandma said as she wiped my tears with her handkerchief.