Silent Striker (13 page)

Marcus looked around. It was more like part of a corridor than a room. Five people were occupying five of the fifteen chairs. A sign in the area said ‘No Rudeness. No Violence. Emergencies Have Priority’.

A nurse walked past, frowning, snapping off latex gloves. Hospital nursing staff wore different coloured uniforms, Marcus noticed. Some dark blue, some light blue. Other hospital staff wore no uniform as far as he could tell. They wore smart shirts or blouses, some carried stethoscopes, or clutched fluids bags, while some wielded clipboards.

For a while in the waiting area, it was like a statue contest. Nobody moved. Frustrated, Marcus got up and went up to a nurse behind a desk at the end of the corridor. ‘Excuse me …’

The nurse took the card Marcus was holding out and looked at it. ‘This is the STI clinic. Is that what you’re here for, love?’ she said, as she peered at his card, doubtfully.

‘What’s STI?’

He heard his mum stifle a laugh.

‘Sexually Transmitted Infection,’ the nurse said matter-of-factly.

‘Er no,’ Marcus mumbled, embarrassed.

Beside him, Horse was giggling too. Marcus nudged him and he fell silent. ‘I’ve got a hearing test.’

‘That’s next left.’ The nurse pointed. ‘Can you see it?’

‘Thanks,’ said Marcus, he tugged Horse along and signalled to his mum they were on the move.

There was another long wait. The people waiting in this space were all old, except for Marcus. Eventually a nurse in dark blue walked towards him. She stopped in front of where he sat, knelt down and placed her face right in front of his.

‘Are you Marcus Adenuga?’

He nodded.

‘Lovely to see you, Marcus. Who’s this with you?’ she said, still kneeling. She had a warm Chinese face, and plucked eyebrows that danced as she spoke.

‘My mate, Horse.’

‘Another one wagging school? Why is hospital always so popular with school kids on a Monday morning?’ she joked.

Horse squirmed.

‘And this is your mum?’

Marcus nodded.

‘I’m not allowed to talk,’ his mum said, speaking for the first time.

The nurse winked at his mum. ‘I’ve known that one before.’

This comment pleased his mum.

The nurse took Marcus’s card. ‘Just follow me will you, Marcus? Your mum and Horse can come along too, but behave or you two … get your ears syringed.’ She smiled broadly as she said this. She took them to a room where another nurse was waiting. The second nurse asked Marcus to sit down then deftly looked in his ears with some kind of torch, first left ear, then right. When she released his right earlobe, she nodded to the first nurse.

‘No problems there then,’ the first nurse said. ‘Follow me, keep up!’

They walked another twenty steps, took two turns and they came to the door of another room. The sign on it said ‘Hearing 2’.

‘Okay Horse and Mum, you have to wait outside now while we do the next bit. Marcus will be back out before you can say, “Ghana versus Germany.”’

‘Ghana versus Germany’, Horse said promptly.

‘Very funny,’ the nurse said, wagging her finger at Horse. Even amid all his nerves, Marcus thought he liked this nurse, she was fun. She ushered him into the room. It was small and boxy, with grey walls that had nothing hanging from them, a grey ceiling and no windows. There was a small table ahead of them and one chair. The table had a set of headphones on it and what looked like a black cigarette lighter with a wire sprouting from it.

The nurse was beside him. ‘Sit here,’ she said gently. She picked up the cigarette lighter thing. ‘This is the control,’ she said. ‘Pop the headphones on, Marcus, then press the red button on the top of this when you hear a sound coming through the headphones. That’s all there is to it. I have to go out of the room now to set up the equipment but you’ll hear my voice through the headphones very soon. Okay?’

The nurse gave him a thumbs-up once he had the headphones on then left the room.

Sat in the only chair, Marcus examined the control. It was like a wired TV remote but with only one button. He waited. There was no view but the walls, nothing to watch, no one to talk to or even to nudge.

‘Can you hear me, Marcus?’

It was the nurse again, this time coming through his headphones.

‘Yeh,’ he said.

‘Okay stand by for the sounds. You remember what to do?’

‘Yeh. Press the button when I hear them.’

There was a long silence. Marcus felt his thumb slipping across the surface of the red button. Why was he not hearing anything? The grey of the room swirled and wrapped around him like a prisoner’s grey blanket. Suddenly, the sounds started. They came to his left ear only.

The first one was low. Like a drone. And so loud it hurt his ear. He liked that. He could hear it so clearly. There couldn’t be any problems with his ears if he could hear that sound so loud. Quickly, he clicked. The same sound came again, fainter this time, but still easy to hear. He clicked again. It came again, even fainter. Click. Then fainter still. Click. Click. Click. The sound switched to something like a submarine sonar sweep. Click. Click. Click.

He understood the pattern now: loud, then softer and softer till he could not hear them. Then back up again in volume as the nurse checked for the faintest sounds he could hear in different tones. He listened on. A referee’s whistle. A boxing match bell. A Buddhist tinkly bell like his mum’s relaxation CDs. The echo in a cavern when water dripped. Then … nothing. Still nothing.

At least ten seconds of nothing.

It felt like years. Why were they making him wait so long? Maybe the nurse was having a glass of water, or their equipment wasn’t working.

Marcus thought maybe he heard something. He was unsure. Maybe it was the usual background sound in his ears. The low ringing he heard deep at night if he lay awake. A sound that everyone heard, didn’t they? Or was it coming from the headphones?

He hesitated. Maybe he should press the button, just in case. He hesitated again. Now there was a faint, very high, ghost-like sound that he lightly felt on his ear-drum, rather than heard. Or was it simply the whoosh sound of his ears and not something coming through the headphones? It was too clear to be inside his ears. He clicked. Next came a sound like the feedback from a mic but turned really low. Click.

Then a pin dropping onto a metal tray. Click. A tiny pin dropping onto a metal tray. Click. Then … nothing … nothing …

Marcus wondered if the test was over. Even as he thought this he heard that pin again. Or was it? He clicked anyway. He breathed, waited for the silence to end. The pin again. He clicked.

‘Well done, Marcus, other ear now!’ came the nurse’s voice, loud, clear and reassuringly warm, through his headphones.

‘Yeh, okay.’ Marcus breathed in and readied himself. The whole series started again. It felt like an eternity. As if he was a space centre control tower, receiving signals from some remote craft on Mars. Or as if someone had suddenly invented a new Morse Code full of clicks and burrs.

Finally the nurse said he could take off the headphones. He took them off, stood and stretched his legs, but he felt faint again and had to sit down. He checked his watch. It had been only fifteen minutes.

The nurse came into the booth all smiles and waved him to follow her.

‘How did I do?’ Marcus asked.

‘The doctor’s just looking at the charts, he’ll see you right now. Follow me,’ she said. Marcus couldn’t read anything from her tone of voice.

Horse had ducked into the room and was looking around. Marcus was so glad to see him at that moment.

‘Someone likes grey,’ Horse said, pointing at the walls. He picked up the headphones and popped them on, then off again. He turned to Marcus. ‘Bit of deejaying going on here, then?’ he joked.

His mum was outside with a ‘how did it go?’ look on her face. Marcus shrugged an ‘I dunno’ back at her.

Then they were on the move, following the nurse along another glossy-floored corridor.

The nurse tapped on the door of a room called ‘Consult 4’, paused, swung it open and nodded to someone inside. Then she beckoned for Marcus and his mum only, to enter with her. Horse was cool about it.

‘This is Marcus Adenuga. His first hearing test,’ the nurse announced to the doctor.

She invited Marcus to sit down on the chair, by the doctor’s desk, which he did. His mum sat on a chair further away.

The doctor was poring over a chart of wavy lines on a screen, like intersecting quadratic equations. He was a bear of a man in a too small shirt. He had a kind face behind wire glasses, and thick black hair. The doctor mumbled a thoughtful ‘thank you’ to the nurse.

Finally he looked up and smiled at Marcus. ‘I’m Dr Glassman, you’re Marcus?’

‘Yeh. How did I do?’ Marcus asked.

‘It’s not bad, and it’s not all good, it’s somewhere in between.’

Marcus’s heart dropped. That meant …

The doctor continued: ‘Your middle ear is fine. Your ear drum is perfect. The results say you are generally okay for the lower and middle range of sounds, but at the moment you won’t be hearing some higher …tched sounds. Both ears … affected, the right side slight … affected than the left. You might not … picking up alarms on your mobile phone. Whistles. That kind …thing. You hear human voices quite well, male or female, but you … struggle a little if … … or if they whisper…’

‘Marcus?’

‘Sorry?’

It was the doctor. He was still talking to him. Marcus tried to concentrate.

‘The inner ear … where the trouble seems to be. Is there a history of deafness in your family?’ the doctor said.

Marcus shook his head. His mind was as grey as the sound booth had been. Nothing stuck. Nothing made sense.

The doctor looked to his mum for confirmation of what Marcus had said. She shrugged and agreed. She had a tissue to her eyes.

‘How bad will it get?’ Marcus asked.

‘We can’t say at the moment. Is there…y deafness either on your mother’s or your father’s side?’

Again Marcus shook his head.

‘Okay, that’s not completely unusual. At the moment you need to be …ring hearing aids. They would really help out, boost the sounds you are missing out on …’

‘Marcus?’

It was the nurse talking to him. Marcus did not know how long she had been calling his name. She had a hand on his shoulder. His mum was standing there as well, looking like she wanted to hug him.

‘Your friend outside, Horse, should we bring him in?’ the nurse asked.

Marcus nodded. He was emotionless, unsure even where he was.

‘I’ll bring him in then?’

Again Marcus nodded.

The next thing he knew, he and Horse were outside. His mum started hugging him and she was crying on his shoulder.

‘Oh Marcus,’ she wept. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Mum, please.’ He pulled himself away from her. ‘It’s okay, Mum, don’t worry. But I need to think. Can I just be on my own for a moment?’

Without waiting for a reply Marcus walked away from both his mum and Horse. He started running. Horse ran after him. Marcus ran and ran until he was far away from the hospital grounds. Horse stuck with him whichever way he ran so he gave up. Next thing he knew, Horse shoved a carton of orange into his hands.

‘Drink it.’

Marcus applied the drink to his lips.

‘Here. A sandwich. Cheese.’

Marcus took that too and bit into it. It didn’t taste of anything.

‘Take this.’ This time Horse shoved his ATC into his hands. ‘No,’ said Marcus, shoving the ball away.

‘Take it,’ Horse insisted.

Marcus snatched the ball from him.

He didn’t know what he did the rest of that day. He remembered playing basketball with Horse in a park somewhere with his ATC. And he remembered sitting on a wall, asking, ‘What am I going to do?’ He didn’t remember going back home but now he found himself in his bedroom by his window and his face was wet. He was staring right up at the sky. It was a black screen, with two dead screen pixels for stars. The darkness of the sky was endless. Was he about to go completely deaf? What would that be like? To not hear his own voice, or anybody else’s? To not hear a dog bark, or a tree fall, or a car engine start. Or the jangle of an ice cream van?

He realised he was hungry. He didn’t want to go downstairs. He remembered how, when he had sneaked in his mum had tried to follow him and he’d held his bedroom door shut. There had been a quick tussle before his mum had given up. ‘This is stupid!’ she’d called out, then, ‘your tea’s going to get cold!’, before going back downstairs.

Marcus sneaked downstairs later when he thought nobody would be up. But when he got down the stairs the living room door was ajar and he heard voices. Normally he wouldn’t be able to make them out, but Mum and Dad were shouting at each other and it was easy. He sat on the bottom step and listened:

‘I can’t take this. I’ve got tablets off the doctors, I’m going to have to take time off work!’ said Mum.

‘What about the bills?’ yelled Dad. Marcus imagined him pulling his locks the way he did when he thought about money, or the lack of it.

‘I’ll get sick pay.’

‘That won’t cover the overtime you do.’

‘Five Star Barry will help.’

Dad lost it big time. ‘Five Star Barry? You mean one thousand-seven-hundred-and-fifty per cent Barry?’

‘Who do you think pays for all the Christmas presents on this estate?’ Mum raged. ‘Five Star Barry!’

‘If Five Star Barry’s Father Christmas then Father Christmas lives on Millionaires’ Row in Cheshire!’

‘He provides a service.’

‘The Grim Reaper provides a service!’

‘Ha bloody ha!’

‘Look,’ Dad said, pleading now. ‘They’re robbing us hand over fist with that bloody card meter for the electricity. We’ve got two loans out for Leah’s stuff. The rent is four months in arrears. Should you really be going off work?’

‘My son needs me.’

‘Our son needs a roof over his head.’

‘I can’t be dealing with this!’

Footsteps stomped. Marcus made to get up, but he was too late. His mum flung open the door.

‘How long have you been sitting there?’ she said, without missing a beat.