Page 99 of The Callahan Effect

He looked up at me through tear-filled eyes and repeated the words back to me.

I kissed his forehead first, then each cheek, the bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth, and finally his lips, lingering there only briefly before kissing his face again and again. Every kiss felt like a celebration of everything he'd obviously fought through alone.

"I love your voice," I murmured. "God...I love hearing you."

A shaky laugh escaped him, softened by tears that still refused to stop falling.

"I was hoping you would."

I rested my forehead against his.

"I would've loved you if you'd never spoken another word for the rest of your life."

His hands tightened around me.

For several long moments none of us seemed capable of doing anything except standing there together. The roast continued sending ribbons of steam into the air, the candles flickered gently in the center of the table, and somewhere beyond the dining room the music continued playing exactly as though the world hadn't just changed forever.

Jack eventually drew a slow breath and glanced toward the untouched dinner waiting on the table.

"We need to sit before dinner gets cold."

"Only you," Coach said, wiping at his face with the back of his hand, "would worry about the roast at a time like this."

Jack’s eyes glistened.

"I spent all afternoon cooking it."

Coach shook his head as all three of us finally returned to our seats, although his Dad and I couldn’t stop looking at Jack for more than a few seconds at a time. Every time he reached for a serving dish or lifted his glass, I found myself waiting for him to speak again, needing to hear his voice one more time just to convince myself this wasn't some beautiful dream I was about to wake from.

Coach finally leaned back in his chair and drew a long, unsteady breath.

"Start at the beginning, tell us everything."

Jack folded his hands loosely on the table and looked from his father to me.

"I suppose I owe you both a very long explanation."

Coach remained quiet for several moments, his fingers wrapped around the wine glass in front of him although he made no attempt to lift it. His eyes never left Jack's face, as though looking away for even a heartbeat might somehow cause the miracle he'd witnessed to disappear. I understood exactly how he felt because I couldn't stop watching him either. Every movement seemed familiar and yet completely new, transformed by the simple knowledge that, at any moment, he could speak again.

Jack drew a steadying breath before explaining while we ate.

"It started with Caroline…Dr. Juneau."

A memory of what I’d heard her mention in the hospital came to the forefront.

"She mentioned the possibility of thyroplasty months ago after we'd been talking about my future in ENT. She knew Dr. Nathaniel Kershaw, an otolaryngologist at the hospital where she works and where I’ve been doing clinicals and insisted I should at least hear what he had to say. At first I dismissed it because I'd already accepted that being mute was simply part of who I was. I'd spent twenty years building a life around silence, and convincing myself there might be another possibility felt more frightening than accepting there wasn't one."

He paused briefly, gathering his thoughts before continuing.

"I started reading about the procedure anyway. Every journal article I could find. Every study on thyroplasty. Every rehabilitation paper. Every long-term outcome that had been published. The more I read, the more I realized there was a genuine chance the operation could succeed, but that frightened me even more because hope can become dangerous when you've spent years teaching yourself not to have any."

Coach listened without moving.

"I arranged to meet Dr. Kershaw when you were at rehab, Mason. Caroline came with me because I nearly talked myself out of walking into his office. He reviewed everything, explained the procedure, answered every question I'd spent months collecting, and then told me something that made me take notice."

Jack's eyes drifted toward the table for a moment.

"He said he wouldn't operate unless he genuinely believed I had an excellent chance of speaking again."