Sometimes You Hear Things | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Sometimes You Hear Things | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
05/07/18
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES

Sometimes you hear things. Things you don’t want to hear. Things you don’t want to know. Things no one should know.

The reality of the thing you didn’t want to hear pierces your eardrum like a nearby siren and it reverberates through your head like the drums in a rock band’s speakers. There is no escaping. You can’t not hear and you can’t not know.

I’d heard the sound hours earlier alone in the privacy of my own room. I knew why that sound was there. It was this sound I didn’t want to hear. My hands trembled as I set the Angelsounds Fetal Doppler back on the tray.

“Did you hear something?”

This grimacing redhead was barely into her teens. She had a life ahead of her. That’s why girls like her came to doctors like me in the clinic. To take care of issues safely.

“Nothing we can’t take care of,” I assured her.

“I don’t want my stepdad to get into trouble,” she whispered. “He said it was part of being family. I shouldn’t have worn that bikini.”

The cramp in my abdomen nearly doubled me over. Nausea lurched toward my throat. I handed over a cloth so she could wipe off the jelly. I turned away from the bared belly.

I’d set up the appointment to stifle an increasing anxiety in my new niece. All she knew is that I was a doctor who helped women with women’s issues. She felt she had an issue because her cycle was off.

My brother had married a wonderful single mom with two teen girls. This little one lying on the table in my clinic was the older.

The fact that my brother raped me two nights before his wedding to this girl’s mother was a nightmare I wanted to ignore. But then, I heard it. Through the stethoscope. A sound like a muffled saw cutting up and down, back and forth. Shoo-hoo, shoo-hoo, shoo-hoo.

For five years I had specialized in talking young girls past their fears, past their thoughts of something sacred, living, and miraculous inside them. “Tissue, like a wart,” I said. “A few moments and your life will be back to normal again.”

When I’d first suspected and confirmed the heartbeat in my own womb I shuddered. What kind of monster had I grown up with? I didn’t even question that I would take care of this problem. But then I heard it distinctly. A whisper. Perhaps a noise as soft as a swishing curtain in the evening breeze. “No.”

I had stared at my belly knowing that fetal tissue had no ability to communicate. Yet, that whisper was captured in my brain. I canceled my own appointment with my colleague.

Every morning I listened to the heartbeat and every day I went to work and ended the heartbeats for others. But this heartbeat was different. It had the potential to be a sibling for my own child. Again, I heard the whispered “no.”

“Come back in a week,” I said to the innocent looking ginger topped teen. “I think we need to confirm that everything is okay.”

I surfed the net to research the psychological side effects of pregnancy. Was auditory illusion part of it? Pro-life websites I had never seen before seemed to mushroom around me with every search. Bible messages started sounding in my ears even when I disconnected from the net.

I called in sick and canceled all my appointments. A dozen girls were prepared to silence the heartbeats and I had planned to make that happen. The “no” had grown to the roar of a raging river when I even considered doing this “just one more time”.

Wednesday, I saw the twitter feed pop up. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, I know that full well.”

Dealing with my brother’s actions was one thing. The heartbeats confirmed truth I didn’t want to hear or know but I couldn’t ignore it. Not when it almost had me end the lives of two innocents.

Life would get complicated. I called the pastor of the local church first before I called the police. I needed to settle a few things in my past before I tried to deal with anyone else’s.

As the heartbeats increased in intensity the mental noises stilled and I began to hear a different response. “Yes.”

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY
SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.

Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.