Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [112]
“Look,” she finally ground out, “I know your year has been hard. But do you want to know what my year has been like?” She paused to draw a ragged breath. “I wake up every morning and I think about Ryan. And I look at my beautiful child, a child that I love more than life itself, and I wonder to myself whether he’ll ever have a friend. I wonder if he’ll ever talk, or go to school, or play like other kids. I wonder if he’ll ever have a date, or drive a car, or go to the prom. I wonder if he’ll ever get married. And I spend all day driving from doctor to doctor, and no one can tell us what’s wrong, and no one can tell us what to do. He’ll be four years old in a little while, and I don’t even know if he loves me. I think about this when I wake up, I think about this all day long, and it’s the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I wake up crying in the middle of the night because of it.” Her voice was beginning to crack. “That’s what my year has been like.”
When my wife finished, I didn’t know what to say. Yes, I was worried about our son. But—and it pains me to admit this—my worries weren’t like hers. I’d split my worries—between Ryan and my dad, Dana and my book—while my wife had zeroed in on our son. He’d become her entire world.
It was the first time I realized the depths of despair that my wife was enduring, and I felt sickened by the argument I’d started.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know it was like that for you.”
My wife simply sniffed on the other end.
“Honey?” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I once made a vow to you to love you forever, and now it’s time that I make another. I promise—I swear on my heart and soul—that I’m going to cure our son.”
The next day, while Miles stayed at a neighbor’s for the day, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a small table and chair. I bought this specific set for the simple reason that the seat had a seat belt with which I could strap my son in. Then, drawing on all the literature I’d read in the previous year, I buckled Ryan into a chair, opened a picturebook, and pointed to a picture of an apple while I held a tiny piece of candy out as a reward. I said the word aloud: Apple. Then said it again. And again. And again.
Apple. Apple. Apple. Apple. Apple. I repeated the words, willing my son to talk. I don’t know that my desire for anything has ever been greater; I concentrated, I focused, my entire world was centered around my son and his ability to say this one single word.
Within minutes, Ryan grew bored. Then he started to fuss and fidget. After a few more minutes, he’d begun to cry, trying to get out of the chair. After that, he started to get mad. Ferociously mad. He screamed and balled his fists, he tried to pull out his hair. He tried to claw the skin from his arms. He growled and cried out as if possessed.
And I’d take his hands, hold them against the table so he couldn’t hurt himself, and say: Apple. Apple. Apple.
Over and over. He screamed and screamed and screamed. And I said it over and over. And he screamed and screamed.
After two hours, he could say A.
After four hours, he could say Ap.
And after six hours, my son—six hours of angry, frustrated, heartbreaking cries on Ryan’s part—said in a tiny whispered voice: Apo.
Apple.
For a long moment, all I could do was stare at him. It had been so long, so exhausting, that I didn’t believe he’d actually done it. I thought I’d heard him wrong, and I said the word again. Ryan repeated it, and when he did, I jumped up from my seat and began dancing around the room, whooping for joy. I moved toward Ryan and offered a hug; though he didn’t respond to my affection, he said the word again.
It was then that I began to cry.
Simply to hear the sound of his voice, his voice—no screams, no grunts, no shouts—was breathtaking. It was the sound of angels, as sweet as music. But more than that, I suddenly knew that Ryan could learn. And I then understood that this had been my greatest fear all along.