His Silence Was Only For Me

Summary

Christian has an emotional processing disorder.

Whenever the noise of the outside world becomes too much for him to bear, he retreats into a self-imposed vow of silence for an entire day. During those twenty-four hours, no matter what happens, he will not speak a single word.

So, when I stood before him holding my father’s emergency resuscitation order, begging him to use his connections to get my father into surgery... it just so happened to be one of his silent days.

No matter how hard I wept, how desperately I begged, he simply sat there in his armchair, perfectly poised, looking down…