The Empty Longing

When I woke up, a doctor was standing beside my bed. He looked over my chart with a sigh.

“You were already nursing a stomach ulcer. This time, the ulcer flared up and caused an acute perforation. Why didn’t you come in sooner?”

After Ty Hyland left, I had called him twenty-six times. He had not answered once.

In the end, I had to call an ambulance myself.

I nodded numbly.

I had no idea how much time had passed when Ty opened the door and walked in.

He was still signing to me.

My chest ached, so I turned my face away and closed my eyes.

Tears slipped down my cheeks.

A hand brushed over my damp face.

“Why are you crying?”

It had been a long time since he had actually spoken to me.

Was it already one years since he met Luna Winter?

He spoke normally to everyone else. I was the only person he insisted on communicating with in sign language.

When Ty saw that I was awake, he reached out to stroke my hair.

In the soothing tone one might use with a child, he said, “I didn’t want to leave you either, but I promised Luna I’d take her to the art exhibition today. I couldn’t break my word, could I?”

His word.

Where had that sense of obligation been on our fifth anniversary, when he stood me up to walk Luna’s dog and left me waiting for three hours?

“You knew how much pain I was in, but you pretended you couldn’t hear me or understand me. Then, you left to spend time with someone else.”

My voice broke into sobs before I could finish.

Ty frowned and took his hand away from my head.

“Stop comparing yourself to Luna. She’s deaf, so of course I have to look out for her more.

“Don’t make such a fuss. If it bothers you that much, we can stop using sign language.”

“I’m not making a fuss. I…”

The custom ringtone Ty had set for Luna suddenly began to play.

Ty immediately motioned for me to be quiet, then stepped aside and video-called her.

Before he had even propped up his phone, he began signing the same three things over and over.

“Please don’t cry. It’s breaking my heart.

“Don’t shut me out. We’ll talk everything through when I get there.”

Each repeated gesture cut deeper into my heart.

Years ago, I had given up the future I had planned for myself to stay with him in Seahaven.

I went to as many as five job interviews a day.

The anxiety kept me awake night after night.

Then, one day, I finally broke down and cried in front of him.

What had Ty said to me then?

“Crying won’t solve your problems. Stop. I don’t want to hear your excuses.

“Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you. It’s not anyone else’s problem that you can’t make it on your own.”

He coldly brushed me aside and left me there.

I had not expected him to sit down and have a long, heartfelt conversation with me.

Nor had I expected someone like him, a top graduate who had landed a job at a major tech company straight out of college, to understand what I was going through.

I had only wanted a few words of comfort.

It was hardly the first time Ty had treated me that way. He dismissed my pain and refused to communicate with me.

Yet at that moment, his hands were moving frantically across the screen.

He could not bear the thought of that girl being upset.

When the video call ended, Ty frowned and headed for the door without even saying goodbye.

A sudden flash of lightning lit up the sky outside.

A second later, thunder roared.

When I was little, my father would beat me whenever there was a thunderstorm.

That was why thunder terrified me. Ty knew this. So, whenever a storm came, he would cover my ears and hold me quietly in his arms.

“It’s thundering.”

I looked at Ty hesitantly.

He reacted as though I had just said something ridiculous.

“What about it? Do you expect me to drop everything and stay with you? Yvonne, that excuse isn’t going to work.

“I let you have your way once. It won’t happen again.”

Apparently, begging him to take me to the hospital with a perforated ulcer was me insisting on having my way.

I tried to speak, but my lips would not stop trembling.

As he opened the door, I forced the words from my mouth.

“Have you forgotten how I got hurt back then?”

Ty froze.