Mara’s hearing improved, somewhat, over the months that followed.
Not much. The doctor at Meridian had said it might, as the bone healed round the place where the graft had been, and it did. The ringing on the left faded, most days, to a faint hiss she noticed only at night. The left ear began to give her voices properly again: Pell’s from across the yard, Tavin’s from the bench, the students’ from the classroom. Thin, still. But words.
She never again heard metal as she once had.
Some mornings, the absence hurt. She would come down the yard office stair, with her hand on the cold rail, and reach the bench, and put her palm flat on a piece of work out of habit, and feel the iron, cool, and nothing else. On those mornings she stood there longer than she needed to. Then she took her hand away and picked up the feeler gauge.
On the roof, in the rain, she heard rain.
It had taken her weeks to go up there. The first time it rained after she came home, she had stayed at the bench with the door shut. She had not wanted to hear what she could not hear any more.
