My Ex-Husband’s Wife Took Away Our 9-Year-Old Daughter’s $3,400 Hearing Aids as Punishment, So I Drove 60 Miles to Get Her Another Pair

My Ex-Husband’s Wife Took Away Our 9-Year-Old Daughter’s $3,400 Hearing Aids as Punishment, So I Drove 60 Miles to Get Her Another Pair

Mrs. Lund called me at 8:20 on a Monday morning in April, and the very first thing she mentioned was my daughter’s name.

No hello. No good morning. Just, “Amanda, I’m calling about Emma.”

She spoke in that cautious tone teachers use when they’ve already thought carefully about how to deliver bad news.

I was standing behind the front desk at Olson Family Dentistry. The second phone line was blinking, and I still had a patient’s insurance card in my other hand. I placed the card on the counter. Kim, our scheduling coordinator, looked up from her computer, noticed my expression, and stopped speaking halfway through her sentence.

“Emma isn’t wearing her hearing aids today,” Mrs. Lund told me. “I asked her where she had left them. She said her stepmother has them. She told me she won’t get them back until Friday.”

For a moment, I genuinely wondered if I’d misunderstood what she was saying.

That’s the kind of thing that happens when you have a child with hearing difficulties. You sometimes find yourself questioning your own hearing instead of believing the words you’ve just heard.

“Friday?” I repeated.

“Yes, that’s what she told me. Apparently, it was because she talked back during supper on Saturday.”

Mrs. Lund stopped for a moment. Somewhere in the background, I could hear children talking and the familiar sounds of a school hallway coming to life.

“We started with our spelling test this morning,” she continued. “I read the words aloud, just as I always do. She sat there crying through the entire test. She couldn’t hear any of the words, Amanda. She wrote her name at the top of the page, and then she lowered her head onto her desk.”

I pressed my free hand against the counter. It felt cold. I still remember that detail. I also remember the little bell above the front door ringing as Mr. Peterson walked in for his nine o’clock cleaning appointment, half an hour earlier than scheduled, just like he always did.

“I’ve already sent her to the nurse once,” Mrs. Lund continued. “Not because she feels unwell. She just needed a quiet moment. When she came back, she took a seat in the front row and spent the entire fractions lesson watching my mouth. She’s trying so hard to keep up. She’s already exhausted, and it’s not even nine o’clock yet.”

“Thank you for letting me know,” I said.

My voice sounded calm and unusually formal. It was the same tone I used with patients who were late paying their bills.

“Thank you, Mrs. Lund. I’ll take care of this.”

“I wasn’t sure whether I should contact you or her father,” she said. “Both of you are listed on the emergency contact card.”

“You did the right thing,” I assured her. “Just give me a couple of hours.”

After hanging up, I remained standing behind the desk in my light blue scrub top, with my gray fleece zipped all the way up to my chin because the office was always freezing in the mornings. I tried to figure out what I needed to do first.

Kim walked around the desk and came over to me. She’d been working with me for six years. She had two sons of her own, and she knew Emma well because Emma often did her homework in our break room on afternoons when our babysitter canceled.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Kendall took Emma’s hearing aids,” I told her. “Sometime over the weekend. She took them away as punishment.”

Kim’s mouth fell open. Then she closed it again. For several seconds, she didn’t say anything, which was unusual for Kim.

“Where did she take them?” she finally asked.

“Home, I suppose. She’s planning to keep them until Friday.”

“But Emma can’t hear without them,” Kim said, as if she needed to remind me.

“No,” I replied. “She can’t.”