Our son was deaf? I’m not ready to raise him! Leave him in the hospital!” I had never observed my wife’s rage before.
“What are you saying, Olga? This is flesh of our flesh,” I beheld her as if for the first timThe child was born deaf? Leave him at the hospital, I’m not going to raise a child like that!” — said my wife, raising her voice.
“Our boy was born without hearing? Leave him at the hospital, I’m not ready to raise such a child!” — my wife’s voice was filled with rage, a rage I had never noticed before.
“Olya, what are you saying? This is flesh of our flesh,” — I looked at her as though I was seeing her for the first time.
Her words hit harder than the doctor’s news an hour ago. The doctor — an elderly man with eyes swollen from insomnia — had placed his hand on my shoulder: “Congenital deafness, complete. Unfortunately, there’s no chance of recovery.”
I stood by the window of the ward. The autumn rain was monotonously tapping on the glass, as if the world was sending me some unknown signal. In these sounds, which my son would never hear, reality turned upside down.
“You don’t understand, Sasha,” — Olga wrapped her arms around herself, as if protecting herself. — “This is a sentence for our whole life. Special conditions… We’ll just ruin ourselves. When will we live?”
I turned my gaze to the tiny bundle. A little wrinkled face, gently pink and calm. The baby slept, unaware that his fate was being decided right now. His diagnosis didn’t make him any less my son.
“I’m taking him home,” — I said quietly but firmly.
“What?”
“I said, I’m taking the child. Alone.”
Olga’s lips trembled, as if she had been struck.
“Are you out of your mind? You work as a part-time electrician! How are you going to raise such a baby?”
“Exactly the same as any other. Day by day.”
I spent the night beside my son’s crib. Nurse Irina — a woman with kind eyes and hands worn from hard work — let me into the newborns’ ward without question.
I watched as Denis’s tiny chest rose with each breath. His heart beat with such confidence, such determination. It’s amazing how such a small creature can possess such a will to live.
In the morning, I found that Olga had disappeared, leaving a note with two lines: “Sorry. I won’t cope.” Five years of life together were condensed into four words on a torn scrap of paper.
A week later, I was taking my son home. The old bus rattled along the broken road, and Denis slept, curled up against my chest, wrapped in the only thing Olga and I had managed to buy for him — a blue flannel blanket.
“And how are you going to cope alone?” — neighbor Marina Petrovna stuck her head out from behind the fence as I approached the house.
“I have no idea,” — I replied honestly. “But there’s no choice.”
The first months turned into an endless race for survival. I learned to change diapers with one hand while holding the bottle with the other.
Sleep in fits and starts, constant fatigue, and loneliness became my constant companions.
The village whispered: “Poor guy,” “He shouldn’t have let his wife go,” “It’s not a man’s job — dealing with diapers.”
Denis cried often at night.
In those moments when despair weighed heavily, I would take him in my arms, press him to my chest, and whisper, “We’ll make it, son. I promise.”
He didn’t hear the words, but he felt the vibration of my chest when I spoke. And gradually, he would quiet down. And then — he smiled at me for the first time.
His toothless little mouth stretched into a smile that was worth all the sleepless nights and doubts.
I realized a simple truth: my son doesn’t know that he’s missing anything. The world has always been silent to him. But that doesn’t mean he’s incomplete. In his world, the rules are just different.
Each day, we learned a new language. This language consisted of glances, touches, and expressions. I learned to read the slightest shades of his mood, and he — to understand me without a single spoken word.
Looking at my son sleeping in his crib, I often thought, “How can anyone reject their own child just because he’s not like everyone else?”
Fortunately, recently I inherited… Continued in the comments 
