Brain Dead But I Heard Everything

For ten years, Laurel Walker has lived in silence. A car crash in her youth took both her hearing and her voice, and only her adopted sister Bethany learned to sign for her. But Bethany's translations were never true, and their parents grew used to letting Bethany speak for Laurel, and to never looking at her at all.

Now a second crash has left Laurel declared clinically brain-dead, and she can hear again. From her hospital bed she listens as her mother weeps and her father agrees to give her heart to Bethany, who has waited years for a transplant. Unable to open her eyes or move, Laurel hears the consent signed and the ventilator prepared, and hears Bethany whisper beside her ear what she has always known.

As the gurney rolls toward the operating room, Laurel waits for a single look that never comes.