Stronger - Sequel to Broken Pieces

Part 41

*Selena's POV*

After a long morning of shopping I rushed home to get the kids ready to go to Bentley's first doctor's appointment since the surgery. It had been healing for two weeks now so it was time we found out if it worked or not and we were all hoping and praying it did.

"I'm home!" I yelled as I walked in the door setting the bags to the side and throwing my keys on the entry way table.

I walked through the living room into the kitchen, where everyone usually hung out, but there was no one around.

"Hello?" I asked as I walked up the stairs and into the kids playroom, finding everything in perfect order.

Confused out of my mind, I walked over to mine and Justin's bedroom door that was closed. I opened it up to find three little monkeys on the bed playing around.

"I have been looking everywhere for y'all. Did y'all not hear m-" I asked before my eyes landed on Justin and my words faded. I tilted my head to the side examining what he was wearing before shaking my head and blinking a few times to make sure it was real. In fact, they were all dressed like they had just come back from a long day of harvesting crops out in the field.

"What- What are you guys wearing?" I asked with a humorless chuckle.

"Ma'am is there a problem?" Justin asked using a fake country twang accent.

"What is going on? Did you guys get abducted while I was gone or something?"

"I thought we looked cute," Justin pouted winking at Emma who was laying on her belly next to him.

"They do," I said pointing to Emma and Bent. "You, not so much. This is a little too... white for you?"

Justin sharply inhaled a breath pretending to be offended.

"Okay, all joking aside, you need to go get dressed, preferably something without a cowboy hat. We have to go in 5 minutes. So get dressed, I'll go get snacks for the kids. Wear something normal, we aren't from the hood either," I called as I walked out of the room.

I was 100% nervous about this appointment today. They were either going to make me the happiest mother ever or the saddest.

However, I told myself, either way I wasn't going to let it affect my relationship like last time. I had to be strong for everyone. And in the end, it was no one's fault.

The drive to the doctors was mostly silent except Emma talking to Bentley like he could hear.

I don't think she really knows that her brother can't hear but for all we know maybe at this point he could.

*Justin's POV*

"Hello, Ms. Gomez and Mr. Bieber, I'm Doctor Stanley," the doctor said as he walked in the room to shake both mine and Selena's hands. "I'm gonna go ahead and take Bentley back to one of the hearing booths to see how he's doing?"

Selena nodded as I handed Bentley off to him and watched him walk out of the door he entered from minutes before.

"It's gonna be okay," I said to Selena as I threw my arm around her shoulder.

She tore her gauze away from Emma who was reading a children book of the floor to look over at me with a smile. "I know."

Selena and I had only been back together for three months but I still managed to learn something about 'the new Selena' every day. She was so much stronger now than she was when I first met her. The Selena I knew back then wouldn't have been able to handle this at all. She would have run away or even tried to ignore the problem instead of doing everything in her power to fix it like she was now. And because of that, I am so proud of her. Yeah, I hurt her really bad but in a way a mad her stronger.

"Okay," Dr. Stanley said as he walked back. He handed Bentley over to Selena.

He sat in his little rollie chair before looking at us with his hands folded in his lap. "Good or bad news first?"

I heard Selena sigh as she looked over at me. "Bad."

"The bad news is that," he started, "that the surgery didn't completely work. It did work to an extent but he can't completely hear. The good news is that he was responsive to some of the sounds that we played for him so he can somewhat hear which is a lot better than the results they got last time."

"Is there any way we can get him to completely hear?" I voiced knowing that was what Selena was thinking.

"Right now, no. When he gets older there may be more we can do, but as of right at this moment no. The best thing we can do for him right now is speech therapy twice a week, and make sure that he wears his hearing aids. I see in his file that you have all been learning sign language, so make sure that you sign to him so he begins to know what that means. But other than that, y'all are doing a phenomenal job. Most hearing parents with deaf children don't even learn sign language, they just point at things," he said as he walked us out.

"That's horrible," Selena said as she looked at Bentley. "I won't ever do that to you, ever."