Unlike most other twenty-one-year-olds, the soundtrack to my life is played by a baby monitor. I complete my homework assignments to the rumble of the dryer and my drawings to the hum of a humidifier. I listen to an oxygen machine purify the air in our home as well as the intermittent squeak of a medical recliner as it moves up and down. I read, watch Netflix, and sleep while always having an ear out for what’s going on downstairs. Was that the click of the walker? Did I just hear the crunch of that patch with the loose floor board next to the bathroom? What was that loud bang?! These questions linger in my subconscious throughout each day and night - always being mindful of what is going on. Mostly though, I am listening for one sound that I am guaranteed to hear, in one rendition or another, at least six times throughout the night: “Hey Aubrey, will you come down here for a minute, please?" said with the jumbled jargon that only a deaf man could produce. That’s right - rather than listening for an infant, I use a baby monitor for my eighty-nine-year-old grandfather.

It’s been this way for a little over two years, I listen out for him, and he lets my dog and me live in the upstairs apartment of his home. The monitor came into play over my first summer living with him when his health really began to decline. He needed more assistance throughout both the day and night, but did not recognize his hindered abilities and the necessity of asking for help. This baby monitor has become my biggest comfort, but also leads me to my most terrible fear. I am petrified of leaving it or not being able to hear it, but I love the one-sided bond that it has created for me. Every move my grandfather makes, every step, every sip of water, every page turn in his book, I am listening just in case something goes wrong. I feel proud and triumphant when I hear him make it to the kitchen for a glass of water and back without tripping or dropping the glass. I feel satisfied when I hear him plop back in his chair instead of miscalculating and plopping onto the floor instead. Although, to someone else, a simple task such as walking around is trivial, to him, it is a victory to be successful. I worry when it is quiet. It is never supposed to be quiet in a home owned by a deaf man.

The connection I feel with my baby monitor is something that is unhealthy for any person to have with an inanimate object. It’s the lifeline I have to my best friend: the man that has taken care of me and supported me through almost every choice I have made. I find myself waking up multiple times in the middle of the night just to check on my monitor. I want to make sure everything is working correctly: Are all of the right lights on? Are the batteries full? Does it need to be plugged in to charge? Once I make sure everything is working properly, I lay the monitor back on my pillow and go back to sleep. If he calls for me, I always hear it and wake up, so what am I so afraid that I am going to miss? I think it all comes back to the first night I brought the baby monitor home. I unpacked it and read all of the instructions thoroughly. I found the perfect spot to place the transmitter so that I could hear him where ever he decided to go downstairs. I lay in bed and just stared at it, willing for something to happen. And then, suspiciously coincidental since it was the very same night I brought my monitor home, it did.

Even a year later,  it never fails that I wake up hearing him cry out those words in excruciating pain: "Please help!" I replay the incident over and over in my head, thinking how lucky I was to have had the chance to buy my baby monitor that exact day. It was almost as if, somewhere in the darkest parts of my brain, I just knew I was going to need it. I remember waking up to a loud crash and a lot of thumping. I recall clear as day the exact pitch of his voice as he yelled out for me like some sort of rescue unit.  I look back, remembering how I laid on the floor next to him, telling him that everything was going to be okay until someone arrived to assist us. I think about the subsequent three weeks and how I spent each and every night by his side in the hospital, feeling thankful that my baby monitor was there at such a crucial time. Because what would have happened it I hadn’t heard that?