Excerpt of Song of Silence by Cynthia Ruchti

Lucy removed her reading glasses and watched Ellie’s thin,
thirteen-year-old fingers splay against the girl’s
too-flat stomach. “Try it,” Lucy said.

“I don’t have much breath.”

“I know.” The confession drilled so much deeper than it
would have coming from any of Lucy’s other students. “Please
try.”

She watched as Ellie struggled to fill her scarred lungs
from the bottom without moving her upper chest or shoulders.
The girl’s hand moved an inch.

“Now, inhale and exhale without letting your hand move at all.”

“I can’t.”

Lucy tilted her head, eyebrows raised, wordlessly urging a
response from Ellie.

Ellie smiled. “Time to be brave? Braver than I feel?”

“Right.” Lucy traced the girl’s line of sight to one of the dozens of motivational posters on the wall. Be Brave. Braver than you feel. Next to it, Right or wrong, blow it strong. Beside that one, Practice doesn’t make perfect. It makes possible. Lucy’s favorite, Just so you know, dogs don’t eat music homework.

“Deep breath from the bottom of your lungs. Push your
abdomen out to allow air in. Hold it. Now two small breaths
in and out without moving your hand. There! You did it!”

Ellie pressed her lips together but couldn’t stop the smile
that overrode her efforts. “I didn’t think I could.”

“Now, let’s try that technique for these four measures.”
Lucy pointed to the sheet on the music stand. “Keep that
expansion in your tummy, even though you’ll have to breathe.
See if it doesn’t help you maintain that beautiful tone
you’ve been working on.”

The girl raised the silver flute to her pursed lips, a mix
of eagerness and skepticism on her face. She exaggerated the
movement of her abdomen, her striped shirt proving her
obedience, and played the specified measures. Ellie’s eyes
flashed her reaction before she lowered her flute. “That,”
she said, “was awesome!”

Tears tickled Lucy’s sinuses. “Yes, it was.”

“Does that work with singing, too? Could I join choir next
year? Is there room for me?”

Laughter poured out of Lucy’s mouth, but it originated in
her heart. “Four brilliant measures and you’re ready to
tackle singing, too?”

As quickly as the laughter erupted, it died. Her choir? Next year?

“My doctor says he owes you.” Ellie’s flute lay in her lap,
the thin fingers cradling it. She stifled most of a cough.
“He says he never would have thought of music as cystic
fibrosis therapy.”

I never thought my first chair flutist would muscle through CF to keep playing. “I’m glad it’s helping.”

“GDBD,” she said, running her fingers over the instrument.
“Good days, bad days?”

Ellie looked up. “Do you text?” Incredulity.

Lucy took no offense. Even at a few months shy of fifty-six,
she must have seemed ancient to a thirteen-year-old. Despite
her sassy haircut. And artsy earrings, thanks to Ania’s
jewelry-making skills.

“Is today a good day, Ellie?”

The girl lifted her flute then pointed to the line of notes
on the page, as a pool player might point to the pocket
where she intended the eight ball to land. “Mrs. Tuttle, any
day I’m breathing is a considered a good day.” She inhaled
without moving her shoulders and played the measures as if
running a victory lap. Which she would likely never do. Run.

Lucy was three hours away from another school-board
budget-cut meeting. Could she keep breathing? The discussion
had crept too close to destroying scenes like this one with
Ellie. Only Lucy’s dogged sense of propriety had kept her
from storming the school board’s line of tables and chairs
last time. If it crept much closer...

Lucy turned her attention back to her admiration for a
thirteen-year-old’s breathless ability to muscle through.

###

When Ellie’s smile left the room, Lucy retreated to her
cramped office at the end of the line of three small
practice rooms. She stared at the screen of her laptop, open
to her calendar. The school day was over, but her list of
duties hadn’t shrunk. Spring concert next week. She needed
to sneak in another announcement for the Woodbridge radio
station and create another mass text message for the parents
and grandparents who paid more attention to texts than they
did the school’s weekly newsletter.

Charlie said he’d eat at Bernie’s tonight. She could work
straight through until the budget-cut meeting if she wanted.
He’d meet her there. Why couldn’t he be the one to speak up
in a public forum? Why did he slip into it’ll-all-work-out
mode when her life stood in the crosshairs? So much for
knight on a white horse. But he would be there. She didn’t
have to wonder if he’d show up.

She needed a new office chair. One that didn’t groan when
she moved. Or was that sound coming from her soul?

Two hours later she pushed away from her desk and closed the lid of her laptop. She shouldn’t head into the meeting with an empty stomach. But it might be emptied by the outcome of the gathering, barring divine intervention. So she had no clear choice.

Divine intervention. Nothing short would move a woman like
Evelyn Schindler, who approached budget cuts with the
ruthlessness of a self-guided chain saw.