(She would always remember her last evening of normal hearing, that night sitting at the kitchen table, aching and feverish with the flu. Her mother was washing the dishes, singing to herself, ‘When You Wish upon a Star.’ Everything Cora looked at seemed a little too bright and shimmery, so she closed her eyes, rested her head on the table and drifted. Her mother’s breathy voice, the squeak of the cloth, the clatter of plates. Occasionally her mother switched to humming, throaty and relaxed. Outside were the Florida night sounds: cicadas, crickets, tree frogs and a whippoorwill.

The thing that had amazed Cora afterward was she hadn’t known enough in that moment to feel gratitude.)

As soon as her head was under the surface, the dolphins’ noises filled her. Sound, bright as light, hard as touch.

Ping-pong balls bouncing down metal stairs.

Dolphins are constant vocal innovators, playful geniuses with unspeakable power, the Maria Callases of the sea, their sounds unworldly and pure.

A gospel group on helium, hitting the high notes.

She found herself wiggling a little deeper into the water. Two feet deep, two and a half. She saw white sand, a crab scuttling sideways and the pilings of the dock.

A tired mouse crying.

She barely paid attention to her surroundings, her entire being focused on the sounds. She inhaled through the snorkel and felt the sounds in her lungs.

Styrofoam squeaking.

The noises were vibrating in her bones, she tasted them on her tongue, saw them between her ears. So clear and crisp and three-dimensional.

Martians arguing, metallic and intent.

Just beyond, a dolphin flashed by, big and gleaming. Surprised, it spotted her and, with a flick of its tail, was gone.

Now the sounds got louder. Excited. The crying, the clicking. She eased forward deeper, floating now, balanced on just her fingertips, breathing through the snorkel, the waves sloshing across the top of her head.

Around the corner of the dock, the dolphins were revealed.

Clustered on the far side of the lagoon, maybe 60 feet away, they stared at her. Their presence, their sheer size. The largest one (at least 11 feet long, must be over 450 pounds) floated in front, the three others behind. The positions a family would take if she walked in with a gun.

They geigered and squealed in her direction. A crinkling sensation like plastic wrap twisting in her gut. The sound exploring her insides.

The big one opened its mouth and clapped its teeth. Agitated. It had a red mark across its chest, maybe a rope burn. It held its flippers out to the sides and arched its back, trying to look even bigger than it was.

The two medium-sized ones stayed just behind, one to either side. One of them had a gash along its right flank, probably 6 inches long. These two kept their bodies between her and the fourth dolphin who was almost the same size, probably an adolescent. The adolescent peered around them, shifting from side to side, trying to see, clicking at Cora.