His right ear began to itch while he was relaxing in his favorite chair after a busy day. Up and about at 3:30 am, he was staining his front porch by 7. At nine thirty he put his paint away, loaded his pickup truck with tools and headed to the church to accept three loads of gravel.
While the backhoe operator did his job spreading the gravel, he busied himself with picking up rocks and sticks from the recently ploughed ground and then pulled some weeds in the pumpkin patch. After the gravel man was finished he grabbed his big push broom and swept off the roadway and then hosed it down. By twelve thirty he was on his way back home to finish up his projects there.
He recoated the front porch with the semi-transparent water based cedar stain and then went to work on the back porch. He finished all his stain but decided against going to the store to purchase more as he had other problems to attend to. Most pressing was dealing with Duke Energy over a change they made to the church's' electric bill. It didn't take all that long to handle the problem: it was just thirty minutes or so he really didn't have to spare.
He still had to put all his tools away, rewind the hose, fix the chip in his windshield, and make sure the church was ready for the big meeting that night. He got home in time to shower, get dressed and grab a little something for dinner before heading out again. It was 9:30pm when the service ended and he could finally go home and relax.
He removed the hearing aid from his right ear so he could relieve the itch but he lost his grip on the tiny thing and felt it slide down his neck onto his right shoulder. He reacted quickly in trying to grab the hearing aid before it could hit the ground. When he did he scrapped a fingernail across his right cheek, leaving a small gash that wanted to bleed. Now faced with two problems, he wasn't sure how best to handled the situation. In order to tend to the cut he didn't to retrieve a bandage but moving about with a loose hearing aid about could result in damaging the aid.
While he was reasoning the situation out his wife, acting instinctually, rushed over and pushed the button on his power chair. He wasn't prepared for that move and while fearful the movement of the power chair might damage the hearing aid or cause it to fall into a space that couldn't be reached, he didn't have time to react to prevent her from moving the chair.
The hearing aid had vanished and no amount of searching for it would reveal results. The entire areas was search and all possible locations were checked into but it just wasn't there. How could something just disappear like that? He didn't know either but it had happened. The hearing aid just vanished.
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