A man feared his wife was not hearing as well as she used to, and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her, he called the family doctor to discuss the problem.
I'm talking about the first sentence. I can not understand its meaning and its structure (grammar). There are two verbs in the sentence without adding -ing to the second one (feard, was). So, I think the word "that" is removed from the sentence. The original sentence is:
A man feared that his wife was not hearing as well as she used to.
That's what I think but I'm not so sure.. Is that correct?
After adding the word "that", I still don't understand the usage of the word "feared". For me, It does not make sense. Why the man is afraid? I think it's better to say:
"A man thought that ..." or "a man believed that ..."
So, what's the usage of the word "feared" ?