He
assumed he was sitting in another examination room following the MRI, bathed in
that familiar fluorescent light despite not actually being able to see it. It was easier without seeing anything this
time, Steven thought, fidgeting in his seat while he waited for someone to come
back into the room. The nurse had left
him here, saying that the doctor was going to be with him soon in her sweet,
reassuring voice. I wish they would have
left me a magazine or something, thought Steven, before he chuckled for the
first time in the two days since his mysterious affliction began. He felt actually content, sans his inability
to see. Following the MRI, the nurse had
brought him something to eat; he hadn’t been able to, and his hunger pangs were
a great discomfort to him. With a full
stomach and feeling adequately hydrated, the fear gnawed at him less. The isolation remained, but not nearly as
terrifying as he remembered earlier. He
held his quiet contemplation until a knock at the door made him jump up in his
chair; he had fallen asleep.
“I’m
sorry to wake you, Steven,” the doctor said, Steven recognizing the soothing
voice almost immediately. He heard her
walk across the room, rubbing his shoulder again as she sat down next to
him. He nodded slowly, wanting to say
something but his voice caught in his throat when he realized that she had the
results of the scan. He felt himself
trembling, and the doctor noticed it too, rubbing her hand gently across his
back. “The test results came in, and I
have good news, but it’s coupled with some perplexing news. Luckily, the scans were all inconclusive; we
didn’t find any tumors, nerve damage, or anything at all. Unfortunately, that means we don’t know why
you’ve lost your sight. I’m going to
assess the situation with some specialists, and we’ll figure out a course of
action to take, ok?” She kept her hand on Steven, noticing the tears forming in
his functionless eyes. “Now, until all the details and a few more examinations
performed, there’s no guarantee of what exactly we’re going to do next. You gave the emergency personnel your
father’s phone number, and he’s been alerted.
In fact, he’s downstairs right now filling out your discharge papers
because you’re going home with him.
We’re going to try to get you all the assistance you need until we
figure out what’s going on, ok?”
Steven
nodded, thanking the doctor for the help.
He heard the nurse again in the hallway, right before feeling her hands
helping him back into the wheelchair. On
the walk toward the elevator, she stopped talking just long enough for Steven
to ask her name and how old she was. Her
name was Joan, and she was twenty-six. Steven
swallowed hard, and continued to make small talk, trying to quell the
uncertainty in a different way. When he
heard his father’s voice, he knew what was about to happen.
“Are
you faking it?” His father first spoke in the car, long after the
hospital. They rode in silence for what
felt like an eternity, but Steven still could not adequately tell the passage
of time; every minute felt like hours and every hour, only a few minutes.
“No.
I can’t see anything,” replied Steven, in a cold, almost distant voice. He swallowed hard, and felt himself blinking
back tears as rapidly as he could. The
admittance of his blindness caused more despair to well up inside him, but he
desperately wanted to keep it at bay. He
did not want to let his father see him cry.
As he tried to compose himself, his father reached out and slapped him
across the face. Steven let out a
shriek, and began to sob: “Why did you hit me?”
“I
had to be certain. Sorry.” His response
was gruff and unapologetic, and Steven knew he still didn’t believe him; he
also suspected that at some point, his father would try to disprove his
condition again. There was no helping
it, despite anything Steven would say: his father believed in empirical
evidence in nearly everything Steven did, and would not be content until the
tests performed by the hospital proved the blindness was real or that he had
successfully gotten a confession out of his son. Steven knew that if he could see, he would
notice that telltale sign of his father’s mind at work, with his jaw set forward
in a rictus smirk and his nostrils flaring with each rhythmic breath. He said nothing the rest of the drive home.
Adjusting
to his new sightless world proved to be easier than Steven expected after a few
initial hurdles. He found himself
enjoying the senses that remained more, requesting silk sheets from his mother
and sitting in the dark of his room with noise-canceling headphones connected
to an outdated mp3 player. He would do
this for hours when not in therapy: the player on shuffle, running through his
large catalogue of music. His father had
agreed to a monthly music budget despite his no-nonsense attitude toward music
in general; despite being a hard man, he knew his son needed something until
the braille lessons progressed. Music
was his sanctuary from the world of darkness, as his memory preserved the image
of the world around him: the soft colors of spring became even more vibrant as
he remembered them when he first could smell his mother’s lilacs blossoming in
the warm breeze as he sit out on the deck.
The scans had long since stop, and other than learning to read with his
fingers instead of his eyes and learning to walk with a cane and a seeing-eye
dog, Steven had little to do with the medical mystery that had unfolded. There were no signs of a tumor, he learned,
and his optic nerves continued to function, even to continue to allow his eyes
to dilate when exposed to light. Enough
tests had been ran that the doctors attending him recognized that his lack of
vision was legitimate, but, fearing as doctors often do, they perceived that it
may be a symptom of a deeper psychological issue instead of physiological. This did nothing to help his issue with his
father, a man who refused to believe in therapy and other “bullshit” as he
eloquently put it one evening during dinner.
Either Steven had a tumor or he was faking it for attention.
Steven,
however, had come into his own in his sightless world. He was no longer the introverted homebody
that he once was, even despite his blindness.
The opposite had occurred, where he relished the time he spent walking
outside with his seeing-eye dog, Chase, at the lead. The park seemed more vibrant and alive when
he perceived it through his other senses.
He had reconnected with old acquaintances, with whom he had no real
contact with since his days at college.
During one particular outing, he had run into the nurse who he had met
during his initial hospital visit, right after he had lost his sight.
The
relationship between the two blossomed from coffee meetings and walks through
the park into an actual romance. Steven
found that his blindness had eased his anxiety in dealing with others, calmed
the words of fear that echoed through his head during conversations. His thoughts became much easier, and he was
able to accept Joan easier without seeing her with his eyes: his hands
conferred that she was beautiful and soft, and her voice calmed him in ways he
never had experienced. He felt an innate
connection to her, like he truly understood her.
These
feelings of ease and comfort still spread a darkness through his thoughts, deep
into the recesses of his mind that psychoanalysis were attempting to tap
into. He knew it when he woke from
fitful sleep in the middle of the night; he knew his new fear the bred through
his thoughts at night and had begun to poison his waking mind. He feared that if he had regained his sight,
that connection to Joan, and ultimately to the world, would fade. The words of doctors, meant to be
encouraging, cut through his mind like a knife.
It began to burden him, burden his recollections of the world around
him; colors drained from flowers, kind voices became condescending, and even
Joan seemed distant and away. He could
not escape it, which meant that the day his eyesight inexplicably returned was
thought to be the worst day of life, even far worse that the day his eyesight
disappeared.
He
woke in the morning with an eye flutter, where he expected nothing but
darkness. Instead, he saw the familiar
paint scheme of his childhood bedroom, the light blue intensifying in the
bright morning light. He gasped and
closed his eyes before he quickly opened them again. The room was visible. He could plainly see the off-white of the
paint on the walls, bathed in a cool glow of light from the morning light
cascading in through the uncovered window.
It was fuzzy at first, as he focused in and out on the meticulously
organized albums lying in their milk crates.
He blinked, rubbing his eyes furiously, as the room around him came in
clearer and clearer focus. He felt nauseous and dizzy as his eyes adjusted; he stood up, and felt a rushing
sensation in his head as his brain adjusted to the flood of new
information. Silent tears fell down his
cheeks. When
his head cleared, Steven carefully picked his way downstairs, without his cane,
but with his seeing-eye dog carefully following him with a sense of concerned
loyalty. The light caused his head to
throb slightly with the beginning formation of a headache.
