“Like because you’d enjoy seeing things?”
“Yeah,” I say. “And I’m tired of the way people treat me. Like the way people are so overly nice to me because they assume I can’t do stuff for myself.” I pause, thinking back on the Incident. “And sometimes the opposite. Sometimes they’re… cruel.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
So I tell her the whole story. About Alexander, about Candy Land, about my parents’ decision to send me to the school for the blind.
“And after that,” I conclude, “I eventually realized I just couldn’t rely on other people. Maybe that sounds stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” she says. “I’ve had a hard time trusting people, too, because… well, I was bullied a lot when I was a kid.”
I pause, waiting for her to elaborate. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
It’s quiet again, and eventually she says, “Do you want me to take your picture?”
“With bandages over my eyes?”
“Just in case you want to look back and see what you looked like before.”
“Not really, thanks. But can I take a picture?” I ask.
“Of what?”
“Anything. How about my savory wall?”
“All right.”
I hold the camera in front of me, and she flips out the monitor so she can see the picture. She directs my aim and takes my hand in hers, guiding it to the lens. She lets go so I can adjust the focus myself, but I wish she had kept her hand on mine.
“Rotate slowly, slowly, right there. Now press with your pointer finger.”
I do and hear the familiar snap of the shutter.
? ? ?
That night, I barely sleep. When I do, I dream about Cecily. I can see her, and it’s very strange because I’m not actually seeing. Still, this one feels different from my usual dreams, which are just hallucinated representations of my everyday experience, loosely chronological narratives of touch, sound, and smell.
Dad takes the day off so he and Mom can accompany me to the hospital. Which must suck for him, using a vacation day to go hang out at his place of work.
The three of us sit in a waiting room for a while. Mom fills out my paperwork. I wonder what it will be like when I can fill out my own paperwork. I hear Dad shuffling through the newspaper. I imagine how it will feel to read with my eyes. I run my fingers over the upholstery of my chair and wonder what color it is. Sure, I could ask Mom. Or I could use my iPhone app that identifies colors. But that’s not the point. I don’t actually care what color the chair is. I just want to be able to determine it at a glance. Like a normal person.
We are called into another room and go through the same pre-op conversations as we did six weeks ago for the stem cell operation. The anesthesiologist asks me a million times if I’m allergic to anything. He knows Dad, and they exchange pleasantries. Dr. Bianchi comes by for a final check-in. He says he is hopeful the operation will succeed, but he reminds me that “we cannot predict outcomes with certainty.” The stem cells have been in my eyes long enough now to have created daughter cells, which will hopefully get my retinas to function. The stem cells are like a foundation, he says, and the corneas are like the house. Assuming my body doesn’t immediately reject the new corneas, it’s possible I might be able to sense light as soon as he takes the bandages off after this operation.
The anesthesiologist puts an IV in my arm. He tells me things are going to get blurry. I start to remind him that I won’t know the difference, but I’m fast fading into sleep and the words get stuck in my throat.
? ? ?
All of a sudden, there’s this incredible noise pounding into my brain. It’s louder than anything I’ve ever heard, like a jet engine, endless, incessant, painful. It sounds like static, feels like a continuous slap to my face, and tastes like acid.
“AHHHHHH!” I yell. “Turn it off! Turn it off! Turn it OFF!”
“Will! It’s Mom! It’s okay. It’s okay.”
I struggle to move and find my body still lagging behind my brain’s commands.
“TURN IT OFF!” I yell, gaining enough control to thrash and jerk.
“Nurse!” Mom says. “Nurse!”
Some more words are spoken—I hear “sedation”—and the sound gets foggy, and I fall asleep. When I wake up again, it’s back, pounding me, demolishing me, demanding my attention.
“The sound! Turn off the sound!” I say.
“Will, sweetheart, calm down!”
“Mom?” I say, my hands groping, finding her face. “Mom, make them turn it off!”
“Turn off what, Will?”
“That sound!”
“There is no sound, Will. It’s very quiet in here.”
“You can’t hear it?” I ask desperately.
“No.”
“Dad?”