Пол Андерсон - Orbit 1

The doctor made a sound like a laugh. “You haven’t lost the eye,” he said.

“What have I lost?” she asked. She could not feel anything except some pressure from his wrist on her cheekbone, so they must have numbed the nerves well with that needle. It was a wonder she had not gone into shock, she thought, and reverted to grieving for whatever it was she had lost. Doctors did not always tell you what.

“You may not have any vision in this eye,” he said in a tough voice. He was not going to make any compromises with a patient like this. Remain polite, she warned herself, or they’ll treat you to something even better than a jab in the eyeball and not a word of warning. It was worse having screamed than being hurt. Or wasn’t it?

The pressure was gone from her face. Both eyelids were gently compressed behind wads of cotton, taped on, her skin stretched under the tape. She could hear a small humming, soft as summer afternoons.

“You must lie still,” the doctor said. “The nurse will give you a pill if you can’t stand the pain, but try to hold out.” He had no more than said it, and gone away on crepe-soled shoes, than a drill began to eat its way through her right eye in the wake of the hypo needle, and she clenched her jaws, wondering if it was possible to hold out against this. In no more than twenty seconds, after her resolve to be polite and a model patient, she yelled, “Gimme that pill!”

The nurse popped a pill into her mouth and gave her a bent glass straw to drink through. “Don’t move,” the nurse warned. “It’s essential for you to be still.” Her bed began to glide on soundless casters, accompanied by the soft humming sound, and another sound, as though a gallery of people were shifting, shoes scuffling, throats being cleared. She faded out.

A dull whiteness shone through everything, bathing her face in faint warmth, and she smelled chicken soup. Her nostrils grew eight inches wide, her mouth opened. “Soup,” she said.

“Ah. You’re awake,” and the nurse spooned a mouthful in. “You look like a hungry bird,” the nurse said. More soup was spooned in, but too soon, it stopped.

“Still hungry?” the nurse asked.

“I’m starving. I didn’t eat any breakfast this morning.”

“Well, that’s a mercy. You should see what happens to some accident cases with their stomachs full.”

“More soup?” she begged.

“Not now, you’d better sleep. And try not to move your head.”

At intervals they gave her chicken soup and told her to lie still, until it must have been morning, and they spooned in coffee, told her not to move, and gave her something for the red-hot needle in her eye. After a while, she was tired of sleeping, and lay with the bandages on her eyes watching the pictures. They flipped over from right to left: flags, geraniums, cakes, colors with no names and the number between eight and nine all appeared, flipped and vanished. When someone spoke to her, the pictures stopped.

A little boy’s voice said, “I’ve got an amputated arm. Have you got broken eyes?”

“Just one eye,” she said, reassuringly.

“I’d rather have a broken arm,” he said.

“So would I,” she said.

“I’m wearing a green bathrobe. Can you see it?”

“No, silly. Both my eyes are covered. Has it got a green belt?”

“Yeah, but I lost it at Ronny’s house when I slept over. But I don’t think I’ve been to Ronny’s house for a long time.”

“How old is Ronny?”

The nurse came in and said, “Tch! I’m sorry, Miss D. I didn’t know he was bothering you.”

“He isn’t,” she protested.

“Come on,” the nurse said to the little boy.

“It’s all right, he wasn’t bothering me,” she said.

“Lie still,” the nurse commanded.

The pictures started again, some of them highly colored, some of them bleak landscapes of granite and bone. She went to the moon and jumped nineteen feet into the air. She fell into a lake where the cold water trickled down her cheek to her chin into the pillow. A pig snuffled at her under the leaf mold and began rooting in her eye until the nurse came in and gave her another pill.

After they had spooned cereal into her mouth, she began to think of her mother. She could imagine her mother’s great brown eyes streaming tears, buckets of tears, weeping for her poor lost daughter. “For God’s sake, stop snuffling,” she thought her father said, long-legged, in red striped shorts shaving on a sunny morning with the bathroom steamed up and smelling of cigarette smoke.

“How are the children?” she asked.

“What children?” the nurse demanded.

“The ones in the other car.”

“They’re just fine,” the nurse said.

One of the children picked up a baseball and threw it at her, and she knew it was going to hit her in the eye so she ducked, but the pillow held her firmly and sure enough, it whacked into her eye and she let out a yell.

“Shush, dear,” the nurse said, slapping her on the back of the neck.

“I’m ten,” the little boy said when she was awake again. “My name is Bob and I only have one arm.”

“I know. You told me. Is it nice to be ten?”

“No,” Bob said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty,” she said. “I didn’t like being ten either.”

“Is twenty better?”

“Sometimes.”

“Oh, tch,” the nurse said, coming in.

“Do they teach you that in nursing school?” she asked.

“Teach us what?”

“Tch. All of you say it, all the time.”

“Come along, Bob, you aren’t supposed to be in here, you know.”

The nurse came back with the doctor, who said, “You may sit up now.”

“No, thanks. I’m quite comfy this way.”

“I mean, you may sit up in bed now,” the doctor said.

“I don’t want to.” She giggled.

“Nurse,” the doctor asked in an undertone, “how much Nembutol has she been getting? We don’t want her to be too difficult.” Rustle of charts. “Oh,” the doctor said. “Well, well, Miss D., we’ll try again later, won’t we?”

“There’s a dog under the bed. Nobody’s fed him.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, and sighed.

“A terrier. He ought to be fed.”

The nurse sighed. “Tch, we’ll feed him, dear. Don’t worry.”

There really seemed to be a dog under the bed, her comfortable companion, kenneled between the downfalls of the aseptic bedspread. She threw her pillow down so he would have something to he on. After a while, the dog crept out, tweaking the wire that hung down from the back of her neck, and he went away. She wanted him back for company; she wanted more Nembutol for comfort; all of a sudden she wanted to be loved. When she tilted the glass, champagne swirled and a few bubbles plopped against her cheek sweetly, love, love, dancing and music. What was the eye going to look like?

“Will it look horrible?” she asked the doctor, who was snipping around the bandages with cold metal.

“Certainly not. A film will have formed over the scar tissue. We’ll remove the film at a later time.”

“Using another of those darling needles in the eye?”

“Keep your eyes closed,” he ordered, and she obeyed. “You don’t want it done without anesthesia,” he commented. He removed the cotton pads and her fids felt chilled. “You may try to open them,” he said.

Try? Try, indeed, to breathe. She lifted her fids and the daylight seared her eyes blind in less than a second. Tears spurted out and poured down her face. “It will take some time,” the doctor said. The nurse mopped her face. “A little bit at a time,” the doctor said.

“It’s Sunday. I want to read the funnies.”

“Well, you go right ahead and read them,” he said, and she felt something, the papers? thrust at her clenched right hand. She grabbed it. She opened the lid of the good eye and peeked. The Pirates of Doran ran all colors of the rainbow; the balloons were full of black ants. She closed her eyes, tried again in a few minutes. Betsy swam in green soup, leaks sprouted at the edge of the page.