Maggie Shayne - Sleep with the Lights On

When a nurse tried to object to all the activity in the room, Sandra laid down the law. “Do you know how many times my sister has been on TV?” she asked. “She’s important. She needs her people around her.”

My people. My entourage. And every one of them so devoted they would take a bullet for me. Well, except for Misty and Christy, who would take a slap for me, max. Maybe. As long as it wasn’t in the face.

Moreover, the people in this room were the only people who knew that the real me was not the feel-good guru who showed up in my books and on talk shows. And they not only loved me anyway, they loved me enough to not sell the truth to the tabloids. That was devotion right there, because that information would’ve been worth a significant bundle.

There was a tap on the door before someone came in. I smelled her and heard her signature footsteps, soft and close together, and I knew her instantly. “Hold up, hold up.” I tapped Mott’s knee as I spoke, and he stopped strumming.

“Doc Fenway?”

“You amaze me every time, you know that?” she said with a smile in her voice.

“I do it on purpose,” I confessed. “So are you here to visit, or did this little accident have some kind of impact on my eyesight? Please don’t tell me I’m going blind!”

Obediently, my entourage laughed. But only a little. There was still noise all around me. Amy’s clicking keys, Sandra talking on the phone—“Ham and pineapple, extra blue cheese and the hottest wings you’ve got”—Mott still picking a string over and over as he tuned the guitar, because apparently he thought as long as he wasn’t playing an actual song he was in compliance with my “hold up” order of a moment ago.

And then Doc Fenway went on. “Actually, I came with some good news for you.” And then she said it. One sentence that changed everything. “You’re going to see again, Rachel.”

The room went silent. I flinched as the words exploded inside my brain. “I...um...how?”

“We have a brand-new healthy set of corneas for you. Private donor. Wishes to remain anonymous, and—”

“No.” I shook my head and kept on talking before the arguments could begin. “I’m not putting myself through it again, Doc. You know I reject every set I get. It’s too much to—”

“Just hear me out, Rachel. Let me explain why it’s different this time. Then make whatever decision you want.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t want to let my hopes start to climb. So far, they hadn’t, but if I let her talk they might, and I didn’t like the crushing disappointment of failure. I’d had transplants before. My body rejected them. Violently. I was sick all over. I know, another one of my endearing quirks. I’m a unique individual.

“If everyone could leave us for a few minutes...?”

“They can stay,” I said. “They’re just going to torture it out of me later, anyway. Go ahead, Doc, give it your best shot, but you know how I feel about beating this particular dead horse.”

“Okay.” She cleared her throat. “It’s been several years since we’ve tried. There’s a new procedure. Descemet’s Stripping Endothelial Keratoplasty.”

“Oh, well in that case, let’s go for it. Anything with such an impressive sounding name is bound to work.” I loaded on enough sarcasm to clog up a black hole.

Doc Fenway sighed, then repeated herself, but in English this time. “We transplant a thin layer of the graft, not the entire cornea. The risk of rejection is minimal. Recovery time is faster. It’s light-years beyond what we’ve been able to do before. And I think it just might be your answer.”

My heart gave a ridiculously hopeful leap. I told it to lie back down and shut the fuck up.

“The donor chose you specifically, Rachel. And we can do it today.”

“Oh my God.” That was Sandra, and the words were damn near swimming in tears. “Oh my God, ohmyGod, ohmyGod!”

I wasn’t quite as impressed. “Today? You want me to decide this today? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Meanwhile Sandra was still going on, “You’re going to see! You’re going to see, ohmyGod!”

The twins started with the teenage-girl squealing thing that sounds like giant mice having their tails stepped on. Really, someone ought to be researching a cure for that. Screw Descemet’s Stripping-whatever.

“This is a miracle!” Amy cried. And then she and Sandra were hugging and hopping around in what sounded like a circle. I don’t know. Blind, remember? Everyone was talking and crying and laughing—and squealing, let’s not forget the squealing—at the same time.

I held up my hands. “Stop. Just stop.” I had to speak very loudly.

They all stopped, and I felt their eyes on me. “Okay. Okay.” I took a deep breath, but I wasn’t processing this. This wasn’t real yet. I didn’t get it. “I do need everybody to get out, okay? Except you, Doc. Everybody else, just...just go get a coffee or something. Give me a minute here.”

I heard a keystroke and whipped my finger toward Amy. “Don’t you even think about tweeting anything about this. Understand?”

“Yeah. No, I wasn’t—”

“Close the lid, Amy.”

I heard the laptop close.

“Come on, everyone, let’s give her some space,” Sandra instructed. She was a little hurt that I’d asked. I could tell by the texture of her voice.

“Yeah. I need space.”

Mott leaned in close. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, you know.”

“Right. Like you wouldn’t?”

“No. I wouldn’t.” Petulant, maybe a little combative? What the fuck?

I frowned. I mean, I knew he thought of the blind as a minority group and himself as our Malcolm X, but I didn’t think he’d want to stay sightless if he had a choice. Then again, he’d been born blind. I hadn’t. I’d had twelve years of vision. Eleven of them twenty-twenty. And I’d had blurry, half-assed eyesight three times, after the last three transplants, a few days each time before my body threw a full-on, no-holds-barred revolt. I knew what I was missing.

Mott kissed my cheek, and everyone left the room. Shuffling steps, grumbling complaints, whispers and finally the door closing behind them. I lay there in the bed, listening to Doc Fenway come over, sit in Mott’s former place, clear her throat.

“What do you need to know?” she asked.

I thought for a long time, and then I said, “Is this for real?”

“Yes.”

“Will it work?”

“Almost certainly. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it, Rachel. This might be the miracle you didn’t think you’d ever get.”

She was telling the absolute truth, as she saw it. Lies were one of the easiest things to hear in people’s voices. I felt tears brimming in my stupid sightless eyes. Damn, I did not cry. Not ever. And if I ever did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be in front of anyone. Thank God I was still wearing my sunglasses. “I don’t want to believe it just to have it go bad again, Doc. Not this time. It would be more than I can take.”

Revealing my soft underbelly was not something I did often. But she wasn’t allowed to tell, right? She was a doctor.

“But you have to believe if you ever want anything to change. Isn’t that what you’re always writing about? How it’s the belief that creates the reality, and not the other way around.”

Right. Like I was twelve and somehow believed my way into twenty years of blindness right? I would probably go to hell for the bullshit I sold to the gullible.

“How long before I’ll be able to look at my sister’s face?”

She patted my hand. “Tomorrow, if all goes well. And better than the other times, right off the bat, with full recovery in two to three months.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll be able to see my sister’s face again...tomorrow.” I lowered my head, shook it slowly. Even if it didn’t last, I’d have that. I just didn’t know if I could handle the letdown if it was only temporary. You might think temporary vision is better than none at all, but you haven’t been there. I have. It sucks.