Sunday, December 29, 2024

Valentine

I remove my eye patch before I go into the eye clinic, since I figure I’ll have to take it off anyways. Once again I get the guy with the ponytail, though he surprises me with a big friendly smile and he checks me right in. In just a few minutes the young Russian guy calls for me and does the retina scan. “Great, you’re doing really great,” he says in his flat voice. He keeps saying it, even when I try read the eye chart with my left eye. I can’t even read the E without squinting. I can’t help but laugh. “No, I mean it, you’re doing really well, considering,” he says, sounding hurt.

The tiny waiting room is right across the hall and it is full of people. I read the news and send some texts and doze a bit. Everyone is on their phone except one old guy who is fast asleep, and a young man playing a video game. 

This room is even more depressing than I thought, now that I’m seeing it clearly for the first time. It’s a glorified cubicle; the walls end well below the roof. Fluorescent lights crisscross high above, half of them burned out. In the corner of the room stands what looks like a child’s drawing of a plant. Many of its leaves are brown and shriveled. I don’t understand why they don’t cut them off; it would only take a minute. This plant seems indicative of everything that is wrong with this place.

Photos of fake-looking mountains and waterfalls hang on the walls, and coupled with the easy listening music, they remind me of the CARE channel they used to play in the hyperbaric chamber. I’m overcome with nostalgia, picturing Jenny putting my hospital socks on, Sally grinning evilly as she hands me a protein shake, KC tucking me in tight like a baby…

One by one the other patients get called. I start wiggling around and dancing in my seat to the smooth, sax-heavy music. I hope to either horrify or amuse the old woman sitting across from me; she looks dressed for fun in a loud jacket and matching sneakers, but she has a look on her face like she swallowed a bug. I want her to look up and see my stupid gyrations and try to resist smiling but ultimately find herself overtaken by the spirit and start to dance. But she never looks up. No one does. 

Eventually I drift off to sleep and am awoken by the yelling of the old man who had been napping. “I’ve been waiting an hour and a half,” he barks at one of the assistants who has had the misfortune of passing too close to the doorway. 

“It’s always like this,” one of the other men says, with the resignation of a patient in an Eastern Blok clinic.

“Then they need to so something about it,” the other man says. 

“We really appreciate your being here. We have a lot of patients,” says the assistant, smiling like an automaton.

“They you need to get more doctors.”

“It’s difficult to find doctors qualified to provide the proper care for our patients.”

 ““I was a surgeon for fifty years. If I had run my office this way they would have shut me down!”

“We’ve been here since 1959,” the assistant says, her smile unchanging.

“I’m friends with the man who built this place,” the retired surgeon says.

“We really appreciate your being here,” the assistant says, and slips away.

One by one the other patients are called, until the only ones left are me and the guy with the video game. He’s stopped playing and is gently hitting the back of his head against the wall. The lights start to go out all around us. 

Finally they call me. I almost make a joke about not being the last patient of the day, but I don’t want to sound like I’m gloating. Instead I just ask the assistant, “You’re not going to lock us in, are you?” 

“Don’t worry, it stays nice and warm overnight,” a woman’s voice calls from one of the exam rooms.

I sit in the chair and wait a long time until Dr. Wong finally appears. He asks how the cataract surgery went and I tell him it’s nice to see clearly again, if only partially. He looks at my chart and gives me drops and shines incredibly bright lights in my eyes.

“And now you’re blind again,” he says.

He’s gone quite a while and I see one of the old men slowly make his way out. How long was he in there? My sugar is getting low and I am starting to get irritated. The office has technically been closed for nearly an hour. 

Eventually he gets around to my injection. Despite the numbing drops, it stings. He makes my next appointment for February 14th. It’ll be the one year anniversary of my first session in the chamber.

“You can be my valentine,” He says cheerfully. 

I sit alone in the room another fifteen minutes before they tell me I can leave. The young man with the video game is outside already, stepping into a taxi. I ended up being the last one after all. 

It’s rainy and dark and my eyes are still dilated so I can barely see a thing. I wheel my scooter very carefully to the streetcar stop. I only have to wait a few minutes. Everybody on board is riled up. One guy yells and bangs the floor with his walking stick, another knocks an empty plastic bottle against his head repeatedly. When I get back home I look at myself in the mirror and even though I was told it happens sometimes and that it’s probably nothing to worry about, I still cry out in surprise. 

My eye is full of blood.


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