Sleep with the Lights On. Maggie Shayne
probably look like an old lady to you.” She was shaking, nervous and hopeful, and near tears.
“Shit, I’ll probably look like an old lady to me. At least you had all morning to do hair and makeup. I’ve never smelled so much hairspray in my life.”
She laughed softly. “It’s true, I did. Spent an hour and a half. It’s not every day your sister sees you for the first time in so long. God, I was what, sixteen?”
Doc’s hands were at the back of my head, and she started unwrapping the gauze, layer by layer.
“Don’t worry,” I told Sandra to lighten the mood. “I wasn’t expecting you to still be three feet tall and wearing bunny jammies. But you’d better have kept the dimples and curls. I’m probably a hag. It’s unfair.”
“You’re beautiful, Rachel. You’ve always been beautiful.”
“Yeah, that’s the ticket. Make me cry so I can’t see shit even with my new eyes.”
I wasn’t even kidding. Really.
“Don’t expect too much,” Doc said. “It’s going to be better than the last times, but still a little blurry for a couple of months. But it will improve. Every day it’ll improve.”
“Thanks for the warning. Will you hurry up, already? What are you, rolling the gauze back up to reuse as you go along?”
“You are such a bitch, Rachel,” Amy said. But she said it with love, and her voice was thick with tears already.
The gauze was gone. I could feel it. Now there were just two thick pads over my eyes. Doc said, “Keep them closed until I tell you to open them, okay?”
“You want me to wait longer? Yeah, what the hell, it’s only been twenty years.”
She had her fingertips over the pads, just in case I got antsy, I guess. “Amy, can you get the lights? Sandra, the blinds? I want it dim in here for this.”
They moved. The light switch snapped; blinds whispered shut.
And then the pads were being peeled away. “Not yet, Rachel. Keep them closed. Just for a few more seconds.” Doc dabbed my eyes with something warm and wet. Then it moved away. “Okay.”
Okay, I can open them now.
No, I can’t do it.
“Go ahead, Rachel. It’s all right. Open your eyes.”
Just do it already. What are you gonna do, walk around with your eyes closed for the rest of your life?
God, why is this so hard?
I made myself do it. And you know, as much as you might think you can open your eyes slowly, you can’t. You really can’t. Try it, go ahead. There’s just no way. Eyes are either closed or open. Mine were closed.
And then they were open.
And it was dim, but...I could see. I couldn’t believe it. Had to double-check.
Am I really seeing, or is this imagination?
No, no, it was real. I could see people in the room. Yes, blurry, I guess, but consider what I had to compare it to. Women, three women, and I almost panicked, thinking I wouldn’t know who was who and would hurt their feelings.
Duh, you knew who was who before, didn’t you?
Right. Sandra’s on the left, holding my hand. I shifted my new eyes to her, and then I clapped my hand over my mouth and the tears started up. “I can see you,” I said behind my hand.
She was smiling and shaking her head, and crying, too, bending to hug me, but I pushed her away. “No, no, I want to look at you.” And then I clasped her face in my hands and stared at it. Smooth porcelain skin, and blue blue eyes, and laugh lines. My big sister, all grown up. I stared at her until I saw the girl she’d been in her face, in her blue eyes. Her hair was still curly, and I thought it was still gold, but it was too dark to be sure.
I turned from her to look at Amy by the foot of the bed. And I laughed and smeared tears off my cheeks with one hand, careful of my eyes. “You look just like I thought...only not as Goth and even cuter.” She was, short, a little more rounded than she wished she was, short dark perfectly straight hair parted deep on one side. I knew it was dark red—not auburn but burgundy; I’d heard her say so. But in the dimness it looked black.
“I usually am more Goth, but I toned it down for this,” she said, grinning, tears rolling down her cheeks.
And then I looked at Doc. And blinked. “You’re Asian?” I burst out.
She broke into laughter, wiping tears from her cheeks.
“Well, you could have told me! What the hell kind of Asian is named Fenway?”
“A married one.”
I looked at the laptop on the tray table beside the bed where BW was sobbing her eyes out from inside a little box on the screen. This must be the magical Skype I’d heard so much about. She had a predictable short, sleek silver hairstyle, but I couldn’t see her face, because she had dropped it into her hands and was bawling like the rest of us.
“God, BW, look up will you?”
She did. Man, she was a classic beauty, sculpted cheekbones, big brown eyes. And sharp. Even if they were weepy at the moment.
She smiled at me. Her teeth were so white!
“You’re gorgeous! You’re all gorgeous.” I couldn’t stop looking from one woman to the other. “God, everything is...brighter. Even in the dark.” Then I looked at Doc again. “Can’t I have a little more light?”
Nodding, she went to the window and opened the blinds just a crack, and I could see even more. If it was blurry, I didn’t know it. Since, aside from twenty-year-old memories, I had only darkness to compare it to, and the teasing glimpses offered by transplants gone by, it seemed perfectly twenty-twenty to me.
“This is amazing. Oh my God.” Please last, please last, please just fucking last this time. “When can I have full blasting sunlight?”
“In a few days. Here.” She leaned over and slid a pair of tinted glasses on my face. “You need to wear these—these, not your designer ones—until further notice, okay?”
I pulled them off and looked at them. “Oh, come on, these? Can’t I pick out a nicer pair? You know, something trendy, with spangles or—” I stopped and looked at Sandra, grinning like a loon ’cause I could still see her. “For all I know, these are trendy. Are they?”
“Not in the least,” Sandra said. Then she leaned over and picked up the top of the tray table, revealing a mirror.
And there I was, staring at myself. At me. Seeing me more clearly than I had in twenty years. It was so surreal my stomach twisted a little. “That’s me?” I leaned closer, tipping my head at various angles, touching my hair. “It’s like looking at a stranger.”
“A beautiful stranger,” Sandra said.
Amy added, “Yeah, but way more beautiful when you’re not in a hospital bed, post-op, no makeup, kind of pale and tired. Trust me, you look way better on your good days, hon.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off myself as I searched for the image I used to identify with, which I only now realized was a slightly older, slightly taller twelve-year-old. With boobs.
“We’ll go shopping for prescription glasses in any style you want the minute you get out of here,” Sandra promised. “But you really need to listen to the doctor and put those back on for now.”
I nodded but didn’t obey. “When do I get out of here?” I asked. Because I wanted to see everything.
“Later today,” Doc said.
I shook my head in amazement. Later today I was going to walk out of this hospital without a cane, without