Love and First Sight(18)

“Hello, Will,” says Dr. Bianchi when he enters the examination room, bringing with him a whiff of cigarette smoke. “Or do you prefer William?”

“Will is fine.”

“Nice to meet you. You want to touch my face?”

He has an accent. You wanta to toucha my face-ah?

“I’m just kidding,” he adds. “That is a little of the blind humor for you, yes?”

I chuckle. “Good one.”

“You like music, Will?”

“Music? It’s okay.”

“I love music. I shall turn it on for us. You like the opera?”

“Sure.”

“Here is another thing all the people believe about visual impairment,” he says. “You all love to touch the faces, and you are all musical geniuses? Yes?”

“Yeah, people are always surprised that I want to be a writer instead of a musician.”

“You wish to be a writer?”

“Yes.”

“Very good.”

He presses a button, and opera music turns on. He turns down the volume so it’s just a background.

“There we go,” he says. “One thing that is true, though—those who were born blind have a more developed sense of touch and hearing. For how long have you lacked eyesight, Will?”

“I was born without vision.”

“In my office, Will, we always say eyesight, not vision,” he explains. “Because they are not the same, yes?”

“I guess not,” I concede.

“Eyesight is in the eyes. Vision is more. It is in the mind. The heart. The soul. But I digress. Let me ask you. Why do you want eyesight?”

“Why not?” I say, as if the question is pretty self-explanatory.

“Yes, why not? But again. This is the important question.” He emphasizes those two words: important question. “Why do you want eyesight?”

“I think it would make my life better. Like, you know, reading and stuff. Have you heard of the ‘tyranny of the visual’?”

“Yes, of course. Since so many of us in today’s world rely on sight because of the mass media, living in our society is now more difficult for the blind.”

“Right. So I think having vision—that is, eyesight—would improve my life.”

He pauses and then says, “Will, do you know why I came to this country?”

“No.”

“I have lived here for twenty years. I moved to America from Italy because PU has one of the best medical research programs in my field in the entire world. So I want to live here for a better career so I can give the better life for my family. So I understand this. When you say you want the better life, I understand this.”

I don’t say anything. The opera singer’s voice shakes with vibrato.

“And I am one of the few surgeons who practice this surgery because I think it can offer a better life. Another reason humans have evolved to rely on eyesight as the primary sense is because it has the best spatial resolution.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t think I know what that is.”

“Say you are in a restaurant, listening to another table. Easy enough to accomplish. But if you try to listen to two different conversations at different tables simultaneously, you find the limitation of hearing. You can’t concentrate on both at once. But a person with eyesight can see and process hundreds of objects and colors at the same time. This is spatial resolution.”

He pauses and then says, as if closing his argument, “So this is why I think eyesight can give you the better life.”

I ask, “Can you help me see, Dr. Bianchi?”

He thinks for a moment. “It is a possibility,” he concludes, in a tone that suggests I’ve cleared his first hurdle. “But several things stand in our way.”

“Like what?”

“First, we must get the B-scan. To see if your congenital blindness makes you a candidate for the stem cell operation.”

“Okay. A B-scan. Then what?”

“Then we must find a stem cell donor.”

“If we do, that’s it? Then I can see?”

“If only, Will, if only. No, then we must give your eyes a month to heal. After this, then we look for a corneatransplant donor.”

“So there are two surgeries?” I ask.

“Yes. First you need retinal stem cells. After that, we wait one month for you to heal. Then we have a two-week window. During that time, you can get corneas.”

“So we need to find a donor? Um, how about one of my parents?”

He chuckles. “No, you cannot ask someone to do this for you. Not a living person. You need an organ donor, a cadaver who is recently deceased due to traumatic accident. But with the eyes intact. And for this donor we can only wait.”

“What if we don’t find a donor within the two weeks?”

“Donors are relatively easy to find. Sadly, accidents happen every day. And rarely are the eyes damaged.”

“But if it did happen? If two weeks passed without us finding a donor?”

“If we miss the window, this is not a surgery we can do for another time. You would be staying blind forever.”

Yikes.

I’m not sure how to take this. “Okay, let’s assume we find a donor, and I have the operation. Then I can see? Is that it?”