Love and First Sight(35)

We are called into another room and go through the same pre-op conversations as we did six weeks ago for the stem cell operation. The anesthesiologist asks me a million times if I’m allergic to anything. He knows Dad, and they exchange pleasantries. Dr. Bianchi comes by for a final check-in. He says he is hopeful the operation will succeed, but he reminds me that “we cannot predict outcomes with certainty.” The stem cells have been in my eyes long enough now to have created daughter cells, which will hopefully get my retinas to function. The stem cells are like a foundation, he says, and the corneas are like the house. Assuming my body doesn’t immediately reject the new corneas, it’s possible I might be able to sense light as soon as he takes the bandages off after this operation.

The anesthesiologist puts an IV in my arm. He tells me things are going to get blurry. I start to remind him that I won’t know the difference, but I’m fast fading into sleep and the words get stuck in my throat.

? ? ?


All of a sudden, there’s this incredible noise pounding into my brain. It’s louder than anything I’ve ever heard, like a jet engine, endless, incessant, painful. It sounds like static, feels like a continuous slap to my face, and tastes like acid.

“AHHHHHH!” I yell. “Turn it off! Turn it off! Turn it OFF!”

“Will! It’s Mom! It’s okay. It’s okay.”

I struggle to move and find my body still lagging behind my brain’s commands.

“TURN IT OFF!” I yell, gaining enough control to thrash and jerk.

“Nurse!” Mom says. “Nurse!”

Some more words are spoken—I hear “sedation”—and the sound gets foggy, and I fall asleep. When I wake up again, it’s back, pounding me, demolishing me, demanding my attention.

“The sound! Turn off the sound!” I say.

“Will, sweetheart, calm down!”

“Mom?” I say, my hands groping, finding her face. “Mom, make them turn it off!”

“Turn off what, Will?”

“That sound!”

“There is no sound, Will. It’s very quiet in here.”

“You can’t hear it?” I ask desperately.

“No.”

“Dad?”

“I don’t hear anything, either, Will. What does it sound like? Are your ears ringing?”

And that’s when I realize that the sound is not coming through my ears. In fact, it’s not actually a sound at all. It’s something else, some other sensory fist pummeling me with its volume and intensity. Is this eyesight? Have the bandages already come off? Am I seeing? Is this my very first sight?

But I lift my hands to my eyes and find bandages. If my eyes are bandaged, what could I be seeing? Unless… is this what the inside of bandages look like?

No, my eyelids are shut. I can feel that. They are taped closed by these very bandages.

What, then? What is this?

Then I remember how once Mrs. Chin explained that complete blindness is not like a person with normal eyesight covering his eyes. Because even then, that person still sees darkness. Blindness is like trying to look at the inside of your shoe through the bottom of your foot. It is an absolute lack of sensory input.

And that’s when it hits me: I’m seeing darkness for the first time.

My heart starts to pound from excitement. I can hear it on the monitor, which just proves to me that I’m right. What I thought I heard before wasn’t sound.

“OH MY GOD!” I say. “I can see! Mom! Dad! I can see!”

“Honey—” Mom says sympathetically.

“No, really! I can!”

“You still have bandages over your eyes, sweetheart,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s just it! I can see the darkness! I can see the blackness! It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt!”

I don’t know how to describe it to them. Metaphors rush through my mind: It’s like a new arm is growing out of my face and getting electrocuted! It’s like I have a second nose and it’s snorting wasabi!

“Oh my God, Sydney, he can see!” says Dad. “His retinas are transmitting to the optic nerve! They are sensing the absence of light!”

Mom and Dad start laughing, and so do I. We laugh and laugh, and Mom starts crying, and the laughs and cries blend into each other. But none are louder than the sound of the blackness pouring into my brain from my eyes. I keep telling myself, no, it’s all right, this is a good thing. But my brain keeps saying, What is happening? What is this mass intrusion of static? The overload of sense from my eyes, plain and dark though it may be, is so strong that I can barely pay attention to Mom and Dad. Eyesight is asserting itself as king over my other senses. It is enacting a coup d’état against hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. And I can already tell it’s going to be a bloody revolution.





CHAPTER 17


The next morning, on Friday, Mom takes me to Dr. Bianchi’s office to get the bandages removed.

At the medical building, Mom and I walk back to a little examination room.

“Mom, can you just wait outside?”

She doesn’t say anything. She’s stonewalling, trying to guilt me with her silence.

For a moment, I consider the situation from her perspective. I think how special this moment must be for her. Her blind son is about to see for the first time. How many parents get to witness something like that?