Love and First Sight(64)
“What?” she asks, grabbing my other hand. “What’s wrong?”
She was so happy when the surgery seemed to have worked, when she could finally show me a sunrise. It hurts to tell her about the swelling, but I do.
“What are the—” she starts to ask.
“Fifty percent.” I say the number like I’m referring to the 50 percent chance I’ll go blind again, not the 50 percent that I’ll retain my eyesight.
“The flip of a coin,” she says.
“The flip of a coin,” I repeat.
We are quiet for a while, listening to the sound of the waves.
“So,” I say, “what do we do now?”
She smiles. It feels like a misplaced expression. I wonder if I’m reading it correctly. What could she be happy about?
“You could start by kissing me,” she says.
“What?” I say, caught completely off guard.
“You heard me,” she says, rotating to face me.
I stammer, “I didn’t realize that you felt, uh, you know, like that about me—”
She puts a finger on my lips, cutting me off. “I think I’ve loved you from the first time we went to that museum, Will. I just never believed you could love me back. I never believed anyone could love me back.”
“But now?” I ask softly.
She leans her perfect face in till it’s just inches away from mine. “Well, there must be some reason you drove all this way to see me, right?”
“There is,” I say. “If I’m going to lose my sight again, I wanted to make sure you were the last thing I ever saw.”
I put my hand behind her neck, pulling her the final inches until our lips meet. I close my eyes, and the world goes dark as my lips light up, my whole body tingling. I run my fingers up the back of her head and pull her tight against me, wanting her to know that I don’t ever intend to let go. We kiss like that on the white sand beach until the sky lights up in a fiery sunset. We hold hands and watch until the sun dips below the horizon, disappearing to someplace our human eyes cannot see.
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MORNING ANNOUNCEMENTS
Spring Semester, Day 1
FINAL SCRIPT
[approved for broadcast by V. Everbrook]
CECILY
Good morning, I’m Cecily Hoder.
WILL
And I’m Will Porter.
CECILY
We’re your new announcement coanchors. Traditionally, this show begins each year with each host sharing his or her New Year’s resolution. By the flip of a coin, Will has been chosen to go first. Will?
WILL
Thanks, Cecily.
Most of you probably know I was born blind and that I transferred here at the start of last semester. My life has changed in many unexpected ways recently, both as a result of coming to this school and because of an experimental operation I had a few months ago to potentially give me eyesight.
Today I have a wonderful girlfriend who has shown me how to appreciate the burning skies of dawn and dusk, I have parents who have patiently helped me learn shapes and colors, and I have amazing friends who have taught me to recognize everything from mountains to canyons to casinos. And as a bonus, the operation went even better than I could have hoped. My next goal is reading. By the end of the year, I hope to be reading the announcements to you off the teleprompter rather than this braille terminal. Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that my New Year’s resolution is to keep my eyes and mind open. Open to beauty in all its forms. And open to all of you—my friends and classmates. Happy New Year.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a story that has been growing in my mind for over a decade. I had originally imagined that Will would, after the operation, immediately be able to see the world with total understanding and comprehension. But as I researched the case histories of patients who had undergone similar procedures, I found a quite different story: Those born with total blindness have a visual cortex that developed differently from that of a sighted person, and the road to recovery is long and difficult.
The most famous (and insightful) modern case study for me was Sidney Bradford, who gained his sight at age fifty-two. His story was studied and recorded by the famous British neuropsychologist Richard Gregory. Bradford was, among other things, disappointed to discover that both he and his wife were unattractive. In fact, he found the entire world to be a visual disappointment, and as Will’s dad explains in this story, Bradford’s psyche fell apart and he died soon after.
The great neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks compares the Bradford case to one he followed in the 1990s in his book An Anthropologist on Mars. In that situation, too, the patient experienced severe depression. Eventually, his eyesight regressed to preoperative levels. But so confused and frustrated had he been by his new sense of sight that the patient was actually glad to return to blindness.