Yesterday I visited the doctor and he told me that I would die any day now. He said that I was afflicted with a very rare strain of a very common disease. When he put me on the table and looked all over for physical signs of the ailment, he found nothing to his touch. I didn't have a fever or bruisings or anything immediately visible to the naked eye.
But at second glance, he noticed a lazy eye. Just my left one, but sluggish nonetheless.
"How did that happen?" he asked.
"How did what happen?" I replied.
"Your eye. It's like your lid is an unfortunate umbrella."
"That's exactly what it is," I said.
"And you don't find that odd?"
"Should I?" I asked as I got out of the chair and looked in the mirror.
"You haven't even noticed, have you?"
It was clear that whatever he was implying was something I hadn't noticed, so I looked closer in the mirror. Still nothing. He took my hand and guided me back to the table. Once I was on my back, I looked up and saw a rather disturbing sign on the ceiling that read:
FIVE A DAY KEEP THE DOCTOR AWAY
I was uncertain as to what five of anything had to do with the fact that I had apparently slowly but surely became visually impaired, so much so that I didn't even see it. This was all very unsettling and just when I thought the befuddling nature of this encounter couldn't possibly complicate itself more, the doctor undid the knot on the front of my robe.
He ran his finger tips up my breast bone and to the spot where the fork in my chest marked my bronchial tree. He pressed down into my flesh and I screamed in agony. This kind of pain was uncharted territory, even for me. Then he took his index finger and put it at the foot of my neck. My pulse was sporadic at best.
"What is it?" I demanded.
His silence was all but deafening. I couldn't bring myself to ask again. For some reason, I thought that staring at him, there in that lonely room, would somehow procure me an answer to this unfortunate turn of events.
We stayed in that position. He with his finger and me with the curtains drawn over my rods and cones. It was then that I cried for the first time in my life.
"That kind of intimacy bored you," he reminded me, but for the first time. "And you were just never good at wearing a watch, now were you?"
I pulled his finger off of me, lowered my lids, and signaled for him to dim the lights.
"Such is the crime of owned and borrowed time," was the last whisper that ever crossed these lips.
what a dark story. This actually has elements of that helpless feeling that Jose Saramago was able to capture in Blindness. I guess one can't help but thing of the novel when reading a piece like this. Here are some hard-hitting effective lines:
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and this was beautiful too:
He with his finger and me with the curtains drawn over my rods and cones.
I have to say that I was a bit confused when the dialogue shifted to a sort of casual knowingness, as if the patient and doctor are lovers. Is this assumption correct? Can the patient literally not see once the lights are dimmed? Or is the patient asking for the doctor to relieve her from life when saying, "...and signaled for him to dim the lights." Is this a metaphor for euthanasia?
Time in a bottle. Nothing should ever be taken for granted!!! But hopefully the journey is amazing!!?
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