Sleep With The Lights On

by Maggie Shayne

Moreover, the people in this room were the only people who knew that the real me was not the feel-good guru who showed up in my books and on talk shows. And they not only loved me anyway, they loved me enough to not sell the truth to the tabloids. That was devotion right there, because that information would’ve been worth a significant bundle.

  There was a tap on the door before someone came in. I smelled her and heard her signature footsteps, soft and close together, and I knew her instantly. “Hold up, hold up.” I tapped Mott’s knee as I spoke, and he stopped strumming.

  “Doc Fenway?”

  “You amaze me every time, you know that?” she said with a smile in her voice.

  “I do it on purpose,” I confessed. “So are you here to visit, or did this little accident have some kind of impact on my eyesight? Please don’t tell me I’m going blind!”

  Obediently, my entourage laughed. But only a little. There was still noise all around me. Amy’s clicking keys, Sandra talking on the phone—“Ham and pineapple, extra blue cheese and the hottest wings you’ve got”—Mott still picking a string over and over as he tuned the guitar, because apparently he thought as long as he wasn’t playing an actual song he was in compliance with my “hold up” order of a moment ago.

  And then Doc Fenway went on. “Actually, I came with some good news for you.” And then she said it. One sentence that changed everything. “You’re going to see again, Rachel.”

  The room went silent. I flinched as the words exploded inside my brain. “I...um...how?”

  “We have a brand-new healthy set of corneas for you. Private donor. Wishes to remain anonymous, and—”

  “No.” I shook my head and kept on talking before the arguments could begin. “I’m not putting myself through it again, Doc. You know I reject every set I get. It’s too much to—”

  “Just hear me out, Rachel. Let me explain why it’s different this time. Then make whatever decision you want.”

  I bit my lip. I didn’t want to let my hopes start to climb. So far, they hadn’t, but if I let her talk they might, and I didn’t like the crushing disappointment of failure. I’d had transplants before. My body rejected them. Violently. I was sick all over. I know, another one of my endearing quirks. I’m a unique individual.

  “If everyone could leave us for a few minutes...?”

  “They can stay,” I said. “They’re just going to torture it out of me later, anyway. Go ahead, Doc, give it your best shot, but you know how I feel about beating this particular dead horse.”

  “Okay.” She cleared her throat. “It’s been several years since we’ve tried. There’s a new procedure. Descemet’s Stripping Endothelial Keratoplasty.”

  “Oh, well in that case, let’s go for it. Anything with such an impressive sounding name is bound to work.” I loaded on enough sarcasm to clog up a black hole.

  Doc Fenway sighed, then repeated herself, but in English this time. “We transplant a thin layer of the graft, not the entire cornea. The risk of rejection is minimal. Recovery time is faster. It’s light-years beyond what we’ve been able to do before. And I think it just might be your answer.”

  My heart gave a ridiculously hopeful leap. I told it to lie back down and shut the fuck up.

  “The donor chose you specifically, Rachel. And we can do it today.”

  “Oh my God.” That was Sandra, and the words were damn near swimming in tears. “Oh my God, ohmyGod, ohmyGod!”

  I wasn’t quite as impressed. “Today? You want me to decide this today? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Meanwhile Sandra was still going on, “You’re going to see! You’re going to see, ohmyGod!”

  The twins started with the teenage-girl squealing thing that sounds like giant mice having their tails stepped on. Really, someone ought to be researching a cure for that. Screw Descemet’s Stripping-whatever.

  “This is a miracle!” Amy cried. And then she and Sandra were hugging and hopping around in what sounded like a circle. I don’t know. Blind, remember? Everyone was talking and crying and laughing—and squealing, let’s not forget the squealing—at the same time.

  I held up my hands. “Stop. Just stop.” I had to speak very loudly.

  They all stopped, and I felt their eyes on me. “Okay. Okay.” I took a deep breath, but I wasn’t processing this. This wasn’t real yet. I didn’t get it. “I do need everybody to get out, okay? Except you, Doc. Everybody else, just...just go get a coffee or something. Give me a minute here.”

  I heard a keystroke and whipped my finger toward Amy. “Don’t you even think about tweeting anything about this. Understand?”

  “Yeah. No, I wasn’t—”

  “Close the lid, Amy.”

  I heard the laptop close.

  “Come on, everyone, let’s give her some space,” Sandra instructed. She was a little hurt that I’d asked. I could tell by the texture of her voice.

  “Yeah. I need space.”

  Mott leaned in close. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, you know.”

  “Right. Like you wouldn’t?”

  “No. I wouldn’t.” Petulant, maybe a little combative? What the fuck?

  I frowned. I mean, I knew he thought of the blind as a minority group and himself as our Malcolm X, but I didn’t think he’d want to stay sightless if he had a choice. Then again, he’d been born blind. I hadn’t. I’d had twelve years of vision. Eleven of them twenty-twenty. And I’d had blurry, half-assed eyesight three times, after the last three transplants, a few days each time before my body threw a full-on, no-holds-barred revolt. I knew what I was missing.

  Mott kissed my cheek, and everyone left the room. Shuffling steps, grumbling complaints, whispers and finally the door closing behind them. I lay there in the bed, listening to Doc Fenway come over, sit in Mott’s former place, clear her throat.

  “What do you need to know?” she asked.

  I thought for a long time, and then I said, “Is this for real?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will it work?”

  “Almost certainly. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it, Rachel. This might be the miracle you didn’t think you’d ever get.”

  She was telling the absolute truth, as she saw it. Lies were one of the easiest things to hear in people’s voices. I felt tears brimming in my stupid sightless eyes. Damn, I did not cry. Not ever. And if I ever did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be in front of anyone. Thank God I was still wearing my sunglasses. “I don’t want to believe it just to have it go bad again, Doc. Not this time. It would be more than I can take.”

  Revealing my soft underbelly was not something I did often. But she wasn’t allowed to tell, right? She was a doctor.

  “But you have to believe if you ever want anything to change. Isn’t that what you’re always writing about? How it’s the belief that creates the reality, and not the other way around.”

  Right. Like I was twelve and somehow believed my way into twenty years of blindness right? I would probably go to hell for the bullshit I sold to the gullible.

  “How long before I’ll be able to look at my sister’s face?”

  She patted my hand. “Tomorrow, if all goes well. And better than the other times, right off the bat, with full recovery in two to three months.”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll be able to see my sister’s face again...tomorrow.” I lowered my head, shook it slowly. Even if it didn’t last, I’d have that. I just didn’t know if I could handle the letdown if it was only temporary. You might think temporary vision is better than none at all, but you haven’t been there. I have. It sucks.

  “It’ll work for you this time, Rachel. I honestly believe that.”

  Yes, she honestly did. I sighed, and she knew I was going to give in. “If I believed in miracles, I’d think this was one.”

  But of course I didn’t. And as it turned out, it wasn’t.

  3

  Eric thought he had blown it. He was pretty sure of it, in fact. At first he’d been in oblivion, but then a sound
had brought him back. The sound of the rat, scratching, biting. It wasn’t digging its way through the wall. It had escaped that prison. Eric had blown a hole through the wall. Into his own head.

  So how could he be aware of anything, then? Aware but immobile, aware but in full sensory deprivation. What was this? Was this hell?

  He’d intended to be dead, to kill the rat, not to let it out. But it was free. And scratching now to let him know it.

  “I know it was my fault,” Jeremy said.

  That voice, those words, snapped his attention away from the rat’s merciless, incessant claws inside him. His focus turned outside, as much as it could, anyway. He couldn’t see anything. His eyes were closed, and though he tried to open them, he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel much either, and he supposed that was a good thing, because he’d blown half his head off earlier today. Or was it yesterday? Or a week ago? Or a year?

  Steady beeping, beep, beep, beep. The sound of Darth Vader breathing in his ear. A rhythmic thumping. And that voice.

  Jeremy’s voice.

  “I shouldn’t have yelled at you for forgetting we were coming home. But you didn’t have to do this, Dad. You didn’t have to do this.”

  It wasn’t your fault, son.

  Damn, why couldn’t he tell him?

  Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  “Are you all right, Jer?”

  That was Marie. She was standing close, he could tell.

  “They’re gonna cut him up, Mom. How can you let them do that?”

  Joshua’s sobbing, which he realized had been soft background noise, took a turn for the louder. He felt like joining his younger son. What the hell were they talking about, cutting him up?

  “This is no place for the boys.” That was Mother. She was patting someone’s hand. From the location, he thought it might be his own, but he couldn’t feel it, only hear the sound. Smack, smack, smack. “I’m sorry I didn’t do better by you, Eric. I hope you’ll find peace in the afterlife.”

  “Josh, Jeremy, it’s important that you guys understand something here.” That voice belonged to his kid brother. Mason.

  Mason had been yelling at him earlier. He remembered that vaguely, but had no idea when it had happened and barely recalled what he’d said. Oh, right. He was mad that Eric had waited for him to get there to shoot himself. He had it all wrong, of course. He’d been trying to do it before Mason got there. He’d just run out of time.

  Go on, he thought at Mason. Tell the boys something. Anything to make them feel better. You always know what to say.

  “Your dad’s already gone.”

  No! I’m not gone, I’m right here. And so is the rat. Scratching me bloody, the damned thing. Why is it so hyper? Why is it still tormenting me now that it’s free? It has what it wanted.

  “He’s already gone,” Mason repeated. “Those machines are forcing blood through his body to keep his organs alive, but he’s gone. And what we’re going to do here, with the parts he left behind, is help other people. Your dad is going to save lives. He’s a hero.”

  Oh, that’s a good one, Mason. But they must know better. Or do they? No one had mentioned the dead men. The confession. The bag of tools. Jeremy wasn’t asking Marie why his father had murdered thirteen young men who looked just like he looked. Why hadn’t he?

  What did you do, Mason?

  Then the rest of Mason’s words started to soak in, and he realized they were going to donate his organs. Well, that was good, right? He couldn’t feel anything, so there would be no pain, and he certainly couldn’t keep on living if they took out all his vital parts. Could he?

  He would be free then.

  Scratchscratchscratchscratch!

  “Part of your father will live on in the people whose lives he saves today,” Mason said softly. “You should be very proud of that.”

  Part of him would live on.

  Part of him.

  Part of him...

  No, not that part!

  A soft breath, close to his face. He heard it but didn’t feel it. “Bye, Dad. I love you.”

  From down lower. “Bye, Daddy.”

  “Goodbye, son.” That was Angela. Mother. Never Mom or Mommy. Mother. Cold. Like she knew.

  He heard the boys’ shuffling steps, Mother’s clacking heels fading, the door swinging open and then closed. And then it was down to Marie and Mason.

  “He kept a part of himself closed up—always. But I loved him, all of him. Even the parts he didn’t want me to see. I wish he knew that,” Marie whispered.

  The rat. You didn’t need to see that.

  “I know. I know.”

  But you saw it, Mason. You saw my rat in the end. Those driver’s licenses. God, what did you do? Did you cover it up?

  A smacking sound, soft, near his ear. Had Marie leaned over to kiss him? God, he wanted to feel that.

  A sob. “I can’t do this.” Running footsteps. The door.

  It was just him and his brother now. Mason heaved a big sigh. Like he was almost too tired to stay upright. He sounded just about all in.

  “I covered it all up, Eric. Your secrets are going to be buried with you. I just couldn’t put them through it.”

  I should have figured you would do that.

  “Maybe the lives you save now will at least start to make up for what you did. Balance the scales a little. I hope so, brother. And I hope to God you find some kind of peace now. I really do.” And then he went away, too.

  There were feet, followed by the sound, not the feeling, of being jostled. And then Eric faded away for a while. When he returned, he felt different. Hollow. Empty. There were still others all around him, their voices muffled. More machines beeping. He was in an operating room. Had been for some time. He wondered vaguely what was left of his body at this point.

  “Scalpel.”

  He heard it. He heard the sound of his skin being sliced. It was like a very faint echo of butter melting in a skillet. Sssssssss. And then the horrifying buzz of the bone saw, and the cracking as his ribs were spread apart. No, no, no, he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel it. He kept reminding himself of that. He was just imagining the pain.

  “Transplant team, ready for the heart?”

  “Ready, Doctor.”

  No! No, wait until I fade away again. I know, I know, I won’t feel it, but it’s still too awful too awful too awful....

  Scratchscratchscratch!

  More cutting. God! And then the squishy sounds as they pried and pulled and lifted what he thought was his heart from what he thought was his chest. Surely he couldn’t keep going now!

  No. No, he couldn’t. He was fading, falling into a whirling vortex of darkness and turning his attention away from here toward there. A pinprick of light appeared far, far away. No more scratching. No more rat. He felt free of it, lighter than air without it weighing him down.

  Believe me, pal, it’s mutual.

  Eric spun around in his rapidly expanding consciousness, which was inflating like a balloon. He started wondering how he had ever fit into his little body to begin with. But still, that voice, the rat, got his attention. Where the hell was it? What was it doing?

  Hey, you made this choice, I didn’t. I’m not going anywhere, buddy. Just because you shot your head, doesn’t mean the rat is dead.

  And then it laughed and it laughed and it laughed, and Eric’s horror enveloped him. He couldn’t see that speck of light anymore. Nor could he hear the laughter. Or anything. He felt like an astronaut cut loose from his tether, floating through space, only without a space suit. Or a body. Or any senses at all. He was adrift in a vacuum that was stretching him in all directions and dimensions, and he was thinning, and thinning, and wondering when he would simply become a part of the void.

  * * *

  The nightmares started my first night home, barely forty-eight hours after the bandages came off my eyes. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Because really, that was major, that day. It was fucking huge.

  I hadn’t taken
the bandages off myself. Not because the doc had warned me so sternly against it—like that would have stopped me. I wasn’t real good at doing what I was told. Or conforming. Or following rules. Or anything, really, except writing books telling people to follow their bliss. The more ways I could find to say it, the more books I sold. But the truth was, the whole premise—that you could attract good things to you by being good yourself; that a positive attitude would make life go smoothly; that belief could create fortunes and castles and bliss—was flawed. It had been drummed into me by the well-meaning adults around me ever since I’d lost my eyesight for good.

  Look for the silver lining, Rachel.

  Everything happens for a reason, Rachel.

  Something positive will surely come of this, Rachel.

  And I remember thinking, My God, they actually believe this shit!

  And when they started getting me books—audiobooks back then, though now it’s ebooks with text-to-speech enabled, because let’s face it, braille is kind of passé these days—that spouted the same bull, I realized they not only believed it, they wanted to believe it.

  By the time I was sixteen I had figured out that these Pollyanna idiots would pay any amount of money for any product that supported their inane beliefs, because those beliefs were so flimsy they needed constant reinforcement. One stiff gust of logic or common sense would blow them to hell and gone. Hence, the self-help guru explosion of the first decade and a half—so far—of the new millennium. Entire companies have been born and built around the idea that one could create one’s own reality. Those companies produce books and DVDs and card kits created by authors who pretend to understand quantum physics, and use their brand of pseudoscience to support their claims that you are what you think and all that crap.

  Eventually I figured, why fight it when I could make millions off it instead?

  So that’s what I did. That’s what I do. Being blind makes me even more popular among the sheep—I mean masses. Silver lining? No. Smart thinking.

  But back to the subject. No, I didn’t take the bandages off. I was an obedient conformist for the first time in...well, ever. I waited because I was scared shitless. I had not seen in twenty years, not really. The post-transplant unveilings of the past had been little better than the blindness that had preceded them and of course, short-lived. And before I’d lost my sight entirely, there had been a solid year of slow fading, so the final unforgettable image I’d seen—my brother, Tommy—had been dull and dark around the edges.