by Bart Tuma
“That’s all we wanted to hear, Erik.” Henry put his hand on the back of Erik’s head. “We just wanted to hear that you’re doing this because you want to better yourself out of trust of the Lord, not out of running from your past. We want to know that you’re excited about something, and that you’ll do it no matter what gets in your way. Sure, we’ll miss you and worry about you. We wouldn’t love you if we didn’t. You are our son no matter what last name you have. We’ll do everything possible to help you in your dreams. Just don’t forget us back here. We won’t expect you to write. We know you better than that, but making a collect call every once in a while would be nice.
“Thank you, Uncle Henry and you, Aunt Mary. I really am sorry I didn’t come to you before. I know you love me. I’ve been too excited about Havre. I know I said I wanted to have a home of my own. I will always know my home is also here.” Erik knew that all that needed to be said had passed. Now it was time to look to the future. It was an unknown future, but one he felt prepared to conquer. As he thought these thoughts he had little idea of how high the obstacles would be. If he knew the future, he might have thought again and retreated back to the bunkhouse.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It happened about a month later, the latter part of August. Erik wouldn’t be able to remember the exact date, but it was sometime right before harvest. He had quit work early on a Saturday. The machines were all ready for harvest so there wasn’t much else to do until the wheat was golden and ready. Erik had taken a short nap to catch up on the sleep he had lost during the long week of work. When he awoke, his vision was blurred in his left eye.
He wasn’t alarmed at first. He merely thought something had gotten into his eye. His vision was like looking through a thin fog, and floating in that fog were tiny particles, almost like hairs on the lens of a home movie projector.
His lack of concern kept him from mentioning it to the Coopers. Harvest was close, and they had enough worries as it was. Since he never trusted doctors, he didn’t even consider going to one.
Instead of clearing, however, the eye gradually became enveloped in a thicker fog. By then harvest had begun, and Erik was too busy to do anything about it. His right eye was perfectly fine so he relied on it.
It was only after the harvest and the work had slowed that he began to get more concerned about his eye. School would start in three weeks, and he noticed that his lack of depth perception hindered his work. Because of his worsening vision he volunteered one Wednesday to go into Fairfield and pick up some needed parts. This was usually Henry’s job, but Erik insisted without telling the Coopers why. His plan was to stop by Dr. Irvin’s office for a quick check-up. He wouldn’t mention it to the Coopers. At first, Henry insisted that the errand was his job, but Erik insisted even harder. Henry had no idea what the problem was, and decided against pushing the issue.
The doctor said very little to Erik when he finally arrived at the clinic. This worried Erik even more. Fairfield had no specialist, just two general practitioners like Dr. Irvin who now poked at Erik’s eyelids. The doctor was an older, gruff man who was not qualified to say anything except that it was obvious there was some type of fluid in Erik’s eye. He told Erik he needed to see an eye doctor immediately.
It was the doctor’s unwillingness to talk that worried Erik the most. It was obvious that the problem was more than a scratch. Dr. Irvin arranged an appointed with a doctor in Great Falls for the next day. He didn’t give Erik an option about whether he wanted to go or not.
The appointment was set for 11 am so the Coopers would have enough time to drive the two hours to Great Falls. The doctor said Erik shouldn’t be driving and the Coopers would have to take him. The specialist would be more qualified to tell him more. He didn’t want to say anything else and make a false evaluation. That refusal, combined with Dr. Irvin’s side-glances and whispers to his nurse, made Erik’s thoughts run wild in speculation. Erik didn’t dream in the bunkhouse. Neither did he sleep.
When Erik got back to the Coopers’, it was decided that Henry would take Erik to Great Falls. Dr. Irvin had personally called the Coopers to make sure Erik didn’t make the drive himself or simply stay home. The Coopers knew as much information as Erik when he pulled into the driveway leading to the farmhouse.
Mary would stay home to make meals for the one hired hand that was left after the harvest. They also felt that it was making too big of a deal of the matter if they both went. They knew it was serious, but until they knew exactly what was happening they didn’t want to scare Erik even more. Besides, if Mary had insisted on going, she knew she would talk constantly on the way to Great Falls because of her nerves. Neither man needed that.
The two had to leave the farm by 8:30 to make sure they had time to make the trip and find the office. Great Falls was still only a medium-sized town of 100,000 to most, but a large city to anyone from Fairfield.
As Mary turned the last batch of bacon, it was clear that neither had slept. The silence also made it clear that neither man was looking forward to the trip today. Usually the trip to Great Falls carried a certain excitement. The trip meant going to the “big city” and stores that Fairfield didn’t have. Not that day. Erik had never been to any doctor except Dr. Irvin and he envisioned a specialist’s office as a sterile combination of machines and sick people. Henry stole looks in Erik’s direction as often as possible. He was afraid of Erik’s reaction as much as he was Erik’s eyes. Each time his uncle looked, the car went over the center line.
“You might want to pay more attention to the road than looking at me or we’ll both be seeing a doctor, but not a eye doctor,” Erik said, his stare remaining straight ahead.
As they passed through Shelby and headed south to Great Falls, Henry tried but wasn’t at all successful in getting Erik to talk. Erik would only engage in trivial matters about the farm and soon grew flippant in his remarks. Every time Henry would ask about Erik’s eyes, Erik would get even more sarcastic. It was an old habit that Henry hated to see. It was obvious that there was nothing Henry could do. Under his breath he prayed, knowing that Erik had retreated into his own world. He had been through so much with Erik that it was impossible to imagine what might happen now.
Erik’s mood changed quickly as they pulled up to the brick building that housed the eye clinic. There was something about the reality of those bricks that could not be overlooked or flippantly put aside. As they walked into the office with its brightly colored partitions and magazine shelves, both men were silent.
A receptionist was arguing with a patient about a bill that needed to be paid before the visit. The Hispanic-looking man had problems speaking English, and this only increased the fervor of her pleas. Erik wished the argument could be solved so that he could check in and be seated. He wanted to lose himself in the waiting room like he had in his own bunkhouse. As he looked around many of the patients had large patches or thick lens glasses. Still, he told himself that none of them had a problem as great as his. Somehow seeing those other patients finally made him acknowledge he had a problem. He couldn’t yet define the magnitude of the problem, but he knew the consequences would be great. In a strange way he now wanted his problem to be greater than the others.
It was a full hour before Erik was taken back to a room, and another half hour before the doctor came in. Erik told Henry to go get something to eat from the diner they saw next door. Of course, Henry refused and even insisted on going back to the examining room with Erik. Many thoughts passed through Erik’s mind as he waited for the doctor. None of them were positive. The only positive presence was Uncle Henry. Erik felt like a little kid whose mommy had brought him to the doctor, but that was a feeling he cherished as he sat there looking at a bad picture hung on the wall.
When the doctor finally arrived, it was obvious he was a busy man who was already behind in his schedule. He stuck out his hand as a hollow gesture of greeting, and stated that his name was Dr. Adler. Adler didn’t wait for Erik’s response. He was focuse
d on his job, not the person. He turned down the lights and put a banded light on his head that reminded Erik of a miner going to work. Uncle Henry was not acknowledged as he sat in his corner of the room. He leaned forward to hear the doctor but still far enough away to not get in the way.
Dr. Adler quickly asked Erik a series of question as if reading from a cue card. “Have you seen strobe light flashing lights? When did you first notice the sight loss? Do you see better in the morning or evening?”
Many of the questions Erik couldn’t answer. If something seemed different it was just a bad day and not an eye problem. It was just an eye, and nothing would happen to his eyes.
Then the doctor asked even stranger questions of Erik. “Are you constantly thirsty? Have you lost weight recently? Are you constantly urinating? Are you having problems with depression? The nurse will be putting drops in your eyes so I can see them better.”
The doctor left without saying when he’d be back. The nurse put the drops in his eyes and said he’d have to wait twenty minutes and she was gone. Erik and Uncle Henry were left in the semi-dark room alone.
Neither Erik nor Henry talked for the forty-five minutes before the doctor returned. Every minute or two, Erik would look at his watch to see how long they had been waiting. He didn’t know if it was the drops or the darkness or a worsening of his good eye, but his watch was both a marker of time and his worsening sight. The quiet room carried thoughts of the worst scenarios.
When the doctor returned, the exam did not take long. Dr. Adler directed a light that was bright enough to hurt. The doctor firmly held Erik’s eyelids open, and gave a series of directions.
“Look up towards the ceiling. More, as far up as you can. Now look to the right. To the upper right. Now to the lower right.” He barked the orders like a drill sergeant. He was as a man who had done this so many times before that it had long ago lost its significance. He had Erik turn both eyes in every possible direction. Although the doctor’s grasp was firm, the pain wasn’t that bad, but Erik still grew sick in his stomach. He tried to hide his emotions, but then that didn’t matter. The doctor’s exam was too close and too thorough for there not to be a problem. The doctor placed the light on the table, and reached to flip the room light switch to on.
“Erik, do you have any history of diabetes in your family?” the doctor quizzed.
“I…I don’t know. My parents are dead.”
“None that we know of,” Henry contributed from the back of the room.
“Well, for one reason or another, you’ve had a growth of blood vessels on the retina of both eyes. Usually that’s attributed to diabetes. We think the eye does not receive enough oxygen because of the diabetes, and the eye tries to compensate for this deficiency by growing additional blood vessels. Unfortunately, those vessels are weak and randomly scattered like weeds in a garden.
“You may have been a diabetic for years and never known it because you didn’t have the common symptoms. Type II diabetes, which you might have, still produces some insulin in the body. You’re young and active so you might not have noticed it. At the same time, it could have attacked your body. But I can only guess at that. You’ll have to go to an endricologist, a diabetic specialist, to find that out. What I know is that these vessels have grown. The vessels are extremely delicate and grow in no set pattern. They can become like clothes lines from one side of your eye to the other. That has happened in your left eye and is in the process in your right eye. In your left eye the vessels have burst and filled your eye with blood. That fog you mentioned is your own blood.
“The other eye obviously hasn’t hemorrhaged yet, and we’ll start treatment right away to minimize that possibility. We have developed a new laser treatment by which we shoot the retina of the eye with a laser beam. It actually kills the spot we hit and tends to make the vessels recede. We’ve had success with this treatment if we do it early enough. I wish you would have come in earlier. I’m not sure how far the process has spread or if we can stop it at this point.
“Your bad eye is in a different category. When you first saw specks in your left eye, we could have helped it with laser. It’s too late for that now. We’ll have to look at other surgery for that. I don’t do that surgery. You’ll have to go to Seattle if you want to try it.”
“But what made it bleed? I was sleeping when it happened. There’s no way I could’ve strained it.” Erik had developed a frightened edge to his voice as he heard words that made no sense to him.
“The hemorrhages can happen at any time. You could have hibernated for the winter and they still would’ve burst. It’s not a function of exertion. It’s a function of the disease process. Small vessels have developed. The traction caused by those vessels are tugging at other vessels and pulling them loose, causing the bleeding. The bad news is that if that condition remains it will pull your whole retina apart and there will be no chance for your eye.”
“What’s the chance for it now?”
“I’ve got to be honest with you, Mr. Winters. We don’t exactly know. The specialist in Seattle will be able to tell you more, but they have only been doing the surgery for two years now and it’s still somewhat experimental. The results are sometimes not satisfactory. Just be glad because two years ago you wouldn’t even have had this option.”
“What is the surgery?”
“They will place two tubes in your eye. One tube will remove the blood and vitreous fluid, and with a micro-drill they cut away the clothes line vessels. The other tube will replace the lost fluid to keep your eye at a constant pressure. It’s called a vitrectomy.”
“What happens if I decide not to do it?”
“Your eye will continue to have the traction placed on it, and at some point the retina will be torn loose. At that point there is no treatment for your eye. You’ll be totally blind, not just legally blind.”
“When would I need this vit…whatever?”
“As soon as possible. I’ll contact Seattle, but you should start making arrangements. The longer the traction exists, the worse it will get. You have already waited a long time by not coming in. Actually, because of the strain on your bad eye, we’ll have to put off laser treatment on the other eye until we have your eye stabilized after surgery. Your good eye is in an advanced stage, and it could hemorrhage at any time, but we will wait because of how bad the other eye has become. It would have been different if you had come in earlier, but there is now no time to wait. The sooner we can get both eyes done, the more hope there is that you don’t have a total loss of vision.”
“Why do I have to go to Seattle? Why can’t you do it here? You said it was just putting in two tubes.”
“Those tubes constitute probably one of the most delicate surgeries around, and, as I said, it’s still experimental. Seattle and San Francisco are the only two places west of Minnesota that do the surgery. You’ll be in the hospital for about a week, and it’ll take a month to recover at home.”
Erik didn’t want to hear any more. Previously, his stomach had felt nauseous with the bright light. Now he was sick at the thought of what lay ahead. He just wanted to get out of that room with its smell and its darkness. They were wrong. The whole crummy place with its bad pictures and crowded lobby was wrong. He just wanted to get out. As soon as the doctor moved his equipment to the side, Erik was gone. He didn’t exactly run, but his feet were quick to move towards the door. Henry tried to stop him, saying there were arrangements that needed to be made, but Erik told him he could make the arrangements. No one could keep him in that office any longer.
Once outside the building, Erik walked. He didn’t walk in a specific direction, or with any destination in mind. He walked with long, quick strides that took him past the city buildings. This was not a metropolitan area, but Erik saw the pavement and stuffiness a city brings. He saw objects that he normally would have overlooked; a sign marking a pedestrian crossing, the sculptured face work of the older buildings, and people of every description walking without seeing eac
h other.
Finally a small park allowed Erik to stop as he sat down on one of the benches. There he could sense a light breeze and a fresh smell of trees through the city’s staleness. A giant oak stood in the middle of the park, the leaves glistening with sunlight as the breeze turned them as crystals to the afternoon sun. The grass had a path worn through the middle by people finding a shortcut from street to street. A small softball field stood empty after a summer’s work, its children already back at school. People were scurrying to meet their lunch deadlines, and Erik saw all that his eyes would show him, but it was not enough.
He cried. Not since that morning of his salvation in the old pickup had he cried so openly and so freely. He was aware that people would notice him on that bench, but he neither cared nor was there little he could do to stop. There was little he could do to hope. He couldn’t help but think that the end had come. Not the end of his life. Blindness wouldn’t kill him. It was the end of his hope. There would be no school in Havre, and there was no need for blind welders. He had wanted to go to the coast, but not for this. This trip would not be to become somebody. It would be a trip to try to keep his life together, and that too was uncertain.
The things he had hoped for so long and so hard were gone. He had dreamt all his life, but only one other time had he felt so helpless. That was the night of the fight at the Mint Bar when he realized he was only a dreamer who had no future. But that night with Christ had changed all that, and once again he had hoped. He had hoped even bigger dreams and made the plans because he felt God had promised him those dreams. Now there was nothing. There was only a broken man crying alone in the unkempt park amid the dirt of a crowded downtown.
He felt utterly alone. It was one thing to be abandoned by his mom. This was worse. The mere possibility of being abandoned by God left Erik chilled in his solitude. For the past two years, God had been his constant companion. Whenever he needed to talk, he talked to God. Now, although he didn’t even feel like trying, no words would leave his lips, and he was sure there would be no response if he did speak. If God had abandoned him, it must mean he was worthless to everyone.
