Goodman, dressed in a white lab coat and bow tie, opened the door and went for the sink.
“Good morning,” he said, washing his hands. “How did things go last night? Any bad reactions to the painkillers?”
“No, this time it went really well,” May said. “I ate a good dinner and slept all night.”
“Excellent. Let’s have a look at those stitches.”
Goodman coaxed the tape along in quarter-inch increments, careful not to cause May to flinch, then lifted away the mounds of gauze he’d used to cover the eyelid. May’s eye remained closed, the area around it not inflamed, a good sign. May expected to hear Goodman’s instructions for changing the dressings and keeping the wound clean. There were always a lot of steps for cleaning an eye, and it was a hassle, too, with medicines and drops and such, but suddenly Goodman wasn’t talking about dressings, he was doing something strange and asking something strange, too, he was pulling open the eyelid with his thumb and forefinger and he was asking, “Can you see a little bit?” he was asking…
BOOM! WHOOSH! OOHHHHHHHHHHH…
A cataclysm of white light exploded into May’s eye and his skin and his blood and his nerves and his cells, it was everywhere, it was around him and inside him, inside his hair, on top of his breath, in the next room, in the next building, in the next state, glued to Good-man’s voice, on his hands, it was fantastically bright—such intensity had to be bright, so, yes, bright—but not painful, not even uncomfortable, and it rushed toward him and around him, yet it didn’t move, it was always moving, it was always still, it came from nowhere—how could something come from nowhere?—it was all white, and now Goodman asked again, “Can you see anything?” and May’s face erupted into a smile and someone inside him made him laugh and then talk, and he said, “Holy smoke! I sure can!” and those words made Jennifer’s heart pound and her throat clench and she whispered to herself, “Oh, my God.”
Now, a second into light, the brightness began to take on a texture—could he touch it?—and a second after that it stopped rushing from everywhere and now seemed to come from a place, it was out there, it was coming from the buzzing sound overhead, and May’s mind went away from the light for the briefest moment so that he could remember that the buzzing in a doctor’s office came from fluorescent lights, and as soon as he remembered that he flung back to the light, which now came from somewhere definite, it came from the fluorescent light above for sure, and a second after that it wasn’t just light anymore, there was a bright shape in front of his face he knew must be the office door, he remembered where it had shut, and there were walls around him, he knew it because the light to his sides was different from the light above and he didn’t have to think about why it was different, he just knew it was a different color—color!—his old friend color, color was right there and it was turned on, he didn’t have to back into his brain to think about it, color was just there and he knew it and he could call to it if he wanted to, and now to his left there was a blob of black and to his right a new kind of white moving alongside his arm, Goodman’s coat, it had to be Goodman’s coat, doctors wear white coats, that’s really white and—whoa!—the black blob on the left was sharpening, it was getting lines and edges, it was becoming something more than color and something more than light, it was an object, objects have lines, it had to be a piece of equipment because objects in doctors’ offices are equipment and—boom!—now it looked like equipment, and now that he knew it was equipment he could see a shiny silver line underneath the black object and that made sense, he’d felt that thing before and it was where it was supposed to be and now he knew what it was, it was the metal arm that held the piece of equipment that Goodman used to look into his eye during exams, now he could see it was the arm, now he could see.
Now Goodman was moving, he was somewhere else every moment, his white coat streaking against dark walls and shining on the room, and then darkness came out of Goodman, on top of him and to the sides of him—his head and hands!—head and hands right where they were supposed to be, his hands another new color, not white but friendly to white, and as Jennifer moved toward her husband May could feel his adrenaline asking to be allowed in, begging to do its job and tell him that something overwhelming was occurring, something sublime and colossal, but his instincts wouldn’t turn him over to such emotion, to allow him to say what was in his throat—“Oh, my gosh, it’s happening!”—because he sensed that he could not pay attention to feelings and to this new world at the same time, that if he were to think, the images would disappear, that the images required more than just his eye for their existence, they required all of him, and he knew that he didn’t want those images to go away, even if it meant postponing the explosions of joy he could feel bubbling underneath.
Tears began to flow down Jennifer’s cheeks. She rose from her stool and walked to her husband. Goodman was still there and examining but she couldn’t help it, she needed to be near her husband, and when she reached his chair she bent forward, rested her hands on his knees, and leaned in close to look into his eyes.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said.
At those words, May saw a brilliant and rich and saturated color coming from just below his wife’s voice, a million-candlepower blast of light different from any other in the room, and his heart raced because somehow he knew the name for that light coming from Jennifer, he knew automatically why it looked so beautiful connected to her.
“That’s blue,” he told himself. “Oh, my gosh, that’s blue.”
A second later other shapes began to fill in around the blue patch, shapes that he knew must be Jennifer’s torso, arms, legs, hands, neck, and head. This was his wife. This was his beautiful wife. She must have worn a blue sweater today.
He looked for her face above the blue and there it was, just where it was supposed to be, pink and different from the blue and a perfect shape, his wife’s face, his wife’s shape, her face, and he needed to see more, he didn’t want to cry for fear of losing the image, so he concentrated on the fact that hair came above the face, and he tilted his head back and there was another new color, a soft white, not like the fluorescent lights above it, a white with some yellow in it, and a thousand teenage fascinations and California dreams flooded through his biology as he looked at that soft white above Jennifer’s face and thought, “So that’s blond.”
May pulled his gaze back down to Jennifer’s face. The parts were all where they were supposed to be, her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, everything. He found her eyes and she found his, and Jennifer knew now that he could see her, she knew because his eye didn’t waver or drift or do anything but look to her, and another tear rolled down her cheek as she realized for the first time that his eye, free of the bluish-white scar tissue that had blinded him, was a deep and lovely brown, its natural color, a color she’d never considered, the color it was before the accident, his color, it was him.
Goodman rubbed May’s shoulder and choked back tears. He didn’t want to cry during their moment.
May wanted more of Jennifer. He leaned closer and squinted for a better look.
“Uh-oh,” Jennifer said with a nervous laugh. “You’re making a funny face!”
May’s face lit up in a smile. He reached for her shoulders and found them perfectly, and pulled Jennifer’s lips toward his.
“Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed. “Come, baby!”
He kissed his wife. They laughed during the embrace.
When they pulled away, May looked again to his wife’s face and then her hair, and now he seemed to see more than blond in her hair, he seemed to see many blonds, some lighter, some darker, and he wasn’t sure he was really seeing this until he remembered that Jennifer had said she streaked her hair, and then he saw it for sure.
May directed his gaze to Jennifer’s chenille blazer, a paisley print of green, chestnut, and rusty red.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“I can see the design on your sweater,” he said, tracing the paisley swirls with his right in
dex finger.
“On my jacket? Oh, my goodness,” Jennifer said. The word “design” overwhelmed her. More tears streamed down her face.
“Can you see my face?” she asked.
May looked toward her mouth. He could see her cheeks bunch together and raise up. He knew that bunched-up cheeks meant a smile.
“I can see you smiling,” he said.
“Oh, good!” Jennifer exclaimed softly. “Oh, that’s incredible!”
May needed to see more of this smile. His instinct, however, was to touch it as much as to look at it. He raised his hands and pushed them toward Jennifer’s face. She remained still for him. He ran his fingers along her bunched-up cheeks. Instantly, as if someone had touched two wires together in his brain, Jennifer’s smile leaped into his understanding in a way it hadn’t just moments before when he’d seen it by vision alone. He took his hands away but he still saw the smile, still understood the smile, it was still there.
May broke into his own big smile.
“Wow!” he said.
Jennifer moved to the side to allow Goodman a better look. When she did, May spotted something shiny over her shoulder.
“What’s across the room over here?” he asked.
“That’s a mirror,” Goodman replied. “Want to take a look?”
“I can’t see that much from here,” he said.
“That’s because the mirror is angled downward,” Goodman said.
May stood up from his chair and walked, fluidly and without his cane or assistance, toward the shiny object. He hadn’t seen himself since age three.
Once in front of the mirror, he squatted down and leaned forward until he was perhaps a foot away. For a moment he saw only a dark mass, but that mass quickly coalesced into the image of a man, complete with a pink blob where the face should be and dark patches where the hair and beard should be.
“That guy looks tall,” he thought.
He continued looking.
“That’s me,” he thought. “But I’m too close to him. I’m invading his space. I’m right up in his face. This is too personal. I shouldn’t do this in public.”
“Oh, what an ugly cuss!” he joked aloud, still gazing at his reflection. Goodman and Jennifer laughed.
“What do you see?” Jennifer asked. “Do you see your beard?”
“I can see my cheeks raising up,” May said, pointing to his face. “My beard. Dark shirt…”
“That’s navy blue,” Jennifer said.
“Navy blue,” he repeated.
May continued to look. He wanted to touch the mirror, yet he still felt he was invading the man’s personal space.
“That’s me,” he told himself. “Go ahead. It’s okay.”
He reached forward and touched the reflection. Though he understood the concept of mirrors, it was startling, almost otherworldly, to reach for a real human being and instead touch glass, stunning that someone could look so real—as real as Jennifer had looked moments before—and somehow be absolutely flat.
“Is that really me?” he wondered to himself, and he knew he would need to spend more time looking in a mirror when he got home in order to know more.
May turned and walked back to his chair, where Goodman commenced an exam that lasted perhaps ten minutes. He inspected May’s eye, which looked healthy. Goodman then stepped in front of May, held up a number of fingers on his right hand, and asked May to count them. The fingers, like everything May saw in the room, looked sharp, not blurry or out of focus. May understood the concept of blurry, of messy, because things could feel blurry and messy to the touch.
“I see three fingers,” he said.
“That’s correct,” Goodman said. “That’s excellent.”
Goodman gave instructions for caring for the eye, and warned May against getting bumped or poked. Jennifer, still dazed and astonished, absorbed maybe half of his directions. May watched the doctor’s face, a pink blob in which he saw little detail, and knew that he wasn’t seeing perfectly, that this couldn’t be 20/20. And yet the vision was so thrilling, so unexpected, so everywhere and vibrant, so much evolving already, that the future of his eyesight didn’t occur to him except that there was a future and that, as had always been true for his life, that future was a place where anything could happen, where there was always a way.
Goodman told them they were free to go. May wanted to thank him properly, to make a moment of his gratitude, but he couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t stop wanting to run out the office door and sprint down the hallway and charge onto the street and look at everything. So instead he used his sight to find Goodman’s white coat and stepped forward and hugged the doctor and he said, “Thanks, Dan”; but he didn’t let go, and for a moment time disappeared, the way it had when May sat down backward on schoolbuses and crashed into swing sets and climbed ham radio towers, the way time had always disappeared when he was about to find out what was there.
Jennifer was next to hug and thank Goodman. In turn, he thanked her and May for trusting in him, and with that he bid the couple good-bye. May reached for his cane and took Jennifer’s shoulder, and he led her toward the office door, which he was able to locate with his new vision.
May took a single step into the reception area before he slammed to a halt. What was this glorious place? What were these magnificent things? Colors and shapes shone on him from everywhere, busy people moved in random ways, things seemed as big as they wanted to be. He moved his head around, gulping the splendor of the waiting room into his eye. He pointed to the ground.
“Look at those shapes! Look at those colors! Are they on the carpet?”
“They’re part of the carpet,” Jennifer said. “It’s the carpet’s design.”
May could see people waiting for their appointments. None of them moved or seemed the least bit excited. He could not believe they were just sitting there ignoring this carpet—how could a person just sit there when such a carpet was happening?
Jennifer directed May’s attention to the hallway door. Again, he located it perfectly by vision, though he found himself relying on auditory cues like echo to figure its distance. Once in the hallway, another carpet—this one equally industrial and ugly by Jennifer’s judgment—leaped into May’s fascination.
“It’s kind of a blond carpet,” May said. “What’s the name of that color?”
“That’s beige,” Jennifer said. “It has speckles…”
May didn’t hear the part about the speckles—his attention had already shifted to a colorful square blob on the wall.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“That’s a painting,” Jennifer said.
May walked to the wall and leaned forward, putting his eye perhaps a foot from the picture. He took the green in the painting to be grass or trees, and the blue to be sky. But he couldn’t figure the meaning of the other colors or shapes, nor could he tell if he was looking at glass or canvas. Overwhelmingly, his urge was to touch the painting—touch always told him what something was—so he ran his hands over its surface. Instantly, he knew that he was seeing canvas, and it now looked like canvas to his eye. But his touch revealed nothing about the identity of the objects shown in the painting; it didn’t tell him if the red blob in the middle was a coffee cup or a fox or a barn, which made May feel momentarily foolish—of course a person couldn’t identify an object by touch if that object wasn’t really there, if it was just a glob of spread-out paint on a canvas.
“What’s in this painting?” he asked.
“It’s a nature print,” Jennifer answered. “There’s grass, trees, a little flowing brook, a small red bridge, and a sunflower. See the sunflower? It’s brown and yellow.”
The brown and yellow suddenly made more sense to May. Yet he still had the feeling that he needed to touch it to really see it. Again he reached out and ran his hands over the painting. Again it startled him to feel just a flat surface.
None of this struggle diminished his excitement. Everywhere May turned he found new wonders, and he
asked Jennifer about them all.
“Is that blue space a doorway?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that red-and-white shape that’s so bright?”
“That’s an exit sign.”
“Are those more paintings on the wall?”
“Yes.”
“Is that a person…on that door?”
“That’s the ‘female’ symbol for the bathroom. That’s the ladies’ bathroom door.”
“Are those numbers on the door?”
“Oh, my gosh. Yes.”
The elevator was perhaps a hundred feet from Goodman’s office. Five minutes had passed and they weren’t halfway there. May wanted to see everything, know everything, touch everything. Jennifer raced to keep up with his questions, even as a dozen new ones rushed in during each of her answers, and as she watched her husband travel from wall to carpet to doorknob to fire alarm, she was struck by how much there was to see in the world, in a hallway, that sighted people never even noticed.
May made his way slowly down the hall. Jennifer watched him press up close to see things, and noticed that the objects he saw best seemed to have high contrast against their backgrounds, but she thought nothing of it; he was just learning to see. It was all fantastic and new, and she had to stay focused herself, not just to help her husband but to be present for this time, to remember it as it was when she told her children about it years from now.
Every time May saw something new he faced a wonderful crisis: whether to keep looking or to move on to the next thrilling sight. Despite his excitement, he still didn’t quite have a handle on what he was feeling. As in Goodman’s office, he knew that if he diverted his attention to the joy and pleasure he sensed were underneath he would lose his awareness of the visual, and more than anything he did not want to lose his awareness of that.
Finally, May arrived at the end of the hallway. There he saw a big silver rectangle and two round shapes beside it. Grinning widely, he reached forward and pressed the bottom circle—a bull’s-eye—which lit his finger with its bright white light and confirmed his suspicion—this was the elevator. The gears moved to answer his call, a sound of music to May.
Crashing Through Page 14
