“About two weeks,” Goodman said. “I think we should know by then. But this is a long shot, Mike. Remember that.”
May’s assistant, Kim Burgess, drove him to the airport. He was to be the keynote speaker at a business conference that evening and was to make presentations the next day. She knew he was shaken and asked if he could still travel. He nodded but did not speak. On the way to the airport, May called Jennifer and told her the news—about the rejection, the risky medicines, the injections, and the bad prognosis.
For a time, the only sound in the car was the tinny rhythm of Jennifer’s voice coming through May’s cell phone. Burgess wondered if Jennifer had finally had enough.
Near the airport, May briefly spoke again.
“Thanks, Jen,” he said into his phone. “I knew you’d be with me on this.”
Flying to Phoenix, May did not bother integrating his vision or cataloging clues. Instead, he looked out the window and thought, “This is it. You’d better remember those fields down there. You’d better remember the shapes of those clouds and the blue of that sky. You might never see them again.”
For an hour he kept his eye pressed against the plastic window. And it hit him, as hard as the injection, that he’d better start seeing the big things in the world that he should have seen by now, the things he’d somehow presumed would always wait for this new eye of his. A doctor had given him vision—vision— and still it had never occurred to him to see the Galápagos Islands, the village in Ghana where he’d helped build a school, the Great Pyramid in Egypt, a topless beach, the Taj Mahal, a bald eagle, an elephant. He hadn’t even taken time to see an elephant.
May gave his presentation that night, then caught the first morning flight back to San Francisco. He could think of nothing but the gleam on Goodman’s needle as it would press through his eye, and the chromosomal-level pain he was due in an hour. He’d been willing to risk cancer in order to continue his odyssey with vision, but as the plane landed he wasn’t sure he was willing to take another of those injections. It sounded like someone else speaking when he gave the taxi driver Goodman’s address.
May sat in the examining chair, and this time he clutched the armrests in advance. Goodman pulled open his eyelids and at once May could see the glinting needle because this time he knew it would be there, and it hung before him growling in the light until Goodman began to push it toward his eye. May had just told Goodman that motion helped him see in depth and this needle was now in motion, and he watched it move into his eye until shards of pain flew across his nasal cavity, into the bone in the back of his head, and then made an S-shape of his spine. If anything, this injection was worse than the first.
Goodman rubbed May’s shoulder.
“Same time tomorrow,” he told May.
At home, May told Jennifer about his time in Goodman’s office but spared her the gory details. He said that it would be two weeks before Goodman could determine if the rejection had reversed, but that the odds were very poor. And he said it was his instinct to go see the major things in the world before he couldn’t see them anymore. A few minutes later, the kids rushed through the kitchen door. May hugged them, inspected the school projects stuffed into their backpacks, then sat them down at the table.
“I’m back early from Phoenix because Dr. Goodman found a problem with my transplant,” he said. “So now I’m getting these needles in my eye to try to fix things. There’s a good chance I’m going to lose my vision.”
“Needles?” Wyndham asked.
“Yep,” May replied.
“Right in your eyeball?” Carson asked.
“Yep, straight in there.”
“How much did it hurt?”
“Remember I told you I once had cavities filled without novocaine? It was worse than that.”
“Worse than your explosion?”
“Yes.”
“Was it gushing blood?”
“No, but believe me, I checked.”
“Did you cry?”
“Almost.”
“Was it worse than when I fell on a stick and got stitches in my arm?”
“I think so. This is an eye—the needle just goes right in.”
“Ewww!”
“Ugggh!”
“If you lose your vision,” Carson asked, “do you get your money back?”
May laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. Then he looked at his boys for a very long time and told himself, “Remember this.”
May’s next injection, the following morning, was even more painful than the first two. Sitting on the ferry going home he felt as if he’d been beaten by a gang of thugs. He had to pull himself together. If he was going to see the big things in the world, he’d best start making travel plans now.
At home, Jennifer fixed him a sandwich and asked about his appointment. He described some of the details but was most interested in watching her move around the kitchen and seeing the bounce in her streaked blond hair as she whirled to throw things in the garbage can.
“Want to go to Peet’s?” she asked.
May had travel agents to call. His assistant was waiting with the phone numbers in his office.
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s go.”
That evening, Carson and Wyndham knocked on the door to May’s office. They could see he was busy but asked anyway: Would he take them to the Graduate, an area sports bar and restaurant?
“Do I need a coat?” he asked.
The boys didn’t mind that May walked a little more deliberately than usual on the way to the restaurant, or that he slowed down to look at the wild plants near Villanova and Sycamore, or that he stopped to inspect the house painted bright purple near the mall, or even that he took an extra minute to study the rainstorm of white bird droppings on the sidewalk outside the Graduate.
“Those are gross,” Carson said. “Come on, Dad.”
“Yeah, they are kind of gross,” May said. “Let’s go in.”
May gave the boys money for the air hockey table and went to the bar to order drinks. A tall young woman with long black hair, shiny earrings, and a low-cut top came to take his order.
“What can I get you?” she asked.
May knew exactly what he wanted—two root beers and a Guinness.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “What’s good?”
The woman began to recommend beers. May watched her gold necklace dance just above the V of her tanned neckline, her hands trace shapes on the menu, her hair fly across the room when she moved it from her eyes.
“I need a little more time,” he said. “Can you come back in a minute?”
When she returned, May watched her all over again.
In the games area, he challenged Wyndham to an air hockey match, nearly knocking their drinks to the ground as he lunged to make saves, sending the flat plastic disc on ricocheted pathways unknown in geometry books. He and the boys played pool (solids were easier to see than the stripes, but he loved all the colors regardless), watched NBA players dunk on the ten-foot television screen, and relaxed at a wooden table that had swirling patterns on top. May needed to go home to work, but everyone agreed to stay later when they discovered a new video game in the back of the room.
May wasn’t due back in Goodman’s office for another four days. He spent much of that time catching up on work. During one of his breaks, he walked to the big school playground behind his house, where he watched kids whirl around on the merry-go-round, traced his foot along the painted lines on the basketball court, and followed a man’s remote-control airplane as it carved shapes into the sky. Near home, he surveyed the giant field of grass before him and marveled at the idea that he could run headlong into that green for more than a minute and still not crash into anything. During another break, he threw a ball to Josh and watched his happy flopping, then took his dog to Peet’s to practice the girl-watching skills Jennifer had taught him long ago.
May took the ferry to his next eye appointment. In the office, Goodman again stood to the
side (to avoid being kicked in the groin) and pushed the needle into May’s eye. This time the pain was a bit more reasonably horrific.
“Come back in a week,” Goodman said. “I think we’ll have our answer then.”
May’s eye hurt, but he forced it open as he and Josh walked to the Ferry Building. Near the dock, he watched seagulls swoop for dropped popcorn—perhaps the most elegant motion he’d seen—then followed an unusual pattern on the sidewalk he knew would lead to nowhere in particular. Nearby, he saw rows of miniature gray statues lined up along the curb, a single-file army of tiny men who looked ready for battle. He figured them to be parking meters. He walked over to inspect one of them more closely.
The meter felt the way it looked—heavy, metallic, cold, and smooth. Near the top he could see small blotches of irregular color, a darker gray than the rest of the meter. He ran his fingers along these spots; tiny jagged edges rubbed rough against his touch. He knew right away that he was seeing chipped paint. He stared longer at these torn shapes. They looked ugly to him, disorganized and broken, and they gave him a bad feeling. It was the same feeling of disgust he’d had when looking at the bird droppings outside the Graduate, at the fading paint on the eastern side of his house, at the pieces of drab yellow stuffing that coughed up from torn public transit seats. It was the same sad feeling he’d had looking at a homeless person. Soon, he might be blind again. He wouldn’t move his eye from the chipped paint at the top of the parking meter.
When May’s boat arrived, he turned to the dock and headed for the round tentlike structure he knew would guide him in. He stood on the pier, watching the buoys bobbing and making ripples in the water. When the ferry arrived, he studied how the men grappled it with a pole and secured it to the dock; he wanted to see the workers’ every action, and they seemed to move as smoothly as the gulls. He found his favorite window seat and got ready to look at everything.
A week remained before May’s big appointment with Dr. Goodman. He continued to ingest and apply the heavy doses of antirejection drugs. Jennifer prayed that he wouldn’t need any more injections. One evening, May thought she seemed distraught.
“What’s wrong, Jen?” he asked.
Tears began to run down her cheeks.
“I haven’t been grateful enough.”
“Grateful about what?”
“About your vision. I took it all so much for granted. I was just living my life as if it would be here forever.”
“Me, too,” May said. “Me, too.”
May dove back into his work, spending several days seeking new investors and checking on his grant proposal, for which there was still no word. During breaks he wrestled with his kids, dressed them for bed, and directed them to clean up the mess in their room, which, he warned them, he could still see until further notice. Sometimes, after the boys fell asleep, he lingered in their room to look at the strange Lego buildings they’d constructed and to study the up-and-down motion made by their blankets as they slept underneath.
When the weekend arrived and Jennifer asked if he’d like to attend Wyndham’s soccer practice, May grabbed his video camera and popped in a fresh tape. At the field, he followed the action on the camera’s large LED preview screen, recording Wyndham’s mad dashes to the ball and using the device’s powerful zoom feature to pull in details, like the confetti of mud that kicked up when Wyndham slid to make a steal. On Sunday morning, he showed the video to his family, standing inches from the television and pointing out the skill in his shaky cinematography. After that, the family walked to Fluffy’s for doughnuts.
Two days later he was due for his eye appointment. He arrived early and used the time to walk the streets and admire San Francisco. When his turn came, a nurse showed him to an examining room. Goodman entered a few minutes later.
“Let’s take a look,” Goodman said.
He held open May’s eyelids with his thumb and forefinger. The touch still reminded May of his boyhood ophthalmologist, Dr. Max Fine, and of the day he first met Goodman in this office, the day Goodman had told him about stem cells and said, “This could work.”
Goodman peered through the biomicroscope. He adjusted the machine and looked again. For several seconds May heard nothing but Goodman’s breathing. Then he heard him say just two words.
“Oh, my.”
May’s heart started to pound.
“How’s it look, Dan? Can you tell anything?”
Goodman kept looking but said nothing more.
May breathed harder. Why wasn’t Goodman speaking?
Goodman pushed his chair away from the instrument.
“I don’t use these kinds of words often, Mike. But this is a miracle. The eye is clear. You turned it around. You did it. This is the most dramatic reversal I’ve ever witnessed. You did it.”
May sat motionless. Nine months earlier he had walked from this chair to the mirror, where he’d seen himself for the first time in forty-three years. He looked across the room. The mirror was still there. He stood up and searched for his reflection. He could see a man standing in the distance.
“That guy looks tall,” he thought. “That’s me.”
EPILOGUE
Days after beating the cornea rejection, May set out to conquer Chair Six at Kirkwood, the same black diamond run that had accordioned his limbs when he’d dared to ski it with new vision. This time, he came armed with his new approach to vision: a commitment to integrate his other senses with the visual scene. He zoomed down the mountain, listening as his skis carved the snow, following Jennifer’s voice in front of him, ordering himself to let the world come to his eye rather than the other way around. He fell, but far less frequently this time.
A few weeks later, May laid his eyes on Christmas. He’d heard people talk of twinkling ornaments, but it wasn’t until he saw the glowing rainbows of dots hanging from his tree and wrapped around neighborhood homes that he felt like he really understood the word twinkle. In a department store, he asked his sons why so many people were standing in an aisle. They told him that the people were there to see Santa Claus.
“Where’s Santa?” May asked.
“Right there,” the boys replied. “He’s the guy in the red suit.”
May walked slowly toward the red man until he stood just a few feet away. He remembered Jennifer’s cautions against gawking, but this time he stared—at the man’s pink face, his round body, his shining red hat. He could see the man’s stomach rise and fall as he exclaimed, “Ho ho ho!” but May looked longest at Santa’s bushy white beard, a sky’s worth of white clouds pressed onto a tiny patch of pink face. His kids were in a hurry to pick out toys, but they didn’t rush their dad while he was looking at Santa.
In early 2001, Sendero got word that its latest grant proposal had been turned down. Despite making inroads in shrinking the GPS unit and refining its capabilities, the company was now in serious trouble. Only a major grant could save the business. May and his assistant, Kim Burgess, redoubled their efforts to seek out government money, which they still believed must be there.
On the morning of March 7, 2001, May set out for a checkup with Dr. Goodman in San Francisco. It had been a year to the day since Goodman had removed May’s bandages. On the ferry, May saw a mosquito for the first time. He watched it dance like the tip of a symphony conductor’s baton, astonished that such busy movements could be so silent.
At the appointment, Goodman pronounced the eye to be perfectly healthy.
“I always aimed for making a year,” May said.
“A year is good,” Goodman replied. “But we’ll always need to check you every few months.”
That spring, May was invited to speak to a vision-science class at the University of Minnesota. The students had been assigned the classic studies by Richard Gregory and Oliver Sacks—cases May still hadn’t got around to reading. On the airplane, he used his laptop to listen to the stories of Sidney Bradford and Virgil, the subjects of these landmark vision-recovery studies. It was the first time he’d le
arned anything about any of his predecessors. He could not tear himself away from these men.
The meeting room was packed with students and professors. Straightaway, someone asked May to compare his experience to that of Gregory’s subject, Bradford, and to Sacks’s subject, Virgil. It struck him, May said, that the essential difference between him and these men seemed to be in the lives they’d led before the surgeries—in who they were, going into vision. “I didn’t do it to see,” he told them. “I did it to see what seeing was.”
In mid-2001, May and Burgess discovered a grant for which Sendero might apply, this one worth more than $2 million, a real long shot. There were none available after that; it was Sendero’s last hope. When May and Burgess finished writing, the proposal was the size of the Davis telephone book.
May went back to work, this time negotiating with a New Zealand–based company called HumanWare. He wanted to put Sendero’s GPS software onto that company’s BrailleNote, a small and lightweight personal digital assistant, or PDA. The advantages would be profound: lighter weight, better portability, instant-on technology, longer battery life, no laptop required. He was awake early, thinking about such matters, on the morning of September 11, 2001, when he heard radio reports of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center. The announcer said that flames were shooting from the towers and that people were jumping for their lives. He listened for more than an hour before it occurred to him that he could watch the events on television. He didn’t know if he could bear to look at such a thing.
May walked slowly to the television set in the family room, where he pushed the power button and moved his face to within inches of the screen. He didn’t need to change channels to find the story. He could see flames bursting out of the sides of the pale towers, the same colored flames doing the same kind of dance he loved to watch in fireplaces. “There are people in there,” he thought, and he kept thinking those five words for the next hour, until his legs ached and he had to go sit down on the couch a few feet away, and when he did that the image on the screen blurred. May had long wondered if he would retain visual memories if he were to go blind again. After September 11, he knew that he would.
Crashing Through Page 29
