With an eyedropper in her hand, the woman leaned over Sara's frozen body and barked, "Open wide." Sara opened her mouth before she remembered to open her eyes.
With the drops inserted, Sara was ordered back to the waiting room. When she returned, the only seat remaining was between two elderly men whose pupils were perversely dilated. On a younger man she might have found the effect alluring, but in the shrivelled sockets of the sunken faces, it made her shudder.
Unable to look at magazines and unwilling to look at the faces of the other patients, Sara turned inward. She would have to call her editor tomorrow with a decision. Joyce still expected her to finish in Europe and then take a three-week assignment in South America.
An hour later, she was convinced she'd been forgotten. The distracting voices around her were loud and rough—the hoarse prattle of a woman sitting next to her half-deaf husband, the overly chipper voice of a young man with his grandmother, the drone of people talking about the weather.
She was thinking about sneaking out the door when Judy came looking for her.
"Let me see those eyes. Yes, looks like you need another set of drops. Here, tilt back." She opened a bottle with her tightly gripped fist and landed one drop in each of Sara's eyes. "The doctor will be right with you. We'll just have to let those drops sink in."
For the next while, Sara sat trying to drain her mind. It was better if she concentrated on nothing. No words. No feelings. No fear. She tried counting sheep like her father had taught her to do when she couldn't fall asleep. The rhythmic certainty of numbers jumping a fence lulled her into a little bit of comfort.
"Alright," Judy said, "come with me."
With her hand dragging along the wall to guide her, Sara followed the woman back through the maze.
Dr. Porter was an older man with fine white hair and glasses. He smiled condescendingly as Sara climbed into his examination chair.
"Are you a student, dear?" he asked.
"A photographer."
"For the newspaper?"
"I work for a travel magazine."
He waved to his assistant. "Thank you, Judy. That's all." She nodded and closed the door."Well," the doctor said, as he pulled his rolling chair up to Sara, "let's have a look." His hand was rough as he placed it on her chin. He moved her face for her, twisting and straining her neck, so that she found it difficult to swallow. "Yes, just as I thought," he said, squeezing her chin further. "Do you have a history of these symptoms in your family?"
"Ah-hun-no."
"Pardon?" He let go of her chin.
"I don't know."
He pulled her forward until her flesh met his equipment. "Put your chin there." He narrowed the focus of his probe light and intensified the power of the magnification. Then he reached out and tilted her head so that its angle was more comfortable for him. "What I'm seeing here is quite developed."
Sara's head felt heavy on her neck. Although it was a struggle to keep it in place, she was afraid to move.
The doctor leaned back from the viewer. "What you have, dear, is an abnormal growth of blood vessels at the back of your eyes. Although it's very unusual in someone your age, it's quite common in the elderly. I'm going to send you down to the old hospital for dye tests. I'd like to know just where the blood is leaking from. Then we'll get you set up." He turned in his chair, as if finished and expecting her to leave.
Sara shifted her head slightly and forced a large gulp of saliva down her throat. "Wait, I... I don't think I understand."
The doctor turned back and let his tired face show.
"You're going to need surgery. What you have is called macular degeneration. I can't offer you a cure. The only thing I can do is to try and prevent it from getting worse. There are two options, depending upon the results of the dye test. The simpler procedure is laser—it's painless and most people are up and running right away. But if it's as serious as I suspect, then we're going to have to consider incisional surgery."
Sara pictured the hot liquid of a soft-cooked yolk.
"Judy will take care of you." This time Dr. Porter stood to punctuate the end of the appointment.
Sara released herself from the chair and walked to the door, struggling to remember the details of the doctor's prognosis. As she stumbled into the hall, Judy spoke to her in a hushed tone.
"Are you here alone, dear?"
"Yes."
"Oh." She sighed and shifted her weight. "Well, you should-n't be. Is there anyone who can pick you up?"
"No."
"Are you sure? Think about it."
Kyle. He loved coming to her rescue. "I can make a call."
"Perfect. Come with me."
Judy led her by the arm as if she was already blind. She asked for Kyle's number, dialled and then handed the phone to Sara. "Ask him to pick you up. He'll need to spend the afternoon with you at the hospital. It's going to be a long day, and you're not going to be able to see."
Kyle was delighted and arrived with a warm muffin and a cup of tea. He guided Sara into his car and opened his arms for her as if expecting a watery torrent, but her eyes were strangely dry.
They were silent as they waited in the cold, bright corridor of the old hospital. They sat next to each other in a long row of plastic chairs that were fastened to the wall.
"Kyle?" she asked. "Why did you come for me?"
He used his hand to smooth her soft brown hair. "I could-n't very well have said no."
"I suppose."
Sinking into the ease of his care, Sara scorned herself for ignoring his phone calls, for never leaving a forwarding address, for not sending greeting cards. Even though she knew it was a trap, she sank comfortably back into the mould he had designed for her. She wondered if one day she would have the courage to finally break it.
"Sara?" he said, gently rubbing her back. "I think the nurse is looking for you."
"What?" For a moment she'd been dreaming.
"It's your turn." He stood to help her up. "I'll wait here for you."
She nodded and followed the nurse.
It was the same small-nosed nurse who had, half an hour earlier, dug around in her arm, trying to find a vein big enough for the large injection of dye. In times of distress, Sara's veins hid below the surface. Now, as she walked, yellow liquid seeped into the puff of cotton taped to her arm.
As she entered the dark lab room, she was greeted by a technician who wore jeans beneath her hospital whites. Seeing the camera that was mounted on a stand and affixed to a long table, Sara took one calm breath.
"Alright. I need you to hold still. This might be a little bright." The woman pointed a beam of light at Sara's eyes. "I'm going to take a series of photographs over the next five minutes to chart the progress of the dye. It's important that you try not to move."
Sara's mouth watered at the first shutter click. She hadn't taken a photo in days.
Against the drone of the stopwatch, the nurse chatted idly. "Is it still windy out there? There was quite a chill this morning. My sister says it's colder than seasonal, but isn't April always like this? I try to not get my hopes up until May. Even then, we've had snow, although not for a few years now. It's the way the wind comes off the water. I keep telling my husband, we need to get away from the dreaded ocean. Of course, I love this city. But