The Eyes and Ears of Love (11 page)

Dorothy sees Donna’s expression turn from sadness to shock, eyes wide open, as a bright light washes over both of them. Dorothy distinctly sees a tear on Donna’s cheek before everything becomes darkness.

Chapter 4

“No!” Dorothy screams, waking from her sleep, gasping from deep within her chest.  She panics, feeling pressure on her eyes. It’s dark around her. She fidgets to find the light next to her bed.

“Janessa, turn on the light, turn on the light!” she begs.

“Dorothy, my name is Candace,” an unfamiliar voice immediately answers. “I am an RN here at Memorial Hospital and I have been taking care of you these last few days.”

“What?” she asks fidgeting and trying to feel around frantically. She feels tubes coming from all different directions of both her arms. “Am I still dreaming? Why am I at the hospital?” The monitor begins beeping a loud alarm. She rips the tubes from her left arm.

“Honey, I am going to need you to slow your breathing,” Candace says, holding Dorothy’s arms down to the bed.

“Why won’t you turn on the lights?” she cries, struggling against Candace’s weight.

“I need assistance!” Candace yells.

Dorothy hears feet stampeding into the room. “I don’t understand!” Dorothy shrieks as she feels a sharp needle piercing her arm. Almost instantly, her heart rate slows and her muscles relax beyond her control.

A familiar voice, a woman’s voice, yells as she enters the room. “What happened?” It’s Dorothy’s mother. “I just left for a minute to get a coffee and I come back and you are drugging my daughter!”

“Ma’am, please calm down,” Candace says to her. “Dorothy woke up.”

“Oh!” Her mom sobs. Dorothy feels her mother’s hand against her head, brushing her hair with her fingers. “Dorothy, can you hear me?” Candace asks.

Dorothy tries to nod, but still feels weak and limp.

“I’m sorry that I had to do that but I need you to be calm while we talk about what happened. You’ve been in an accident. You’ve been unconscious for four days now. The doctor’s on his way down to talk to you.”

Dorothy lies still, in part because of the drug, but in part because she can’t make sense out of Candace’s words.

“Candace, how is Dorothy doing?” a deep male monotone voice asks.

“She’s calm and I think we’re ready.”

“Hello Dorothy, my name is Doctor Chandler,” says the voice.

Dorothy feels the warmth of another person nearby; the doctor must be close to her face, but she still can’t see.

“Do you feel pressure on your eyes?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Do you feel any pain in your eyes?”

“No.”

“That’s good to hear. I am going to remove that pressure you’re feeling, is that okay?”

“Yes.” She sighs, finally ready for him to remove the barrier that is affecting her ability to see. Between her confusion, and her mother being in the room, she needs to feel in control again. She feels the pressure lifted, her face is bare, and she begins batting her eyes continuously. She feels her eyelids opening and closing shut but doesn’t see anything in front or around her. Tears flow freely from her eyes. She knows something is seriously wrong. “Why won’t you turn on the lights?” Dorothy whimpers. Her mother squeezes her hand.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your eyes suffered significant trauma from shards of broken glass in the accident.”

“What? What are you saying?” Dorothy asks.

“You have optic nerve damage.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, usually, in cases similar to yours, sharp trauma only affects the cornea, which is the surface of the eye. And if the glass shards bury deeper within the eye, it’s called a laceration. In your case, you have many lacerations.”

“So?” Dorothy shakes her head.

“However, the lacerations among your eyes have damaged 93% of the nerve fibers that transmit visual signals from the eyes to the brain.”

“Doctor, what are you saying?” Dorothy asks.

“At this time, you are completely blind.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry Dorothy. We’ve managed to remove all shards of glass from the irises and eyelids and save both of your eyes from being removed, but your vision cannot be recovered at this time.”

Dorothy holds both her hands up in front of her face. She knows they are literally an inch away from her eyes because she feels the warmth of her breath tingling on her skin. Nothing visual is in front of her though, not even a shadow.

“I’m permanently blind,” she says to herself.

“No,” Doctor Candler interrupts, “I did not say your vision loss is permanent.”

“Will she get her vision back soon?” her mother asks him.

“There are 7% of nerve fibers still active. Now is that enough fibers to transmit visual signals from the eyes to the brain? No. But it’s a start. Our bodies are remarkable machines and sometimes it can rehabilitate on its own.”

Dorothy grasps for the doctor’s hands, finding them and squeezing them. “Please! You’re a doctor, just give me my vision back.” She panics.

“I can refer you to the best ophthalmologists in the country,” he says. “There is no need to lose hope, you’re going to have plenty of resources and support.”

She barely hears his words through her sobbing.

He sighs, “I am so sorry Dorothy,” Doctor Chandler muffles.

“What about my sister, Donna?” Dorothy asks trying to pull herself together.

“I think that is something you need to discuss with your mom. Candace and I will leave you be.”

She hears the scuffle of footsteps and the quiet closing of the door. “Mom?”

Her mom replies only with sniffles.

Dorothy suddenly gets a sinking feeling in her stomach. She remembers something about Donna before the accident, but isn’t sure. She feels the need to ask it. “Where’s Donna?”

“Donna was in the accident too,” her mom says. Her voice is breaking up.

Dorothy covers her face with her hands. She digs her nails into her cheeks. The terrible dream that Dorothy just had was no dream at all. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I, mom?”

“Why would you be in trouble, baby?”

“I was drinking.”

“You were all drinking. Even Donna had alcohol in her system.”

“But they weren’t driving, I was.”

Her mom touches her arm. “No, honey, you are confused.”

“What?” she asks.

“You weren’t driving.”

“Yes. Yes, I was,” she says with certainty. She remembers that part clearly. “I was in the driver’s seat and me and Donna were fighting while I was driving. Oh mom! Will you tell her I’m sorry, and I don’t want to fight anymore? I didn’t mean what I said, I was upset.”

“What were you and Donna fighting about?”

Dorothy thinks very hard, and bits and pieces fall into her memory. “Mr. Bloomington,” she whispers.

“Who’s Mr. Bloomington?”

Dorothy refuses to say. Somehow, it doesn’t seem to matter as much anymore. “No one.”

Her mother swaddles Dorothy’s hands with her own hands. “Dorothy, a boy named Luke was driving Julie’s car when the accident happened.”

Dorothy shakes her head. She tries to remove her hands from her mother’s, but she is too weak. “No,” she hisses.

“Yes, honey. He missed the stop sign and there was a collision with another car.”

Dorothy continues to shake her head, trying with all of her strength to object, in this new darkness around her. “No. I missed the stop sign. Stop trying to confuse me. Just ask Donna, she’ll tell you,” she demands.

“Baby.” She cups Dorothy’s hands tighter, choking up. “Donna didn’t make it.”

Dorothy’s breathing becomes heavy and she holds her heart and tightening chest. But the medicine fights against her, keeping her calm when she so badly wants to fall apart. “You’re lying,” she finally says to her mother. “You’re just trying to hurt me because I didn’t say goodbye before I went off to college.”

Her mother’s voice cracks as she speaks softly. “Honey, I’m not lying. Donna died instantly from impact.”

Her blindness gives way to a new darkness. She feels like her insides are evaporating; her chest is becoming hollow. To say it feels like a dream would only be half-true. Her mother’s words are surreal, but the sharpness of her voice, the scratchy hospital sheets, and the sanitized smell of the room is too real for her to pretend this isn’t happening. Dorothy just saw Donna moments ago: at least that’s what it feels like. She just saw her, how could she be gone now?

Finally, she weeps, “I killed my sister?”

“No honey, you didn’t. You were sitting in the backseat with Julie.”

She shakes her head, unable to understand why her mother is doing this to her. She remembers everything. She remembers driving. “I need to talk to Luke or, or Julie,” she insists.

Dorothy feels her mother’s hand squeeze hers tighter. Her palm is cold, sweaty. “You’re the only one that survived, honey.
”

She doesn’t respond, but lies there motionless, unable to handle any more information. Her body and mind are forced into a stupor; the blackness before her makes her hyperaware of the reality surrounding her.

Dorothy sits there in the dark with no recollection of time, she doesn’t know if it’s been seconds, or minutes, or hours since talking to her mom. She can overhear her mom talking to Doctor Chandler outside her door.

“She’s convinced she was driving, Doctor,” her mother says, her voice taut with concern.

“It’s common. She is having memory loss and confusion, which is expected after the concussion. I’ll be surprised if she even remembers the days leading up to the day of the accident.”

“Will she ever regain that piece of memory?”

“It’s possible that she’ll recover all the details from the night of the accident, or maybe blurred details, or it’s possible, she won’t remember a single detail.”

Her mom’s voice is high and unsure as she asks, “How do I help her cope with confusion?”

“Sometimes some sort of proof will convince her, but it’s hard when she cannot see it for herself. I actually have the newspaper article of the accident in my office. Maybe if you read that to her, it’ll help clear up some of the confusion.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

Dorothy hears solid footsteps down the hall and away from her. The doctor must be finding the newspaper. Her mother returns and brushes Dorothy’s hair from her face.

“I’m awake, mom, you don’t have to do that.”

“Oh,” her mother says softly. “I thought you fell asleep. Did you overhear me talking with the doctor? He thinks it will help you if—

“If you read me the newspaper,” she says, feeling her heart pound. “Yeah. I heard him.”

The doctor’s heavy footsteps approach again. He mutters, “Here,” presumably handing the paper to her mom.

“I’ll go ahead and read it, then,” Dorothy’s mom says.

Dorothy nods.

Her mother sighs and reads.

“At 11:00 P.M. Friday night, Starlight Beach University suffered a significant loss. Three students, including the driver, were killed in a car accident after attending a fraternity party. The driver, Luke Walsh, had a blood alcohol content of .12 when he missed a stop sign, driving onto Everest Street into oncoming traffic, and collided with another vehicle. The driver of the opposite vehicle, Martin Shielding, died on impact, according to the commissioner at Memorial Hospital. The family of the fourth student who had occupied Walsh’s car asks that she remain anonymous, as she is in critical condition at Memorial Hospital. It has been reported that the surviving victim is a sibling of one of the deceased students.”

Dorothy hears and acknowledges information coming from something other than her mother, but she still cannot seem to accept it.

“Hello?” Dorothy recognizes the voice coming from the door and freezes in her bed.

The man approaches, his footsteps slow, cautious. “Oh, I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry. I’m Adam Bloomington, Dorothy’s professor,” he greets Dorothy’s mom, his voice wavering.

“Hi Adam. I’m Dorothy’s mother.”

No one speaks. Dorothy sits up in her bed in the middle of silence.

“Can I have some privacy?” Adam asks.

“Ugh,” her mom’s replies, skeptical.

“Mom, its fine.”

“Ok, I’ll give you two a minute.”

“Dorothy, I am so sorry for your loss,” he emphasizes.

Dorothy thinks to herself of what to say. If she was never driving, then Donna and she were never fighting, which means the fling between Donna and him never happened. She keeps her head down, feeling naked in her new black space, wondering if her facial expression is giving away the confusion she feels.

“I need you to clear something up with me,” she says, feeling her little remaining strength deteriorating.