Blind (3 page)

He would have stared at it forever. The eyes, tracing the acute 70 degree angle over and over again until his father came home and shook him from the trance.

But the same low groan issued from the corner again, from the small space between the crib and wall, beneath a window that illuminated it, but only partially.

He saw all the blood—and he was certain it was blood now—soaking the front of her clothes. It was like she’d splashed it all over herself, careless of her clothes and hair. She was dead. Her legs sprayed out in front of her with her back propped unevenly in the corner that was too small to really accommodate her. He was
certain
she was dead.

Until she spoke

“It isn’t enough,” the woman moaned. “It isn’t enough.”

“Mom?” Edison said, his voice was high and quivering. “Mom, are you okay?”

“Help me,” his mother said, tearing at the back of her head, pulling her hair as if to rip it out. “I have to remove the chip. It’s got to come out too or I’ll never see it. I’ll never see it again.”

Then she plunged her fingers into an eye socket and that was the last thing Edison remembered.

“Is there a reason you’re pacing outside my door?” Nana asked.

“It’s Curie’s door,” he said, automatically. But then he felt terrible for being so short when, in fact, he had been hovering and trying to solicit an invitation.

“Technically,” his grandmother said. “But since I sleep in here too and I’m older, I have seniority.”

Edison nodded, coming into the nursery and sitting at the edge of the bed where his grandmother had been reading. The nursery looked nothing like it had on the day he’d found his mother. Nor like the incarnation before that, when it’d been an art studio. They’d repainted and bought new furniture on both occasions. His father had even tore out the flooring—as if to remake the room from the inside out.

Edison kept his voice low as not to wake Curie.

“What are you doing?” he asked, a pathetic question.

His grandmother took the application, giving it a once over. “I’m listening.”

Edison hesitated, staring at the sheet of paper in her hands. It was blank still, even though he was supposed to submit it fully completed tomorrow morning when he checked in for surgery. Twenty minutes of pacing outside her door, rehearsing this conversation over and over again—and he still found it hard to speak.

Nana placed a hand on his knee. The fingers crooked at odd angles and the skin stretched thin over protruding knuckles. His eyes paused on the dark spots marring a few places, as if old blood had pooled beneath the skin.

“Is he going to stop me?” Edison asked.

“The surgery is tomorrow,” Nana said. “He’d have done it by now, don’t you think?”

“Maybe he was waiting for something.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “He asked me to watch Curie in the morning.”

Edison looked over at the sleeping girl three times the size she was when he’d found his mother blind.

“Are you nervous?” Nana asked. Her voice graveled against her chords.

“No,” Edison lied.

“I was a wreck,” Nana said, laying the book flat against her chest. “I didn’t sleep for days before.”

Again he was silent, watching Curie’s thumb bob in her mouth as she sucked at it intermittently, as if it were forgotten, only to be remembered again with renewed passion.

“Do you think he is right?” Edison asked. His voice was someone else’s. Lower and more resigned than he’d ever heard it.

Nana gripped his knee. “Edison, I want you to listen to me. I’ll try to explain something to you. You may not understand, but I’m going to try regardless. Is that all right?”

The strange request caused him to meet her eyes for the first time. “Okay.”

“When you grow up, you pick up a lot of fears along the way,” she began. Then she shook her head. “No, that’s not what I want to say.”

“Dad is scared for me,” Edison offered.

“Yes,” his Nana said with a tight grin. Her disappearing lips, as thin as a penned stripe turned white. “But what I’m trying to say is that what happened to your Mom, what she
did
—that scared him. And he’ll always carry that with him.”

“Do you think I’m like her?” he asked. His eyes fell to his lap.

“Yes,” Nana said. “You have her kindness. Her patience. Her curiosity.”

“But am I
like
her?” Edison pressed. “Do you think—?”

“No. And your father doesn’t either. Not really. That’s what I’m trying to say,” Nana answers. “The fear your father has isn’t about you at all.”

Edison’s head snapped up and he found his father in the doorway, watching them with still eyes. Instinctively, Edison’s mouth opened to apologize though he had no idea why.

“We have to be at the hospital early,” Mr. Jacobi said. The tension between his thick brows released, smoothing out. “You should try to go to sleep early. And no food after midnight.”

Even after he was gone, Edison still couldn’t look away from the doorway.

“Here,” Nana said.

Edison opened his hand expecting to get his application back, but it was a small booklet instead. His mother’s book,
The Tales of Eden,
lay
sketched in colors he couldn’t see, in a world he couldn’t imagine.

“Where did you get this?”

“It was in your sister’s books,” she replied.

As he looked through the pages his throat grew tight.

“Don’t be afraid,” Nana said, gently, making the boy accept the booklet and the application. “There’s plenty of time for that when you’re older.”

Edison could only nod.

Then he spread the application flat on top of the booklet and wrote Eden
beside
Name
.

Something was wrong.

Edison’s heart pounded furiously in his chest, coursing up through his constricted throat and the pulse in his temples shattered all thoughts. He couldn’t remember where he was. What day it was. What had happened? And why was it so utterly and completely dark?

His body felt strange, sluggish, and heavy like the time he’d taken pain medication to alleviate the throb of a decaying baby tooth before its removal. His slowed responses and poor limb control only frightened him more.

And then he remembered—Edison had lain down on one hospital bed and woke up in another, as was often the case with surgery. This morning he’d hardly had time to be nervous between kisses from Nana, and Locke’s constant chatter as the three of them—Mr. Jacobi included after all—drove to the hospital in the early hours. He’d then entered the hospital and handed over his application to Dr. Barnard before turning himself over to his care.

Had he undergone the surgery already? Was this his first dream? He reached up to feel his eyes to confirm what may or may not be happening but he only felt the soft mesh of gauze under his fingers. He wanted to feel them. He wanted to
see
. Even as he gingerly worked the gauze away from his face, he felt the strength of his limbs returning, the medication dulling with every awakened moment. The pain in his skull worsened.

Then something went terribly wrong.

Instead of sliding his fingers under the gauze to find the expected metal orbs nestled in his skull, his fingers curled into the warm moist tissue of empty sockets, sore from cauterization.

He screamed as much at the dull pain of his actions as with terrified surprise.

“Eddy, Eddy,” Locke said. “Be still. I’ll get your dad.”

Her footsteps left the room as quickly as they came. Edison continued screaming more and more from fear than any other emotion he could specify. As he drew himself up into a sitting position, his head hit something, and reverberated with pain.

“Edison,” Dr. Barnard said, in the rush of feet entering the room. “Edison, I need you to remain calm.”

“Lie down, son,” his father said. And suddenly there were hands all over him, forcing him into the bed. “That’s it. Be still.”

“What happened?” Edison said. “Where are my eyes?” He heard the fear in his own voice.

“No need to be upset,” Dr. Barnard said. “You will be perfectly fine. Your skin simply reacted to the nickel and I thought it best to wait it out rather than leave them in and possibly cause an infection. But your eyes should arrive tonight and we’ll get you right back into surgery. You’ll be back on your feet in no time.”

“It’s all right,” Mr. Jacobi assured him. “Just a little set back, son.”

“I’m sorry to frighten you like this,” Dr. Barnard added. “Artist eyes are so seldom chosen that the pair we had on hand were not nickel-free, as most of the newest models are. But the pair being sent from Columbus will be top of the line—brand new.”

“He’s bleeding,” Locke said, in a small voice.
“He’ll be fine,” Dr. Barnard insisted. And the tender touch of his care caused a warm stirring in Edison’s mind. The darkness formed by his wrapped sockets gave itself over to something else entirely. Like canvas, the darkness seemed to stretch and warm. The shade seemed to lighten somehow until he realized what he looked at now was no longer black at all but rather a different tone. A
color
.

He gasped, pressing himself further into the mattress as if to put distance between himself and the growing color which no longer stood alone. Each shade and variance grew, became distinct.

“Edison?” Dr. Barnard asked. “Is everything all right?”

“Is it the chip?” Locke asked. “Maybe the chip is doing something.”

“No,” Dr. Barnard said. “I didn’t insert the cerebral implant. Once I saw that we would have problems with the eyes, I didn’t proceed any further. And his old chip was removed along with his Mathematical eyes. There’s nothing to cause a reaction. It must be the pain.”

It’s not the pain, Edison thought. Something in him was opening, flowering, once coiled, unfolding before him.

He saw his mother standing alone in a field of tall pale grass and sunlight. Her earthy green dress swirled up, wind-caught, to reveal her legs and bare feet as the grass parted between gusts of air. Her long dark hair curling over her back and shoulders, too, was caught in the wind. So much wind, that as she called for him, her voice was drowned in the rush of it. He watched her from the tree line, not yet ready to join her despite the unfathomable beauty of this world.

Her eyes were not mechanical anymore. They held every color now—green and brown—flecks of yellow and blue. It was his mother’s dream—her alone in a field beneath the largest tree he’d ever seen, calling for him—knowing he was near but not yet seeing him. The little boy-fox.

“Son?” his father asked, touching the boy’s shoulder lightly. “What can I do for you? What can I do? Edison—”

“Eden,” he told him. “It’s Eden.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kory M. Shrum lives in Michigan with her partner Kim and a ferocious guard pug, Josephine. She’d love to hear from you on
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