Playing Doctor

Chapter 7

Brenda was true to her word a few days later. She excitedly came in and set something up at the foot of my bed, talking to me the whole time.

"Henry wasn't too keen on the idea, he thinks this will just stress you out too much, but that man just doesn't understand sometimes. He is so concerned about you, you know. Just wants the best," Brenda told me, a smile in her voice. "But he doesn't know a teenage girl. They need their outside connections, yes they do."

With that, I heard the sound of a TV switching on and the blare of voices. The sounds flickered and didn't stay the same. I could all but assume she was switching the channels on me. After a moment the noises settled and I heard some reality TV show about wedding dresses. Brenda walked beside me and pulled up a chair.

"I love this show," she told me, her hand patting my own. "Oh, this lady is looking at a ugly little thing. Too much lace and glitter for someone of her size. She's gonna look like a beached whale. No good, that's just no good," Brenda told me. As the show went on Brenda would describe dresses to me, explaining what the women looked like. I quickly got the impression that Nurse Brenda had a strange view of the human figure. Small, skinny girls with a classy taste seemed to make her happy, but girls that wanted to show too much were sluts. And if the girls were overweight she called them derogatory names. It made me uncomfortable. Before I was hospitalized, I had been a bit bigger. Not huge, but just enough overweight that people had pointed it out since grade school. Now I felt like there wasn't much left of me. I must have lost about a hundred pounds or more by how frail I felt.

At some point, Henry came into the room, his voice soft and playful, almost laughing. It all seemed way to casual to me. Almost weirdly so.

"I think Miss Andrea needs her rest, now don't you Brenda?" Henry finally said after an episode ended. Brenda sighed, but complied. Henry stayed though. I heard him flicking through channels till he turned it off. I could hear him put the remote somewhere next to my head. Was there a shelf there?

"Um...I love the TV," I said awkwardly. Henry grunted in response, as if he wasn't the most pleased by it. There was a shift in the air, like I had disgruntled him, and I bit my lip. "You know, TV would be better if I could see."

Henry sighed. "Andrea, I don't know about that."

"Oh please? It's been so long and I promised not to do anything wrong," I pleaded.

"Promise?"

The word sounded hoarse, almost like it came from someone completely different.

I shrank back for a moment, wondering if I heard that right. Figuring I didn't, I sucked in a breath and answered, "Yes, I promise."

"Okay then, but only in this room. And no more outside time for a week," Henry responded. I felt butterflies in my stomach as I felt him touch my head. Slowly he unwound my bandages, light slowly starting to come threw the black. Even the slight bit of light hurt and made me squint. It was almost headache inducing when the last of the bandages came free. The air felt cool on the newly exposed part of my face; it almost stung in some places.

I had closed my eyes at the last moment before the last of the gauze were gone, but now I opened them and felt my stomach drop. My left eye was fine. The room came into focus. White, stark, clean, and uniform. But my right side remained black, only a bit of light and shadow coming through. Panic exploded in my chest and I sucked in a breath.

"My eye! It doesn't work! What's wrong with it? Doctor Henry what's wrong with it?" I nearly shouted the words, but then I remembered my promise and I sucked down my hysteria. "Why can't I see?"

I felt Doctor Henry's rough hands touch my chin and he turned my face towards him. Half my vision was filled with the face of a rough looking man with olive skin and green eyes. He had greying stubble along his jaw and neck. His lanky brown hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail, the sides of which were turning grey like Mr. Fantastic.

I felt him touch the right side of my face. There was a sharp pain and I flinched, turning away. He dropped his hands and sighed.

"It's just swelling, Andrea, it's okay. Your vision should come back over time," Doctor Henry told me, though his voice sounded far away. I sucked in a breath, nodding, trying not to get too worked up.

"It will fix itself," I said to myself, reminding myself. This is all temporary.

"Yes, that's right," Doctor Henry confirmed, this time more strongly.

I nodded, feeling a bit of excitement starting to well up in me again. I could see now. Almost completely fine. "Um...before you leave, can you turn the TV on for me? Maybe to like...cartoons or anything else besides that...garbage." I gave a faint smile.

Henry chuckled and the TV popped on again. The channels switch rapidly till it landed on an episode of Friends. I told him that was fine and he left me to myself, watching my TV. Seeing for the first time in a long time. I glanced around the room but saw nothing interesting. White walls, no windows, a white counter with a stainless steel sink. Drawers, shelves with medical supplies on them. The heart monitor and a few other machines I didn't know the names of were sitting silently by the side of my bed. I almost missed their chirping.

The last thing I looked at was myself. It was hard to take everything in with one eye, but it was better than none. My body was tucked under a blanket, but I could tell I was rail thin under the cheap cotton sheets. I could barely recognize the body I was seeing. Sticks and stones under thin fabric. My arms were pale, bruised, and my left side was pink, red, and bandaged in places where my road rash was still horrifying. Around my wrists were leather straps. They didn't look right with the stainless steel frame of the bed. The ankle ones were loosely hanging from the footboard and the wrist ones seemed to attach some where lower on the bed, probably near the bottom part of the bed frame where I couldn't seem. They looked handmade and crude, not something you'd see in a hospital at all.

My stomach flipped a little and I tried to push away the nagging thoughts in my head. Everything was going to be okay. Everything was fine. Just fine.

But was it?