Claire Merchant

Preface

Premonition

I used to be positive.

I was brave, and I was strong, but then the operation happened.

I’d spent years blinking through lenses until I decided to get laser surgery to rid myself of the burden of glasses, but they had been the least of my worries. Something happened when I got the LASIK surgery, something that not even my ophthalmologist could have expected. I didn’t tell him because I knew that he would have no explanation for it. As far as he was concerned, the procedure had been a success. My vision was better than twenty-twenty. Better than. Too much better than.

I lay still as the machine moved closer to my eye. It was numbed, but I could still feel the laser sear around my iris and then the cornea being removed. I thought the worst part was behind me, but then another machine moved over my eye, and I couldn’t do anything but stare upwards. I smelt burning and wanted to look away, but I knew that doing so would do more damage. I waited anxiously for it to end and stared into the blackness. Tiny silver stars twinkled in my vision, and all that ran through my head was, even if I was blind in one eye, at least I had the other. But then the blackness began to subside, and the dark clouds started to clear. I sighed in relief as the surgeon replaced the flap of my cornea on my eye.

“One down, one to go.”

I didn’t know if I could handle going through it again, but there was no going back now. I’d asked for this. I’d wanted this. All I’d ever wanted was to be able to see clearly without the aid of lenses. I guess it was true when people said to be careful what you wished for.

I used to be positive, but that was when I was blind to what was really happening.

Now I saw everything, and it made me feel even more desensitised than I had before, as if I was a deer staring into headlights just waiting for the car to hit me.

1:1

An Eye for an Eye

“Have you had any problems, Cassia?” the nurse asked. “Any discomfort?”

“A little,” I replied. “I felt so tired and could barely keep my eyes open yesterday after the surgery. When I woke up, I felt like someone had poured dirt in them.”

“That’s perfectly normal. It’s all part of the healing process.”

“Okay,” I sighed.

She smiled, but it looked skewed through the chunky plastic shields still covering my eyes. I was told not to take them off until my follow-up appointment today, and even with them obscuring my vision, I could see better than I ever could.

“All right, let’s take these off then,” she said.

I closed my eyes as she peeled off the medical tape and could feel the butterflies in my stomach growing with anticipation. I had waited a long time for this. I’d been wearing glasses for as long as I knew.

“You can open your eyes now, Cassia,” she whispered.

I took a breath and then slowly opened them. I looked up at the nurse and then gasped. She did not look as well as she sounded. In fact, she looked as if she was suffering from a terminal illness. She was very slim, almost lifeless, with very pasty skin and hardly any hair. I blinked, and her image flickered.

She smiled. “What can you see?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is your vision clear?”

“It’s clear,” I replied slowly. Not that I understood it.

I looked past her to the mirror and saw that her reflection looked as normal as she had through the plastic shields. I didn’t know what was happening or why. How could I see something different from what was before me? What did it mean?

“Okay, let’s just do some testing, shall we?” she said.

She was acting normal, so I guessed that I should. She handed me a wooden paddle and told me to cover one eye and read the bottom line of an eye chart. Then I had to cover the other and read it backwards. My vision was perfect, better than twenty-twenty, apparently. But that didn’t explain why I could see more than what other people could.

The nurse put drops in my eyes and handed me back the shields to wear at night for the next few days, then told me to go back in the waiting room until my doctor called me through for a final examination. When I returned to the room, I felt as though I’d been transported into a zombie film. The people who sat in the room and even behind the desk looked like they had died and risen again. They were riddled with injuries and illness that should mean their death, and yet they were still very much alive. I didn’t know what was going on, I was just glad that my boyfriend, Travis, still wasn’t here yet, so I didn’t have to see him in the same way. He was parking the car.

I sat down as far from the other people as I could and focused on the floor. I was too scared to look around because, even if I could see, I didn’t like what I saw. My vision may be clearer, but it definitely wasn’t better.

“Cassia Reid,” my surgeon called.

I looked up and saw him looking older than I remembered, and then followed him down to his office.

“So how is everything going?” he asked.

“It’s a little weird,” I replied. “I’m seeing things.”

He smiled. “It’s always strange for people to see without the confines of a lens. Any pain?”

“Um, no, some discomfort, but apparently that’s normal.”

He nodded. “You have a bit of bleeding in your eyes around your iris, but I’ll give you some antibiotic drops for that. Just drop them in three times a day.”

“Okay,” I answered.

“Let’s just see how your vision is,” he said.

He moved the eye-testing machine in front of my face and sat in front of it. The lens wasn’t a prescribed one, so I could see clearly straight through it. He looked thirty years younger than when I saw him without the glass.

The testing came up clear, and he declared what the nurse had – that my vision was better than twenty-twenty. I didn’t know what it meant to be better than perfect, but he seemed to think it was a good thing.

“Do you have any questions, Cassia?” he asked.

“Um, just one,” I replied. “Is there any reason why I would be able to see more than what other people can see?”

He frowned. “Your vision is better than twenty-twenty.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant see more than everyone else… maybe things that I shouldn’t be seeing.”

“I’m still not sure what you mean, but if you feel that you’re seeing things that aren’t really there, then perhaps you should be talking to—”

“No, I’m… I was just curious,” I answered. “But to you, everything went as it should have, right?”

“Yes, everything is great. You’re cured.”

I tried to smile.

“In the meantime,” he continued. “Just keep up with the eye drops and wear sunglasses if you find it a bit bright outside. If you have any other concerns, just call up and make an appointment.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “Thank you.”

I slid off the chair and headed towards the door. On the way back to the waiting room, I fished out my sunglasses and put them on. For some reason, people didn’t look like the living dead from behind the lens.

I found Travis and told him that we could go, and he walked me down to the car and opened the door for me. I made sure to keep my sunglasses on and tried not to look at him as much as I could just in case I saw him the way that I saw the others. I couldn’t bear to see him as fatally wounded as the rest of them.

“All good?” he asked.

“Yes, I have better than twenty-twenty vision, apparently.”

“That’s amazing. So you’re healed then?”

I rested my head back. “It’ll take a little while to heal. I’m still pretty tired. It’s a lot to adapt to.”

“How long did the doctor say it would take?”

“It’s different from person to person,” I sighed. “Though I have a feeling it’ll take a while for me.”

“Don’t say that, babe. It’s self-fulfilling prophecy.”

I turned towards the window as he slowed at a red light. It was at quite a busy intersection in town, and there were a lot of people buzzing around the streets.

I took a breath and tipped off my sunglasses, but no one looked any different to how they were supposed to. I rested my head against the glass and then pressed the down button for the window. As the light crept in over the tinting and the breeze fanned my face, the people in front of me morphed into the living dead. I closed my eyes and slid the sunglasses back on, then put the window back up and kept my eyes closed until I got home. I went straight to my room and stayed there because I couldn’t understand exactly what had happened to me when I got the surgery or why, but whatever it was, I just hoped that it would all go away with a bit of sleep.

**

“Hey, Cassia,” my roommate Stephanie said. “I brought you some magazines.”

“Reading material, great,” I mumbled, keeping my eyes closed. “It’s awesome to focus on small print when my eyes have just been burnt with a laser. Good idea. Very thoughtful.”

“You are so ungrateful sometimes,” she answered.

I felt a weight hit my feet and twisted to peer out from beneath my beanie. It wasn’t cold, but the brightness still hurt my eyes a little.

“I’d be grateful if you please just left me alone, Steph,” I replied. “I need to sleep.”

“Seriously, how can you actually be responsible for children when you’re acting like one yourself?” she snapped. “What is going on with you?”

I covered my eyes with my hand. “I’m tired, and I’m healing. Leave me alone.”

“Cassia, this isn’t healthy,” she said as she threw back my covers. “Cassia!”

“Steph, seriously!” I shouted. I reached for my blankets and then gasped as I caught a glimpse of her. She looked as if she had been beaten black and blue. Her eyes were swollen, and she had a split lip. “What the hell happened?”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

I turned my head to the mirrored sliding doors of my wardrobe behind me and saw her usual rosy reflection was looking back at me with an annoyed expression painted on it.

“What is with you, Cassia?” she asked. “Why are you acting so rude?”

I pulled my beanie down over my eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be. I just really want to rest.”

“You’ve been resting for the last two days. You need to get out of bed and start getting back into a normal routine,” she replied. “Even your doctor said that it’s important you do.”

“You spoke to my doctor?”

“Yes, because I was worried about you. I still am,” she answered. “You used to hate staying indoors, Cass. I just didn’t think it was normal for someone to completely change their personality after something as simple as eye surgery.”

Simple eye surgery. That’s what it should have been.

“Look,” Stephanie sighed. “At least come out and eat dinner with Travis and me. He’s been camped out in our living room waiting for you since he drove you back from your follow-up appointment.”

I frowned. I hadn’t seen Travis properly since the surgery. Stephanie was the only one brave enough to attempt coming into my room lately, and that was just to drop off food. Sometimes I ate it; sometimes I didn’t. I hadn’t set eyes on her until just now, though, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle her appearing all beat up every time I looked at her.

“I didn’t know that Travis was still here,” I said.

“He’s been bored stupid. He even resorted to working from the couch.”

I exhaled. “Okay, I’ll come out. Just let me get a shower to freshen up.”

“Thank you, Cassia.”

I waited until she left and then gathered the clothes on my bed and slipped across to the bathroom as quietly as I could. I took a long time in the shower because, as much as I had missed him, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing if Travis looked different to me too.

As I washed my tangled hair, I regretted not doing it sooner. Even though my orange mass of curls was usually quite unmanageable when it was clean, they were rather disgusting when they were greasy. I tried to braid my hair but then gave up halfway down my back. Instead, I just pulled my beanie back on and decided to worry about it later.

When I was sure that I had wasted enough time, I headed out to the sitting area of my and Stephanie’s two-bedroom apartment. I noticed that there were blankets strewn all over one of the couches and felt a little guilty for it. Travis typically just stayed with me whenever he stayed over, but my door had been sealed shut since the surgery.

“Hey, beautiful,” Travis said. “It’s nice to see you.”

“Hi,” I replied. “Sorry, I’ve been really exhausted.”

I felt his arms move around me and let myself be hugged. I was still frightened to look at him.

“I was just telling Travis that we should make the most of the holidays while we can,” Stephanie said. “Well, this week of the holidays anyway. We need to go in for prep next week.”

I glanced at her and nodded. Stephanie, Travis, and I were teachers at St Lucy’s College for Girls. It was a Catholic high school for the private and wealthy of South Coast. It was quite a small school, but that only made it more exclusive. Stephanie taught art and craft, Travis taught science, and I taught religion and mathematics. We were in the first week of the fortnight-long holidays that broke up the second and third term. It was winter for us in South Coast, so I thought it would be the smartest time to get eye surgery. The only catch was, winter in South Coast meant that it was still sunny, just a little cooler, and with a slightly higher chance of rain than any other time in the year.

“Um, what did you have in mind?” I asked as I headed to sit at the small round table to the right of the kitchen. “To make the most of the holidays, I mean.”

“What about camping?” Travis offered.

He wandered over to sit beside me, and I looked down.

“In the winter?” I mumbled. “No thanks.”

“Why not? You like camping.”

I bit my lip. “I just don’t want to be around so much dirt when my eyes are still healing.”

“Oh, right,” he replied. “Sorry.”

“We could go dancing?” Stephanie said. “I’ll convince Brady to be my partner, and we can make a night of it.”

Brady was a physical education teacher at St Lucy’s. He and Stephanie went out together a lot, mainly because they were both interested in men and were somewhat effective at getting each other dates.

“That sounds fun,” Travis agreed. “What do you think, Cass?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to go out to a place where there are flashing lights everywhere.”

“Okay, well, what do you want to do, Cassia?” Stephanie asked curtly.

I sighed. “I really just want to stay here. You guys can do what you like, but I’m just not really feeling up to being around loads of people right now.”

She rolled her eyes and headed into the kitchen. I knew that I was being a little difficult, but it wasn’t without a good reason. Even my doctor had said that I would feel tired for the first week or so. Expecting me to be back to my usual self within a couple of days was a little unrealistic, even if I didn’t see weird things when I looked at people.

“Hey,” Travis whispered. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay, just a bit drained still.”

His fingers rested on my chin. “Why won’t you look at me?”

I swallowed and then slowly lifted my eyes. When they reached his face, I exhaled because I saw him the way that I always had. His brown eyes smiled at me, and I raised my hand to run through his light brown hair.

“Hi,” I said.

“There you are,” he answered. “Your irises still have a red ring around them. Are they sore?”

I shook my head. “Not so much sore, but it’s exhausting to keep them open for too long. Do they look bad?”

“No.” He smiled. “They just look a little purple since your eyes are blue. They’re actually kind of amazing.”

“Well, I’m sure they’ll heal with time.”

He nodded. “You know, I forgive you, Cassia.”

“Forgive me for what?” I asked.

“For being a bad girlfriend and neglecting me lately. I mean, I know you’re going through some stuff, but I want to be here for you. I just wish that you wouldn’t push me away.”

I sat back. “Travis, I haven’t neglected you. I had eye surgery two days ago. I’ve barely had the energy to get out of bed. That doesn’t make me a bad girlfriend.”