I close my lids so Jeremy doesn’t have to look at me.
Doctor Lively is on the phone; I can tell by the one-sided conversation. Jeremy takes my hand and rubs it with his thumb.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Not really.” Part of me wants to pull my hand away and part of me doesn’t. Now I feel like he’s just here because I’m a sad case and not because he actually wants to be with me. But I want him here by my side. I feel so scared and alone.
“It’s going to be fine. James says this stuff happens and it’s totally fixable.”
“This stuff happens? To who? Old people? People with eye problems, probably. I have twenty-twenty vision.”
“The important thing to keep in mind is that you’re going to get better really soon, and then things can go back to normal.”
“Normal,” I scoff. “What’s normal anymore? I have no idea.”
“You can stay with me while you heal.” He sits down on the side of the bed and takes my hand into his lap. I try to pull away, but he won’t let me.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I mumble, feeling massively sorry for myself.
“You didn’t ask. And it’s a done deal, so don’t argue with me.”
I sigh, trying to think of how to turn him down. I can’t let him do this. He’s already vulnerable enough. Taking care of an invalid will send him back to the drugs to escape.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because. It’s a lot of work taking care of a sick person.”
“I know that. I’ve been around sick people before, you know.” He sounds like he’s laughing at me.
“Not someone who can’t see.”
His arm moves, and I take that as a shrug. “How hard can it be? I’ll get you a cane and you can bang around the house to find your way.”
I can’t help but smile. His style of caregiving sounds a lot like me fending for myself. For some reason, it makes me happier. “Nice. What if I fall down your stairs?”
“I’ll nail boards across them or put up a baby gate.”
I laugh. “Can you see me flipping over the top of that gate and falling down the stairs? I can.”
He rubs my arm and lowers his voice. “I’ll take good care of you. I promise.”
“Do you even have a place to live?”
“I do, as a matter of fact. I just have to talk to my sister Jana about it.”
“Why?”
“No reason. Just want her to be able to clean it up for us first.”
“Great. She’ll love having to be my cleaning lady.” This just keeps getting worse.
“She wouldn’t think about it like that, I promise.”
We run out of things to say, and the noises of the emergency room intrude on our little space. A nurse comes in and starts asking me questions that I try to answer from memory. Jeremy fills in the missing information from stuff in my wallet.
“You ready to prep for surgery?” a new voice says. This guys smells like lemons.
“Already?” My blood goes ice-cold, and I start to tremble again. Someone puts a warm blanket over my legs.
“Babe, you’re going to be fine.” It’s Jeremy again. Calling me babe. It makes me want to cheer and weep at the same time. He gets up and lets my hand go. Weeping wins out when I realize him leaving makes me feel more alone than ever.
“She is going to be fine,” assures a woman. “She’ll be done in a few hours, so you can wait in the post-op waiting room. Second floor, room two-ten. Sign in at the nurses’s station so they know who you are and what patient you’re there for. With the patient’s permission, they’ll update you on her condition.”
I feel a pen pushed into my hand. “Sign here. I’ll put the pen down on the paper and you just need to do your best with the signature part.”
“What am I signing?”
“I’m going to read the whole thing out to you right now. Are you ready?”
I nod, numbly letting her words wash over me. Details about my surgery, the risks, and the condition I have.
Ready or not, Operating Room, here I come.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“ARE YOU COMFORTABLE?”
IT’S JEREMY again. Being a mother hen. He hasn’t stopped since I was discharged yesterday. Three days together in the hospital, and he’s hardly left my side. The nurses all commented on how he slept in the chair next to me each night. None of them had the heart to tell him to leave. I think the fact that he’s so adorable worked in his favor there. Rules were bent and broken.