This has been hungry for a home and can't seem to find one. One of the reasons for making this place here, right?

Buzzer Shot

            Open. The first thing, the very first, should have been her. But it was the damn bedpan on a side tray bouncing the light - goddamn light - across dingy white hospital blankets. Under the cheap blankets, two lumpy shapes I understood to be my own knees. Shut. I opened again and shut immediately. Tried again. Next thing was the overhead florescent. Shut. Open. Finally, a ring of faces. The hope there was the weight of the earth. Was gravity defined.

The exposed skin, freed from gauze and tape, prickled with itch, but I resisted lifting my fingers to scratch at my new eyes. They waited. I felt the collective held breath of my wife of nine years, all three of my children, the magic doctor and an entourage of nurses and assistants. I found my blotchy altered face reflected in a camera lens as a young dark-haired man stood to the side, recording this large moment for television. I held with them as I pressed into the light like it was a solid thing. I caught my own breath and swallowed.

“What do you see?” asked the miracle doctor.

I blinked obediently, the light pushing back. I saw the voice now a face that was my surgeon. The scratchy tenor realized as surprisingly young, freckled and balding. Dr. Tabor was tall and thin enough, but shapeless in the way of those who rarely get exercise. It occurred to me that I was in better shape. I licked a circle around my lips. I needed time. I fell back into the arms of the darkness and floated for a long minute away from the faces of expectation. The faces now battling with themselves as creeping disappointment worked it out with resolve, the good fight rising optimistically over disbelief, a habit of hope. I couldn’t give it to them now. As badly as they wanted it.

In that small second, I saw plenty. My memory of light and shape from 20 years ago confronted with the real thing. The visible world - all that I took for granted before the reaction to penicillin. Before a 12-year old boy’s world slipped dark.

In that moment before closing my eyes, I had seen her, Donna, her face beautiful enough - just as everyone told me - and still no match for the one constructed of voice and touch and my nose against her neck. A small kindness in high school that became a marriage. That became the one sure thing I reached for and found. Over and over. Now, I saw myself without the need, without cane or hand or guide, and saw her moving away, walking wider circles, out of range.

I saw my children. Our boy, Kevin, looked like her. I knew that. The girls, Hannah and April, twins and nothing the same. All three, their confusion and wish to be like everyone else. To have a father who isn’t blind. Their child-focused disgust at the particulars of miracles, the bandages and stitches. Antiseptic covering evil smells. I wanted to give them the dream come true.

The good doctor, so skilled, rested his hand on April’s back. This, his chance to be a hero. A fortunate alignment of opportunity, intelligence, precision, practice and plain good luck. I saw his doubt, the sense of possible failure. His head spinning with questions as he ran back over the procedure and wondered just where things might have gone wrong. My eyes, his work.

“Honey?”

I avoided the eyes and scratched my nose instead. I straightened my legs, sat a little higher and reached for Donna, thinking of her belly now after the twins. Smooth, but rounded in a way it hadn’t been before. A little hill. My favorite pillow. I wanted her in the bed with me now. She took my fingers and pressed her thumb into the center of my palm. Always our signal for “it’s okay.”

“Daddy, can you see?”

Hannah asked all the questions. Gathered information for her sister. Had the most scrapes and scabs. I touched the air near her voice, eyes still closed. She came closer and I felt the weight of her hands press the corner of the bed.

Perhaps the television crew wanted it most, although not deepest. Donna wanted it for my sake first, I think, even though my sight would make her life easier. For the reality TV show, it would be the perfect ending. Miracles granted like lottery winnings to the randomly lucky. Bolster for the idea that anything can be fixed. My blindness, their opportunity.

I pictured a man and a woman somewhere, St. Louis maybe, leaning against their oak headboard, prime time after a late dinner. Winding down from a busy day. They watched and needed me to be healed. They wanted an arm around Donna, April on my shoulders, Kevin and Hannah running ahead, excited to show me everything I had been missing.

I opened my eyes again. The faces had barely moved. They were trying to be patient.

“Any light at all getting through?” The doctor’s face came in close as he held each eye wider with spread fingers and shined a small flashlight at each pupil.

“Any sight? Shapes maybe or dim movement?”

I thought of my father, the last person, the last thing I remembered from 20 long years ago. His hopes for me. The medication meant to help, that turned on me. The basketball playoffs we watched in the waiting room. His tanned hand on my knee. A shot at the buzzer. Round, orange, circling the rim.

I hesitated. Opened my mouth. Stopped. Then, “nothing.”

The collective breath sighed out in one huge rush, pooling on the sterile tile.

“Nothing? Nothing at all?”

I turned to the window and pretended not to notice a wave of green moving in the gusting summer winds, strong breezes gathering a rain, maple leaves exposing their lighter undersides.

The ball dropping through net. Game over.

Well, maybe. But not here. Not with the cameras. Not for the couple in St. Louis. Not with the nurses. Tonight in bed with Donna. Her hair. Then, tomorrow a browning banana for Kevin’s cereal. One thing at a time.