The Hermit's Story Rick Bass (popular books to read .txt) 📖

right behind the retina, packing the eye socket tight to prevent the retina from slipping loose again, until the connective tissues of life could reclaim it, reattaching and binding it to the back of the eye. That was the reason that Jim would have to keep his head tipped down for several days—to keep the bubble, tucked back in there like a Ping-Pong ball, from sliding to one side or another, wherein the retina, the wallpaper, might slide off.

Near-perfect calm and stillness would be required for the next six to seven days, to keep the bubble balancing there, like an egg perched not even in the cup of a spoon, but on the inverted arc of the spoon overturned—inflated tight-but-not-too-tight against the precarious curve of his eye.

Jim slumped in the outpatient chair. It was a beautiful day outside, nothing but blue sky with bright late-winter sunshine. “I don’t even mind the six or seven days,” Jim said. “I just mind the not-knowing for that period of time. I’ll do anything to get my sight back. Anything. Whatever it takes,” he said, “sign me up for it. Anything.”

The second operation was scheduled for later in the afternoon; they had six or seven more hours to kill, though Jim showed no inclination toward doing anything but remaining slumped in that chair.

“I thought it was all right,” he said. “I thought that because I could see patches of light, it was going to be okay.” He sighed deeply. “I knew I was fucked though when he held up two fingers and I couldn’t see them. He held them right in front of my face, and still I couldn’t see them. Just black.”

He slumped farther into his seat.

“The nurses all kept saying how lucky I was to have him—that he’s the best in the Northwest,” Jim said. “They said he’s a miracle worker.” Jim shrugged, talking more to himself than to Jerry. “I don’t know. I will say this, he’s a joker; he did try to make me feel better. It was kind of weird, and only a little bit funny, but at least he was trying.

“After he’d told me the bad news, he left me alone there for a minute to digest it. Said he had to go look at an x-ray. What he really did though was put on this disguise, one that made him look a little different. It was pretty real-looking, especially since I could see just out of the one eye. He was wearing a wig that was just slightly different from how his real hair was, and he had this fake rubber nose, again very realistic, that was just a little different from his real one—longer, and more angular. He had on a slightly different set of eyeglasses, too—not wildly different from the ones he’d been wearing, but a little different, so that you’d notice something had changed—and he was wearing a different smock, one that said ‘Doctor Smock’ instead of ‘Doctor Le Page.’

“When he saw me give him a double take, he laughed and said, ‘I’m not Doctor Le Page, I’m Doctor Smock. Don’t worry, you’re not going crazy: it happens all the time. Everyone thinks there’s just one of us—or sometimes they think we’re twins!’ He folded his clipboard to his chest and sidled in closer, far cheerier than Doctor Le Page had been. ‘What’s that old buzzard been telling you—that the odds are long you’ll ever see again?’ He leaned in close to my eye, spread it open with his fingers a little, and clucked. ‘I don’t know what that old buzzard told you—’

“‘He didn’t tell me anything,’ I said.

“‘But I can tell you’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to be all right. He’s a piece of shit, socially, that Doctor Le Page, but it’s true what they say, he’s a fine surgeon, and I can tell it’s going to turn out all right.’ Then he left the room,” Jim said, “and a minute later, he came back in, himself once more—Dr. Le Page—pretending not to know what was going on.

“It was too weird,” Jim said. “Man, I’ll tell you what, I am fucking wiped out. Can you imagine?” he said, his anger starting to rise. “What the fuck do you think he was thinking? It was just too weird. He must have gone to a shitload of time and trouble to get it all made up, manufactured just right, so that it seemed only a little different rather than a lot different.” He shook his head. “It was so weird. There wasn’t much change in him. Just one or two little things. He was hardly any different at all.”

The nurse, who had been listening as she filled out some forms at the typewriter, gave them a look that said clearly she’d heard enough moping, that it was time to move out and forward—to clear a space for the next patient. Through his one good eye, and sunk in his pensiveness, Jim noticed none of this, but Jerry said, “Come on, it’s a fine day. Let’s go outside,” and got him up and moving, and they made their way outside, back to their truck.

Jim had made reservations for them to stay at the navy base, and they stopped for lunch at a barbecue place on the way out to it. Several enlisted men came and went, young and hale in their camouflage fatigues, crewcuts, and heavy shining boots.

They drove on to the base. Jim cautioned Jerry to slow down. There were twenty-mile-per-hour speed limit signs posted around the schools, the commissary, the churches, and the hospital—and these limits were enforced totally, zealously, so that all the traffic slowed to a creep in these areas, and coming in from the wild bustle of the outside world, Jerry was disoriented by the effect. It was as if they had wandered or even descended into someplace where time, if not suspended from its usual rapid and alarming rate of decomposition, was at least slowed or postponed.

They registered