My first instinct upon waking to find my eyelid sealed shut is to leap out of bed in panic, which leads to my second instinct which is to vomit all over the floor. The condition of my eyes has always been a sensitive topic to me. As a child, the routine trips to the eye doctor which did not result in me vomiting all over the floor required frequent intervals of floor-rest. This is a technique where I fall to the ground and lay very still until the cold sweats pass. Fortunately, on this morning, I manage to pull off this maneuver before I lose last night’s squid-stuffed squid across my carpet.
When my vision finally clears in my good eye, I blindly attempt to reach my arm over the edge of my desk to push off my cell phone so that I may seek help. I succeed only in knocking my computer speaker onto my face and pulling a muscle in my right shoulder. Fortunately, the combined pain from these two events actually distracts me from my nausea long enough to sit up and grab my phone with my functioning arm before returning to the safety of my carpet. I congratulate myself on my accomplishment, and then begin thumbing through my contacts list so that I can receive medical aid.
Here’s the thing about my contacts list: I hate all my friends, and they aren’t super keen on me either. I figure there are at least three names on the list however who are at least in some way responsible for my well being: my mother, my girlfriend Autumn, and Matt. Only two of these people are in the same state, so I start at the top of the list.
*ring, ring*
A groggy voice answers the phone. “…hello?”
“Autumn, I’m dying, I need you to drive me to the hospital.”
Autumn, unconcerned: “…what?”
Me: “I need you to drive me to the hospital.”
I imagine she rubs her eye or something at this point. “What time is it?”
I cannot see my alarm clock from my strategic position on the floor. I take a wild stab at it. “7:30?”
Several seconds of silence pass as she weighs the pros and cons of doing what I say. Finally: “Can’t you do it yourself?”
I actually consider this for a few moments before remembering why I’m still on the floor. “No, I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
There are several more seconds of silence. She really, really doesn’t want to do this so I help her out. “I guess I might be able to take the bus…”
She is relieved. “Are you sure?” (this question is probably rhetorical)
No. “Yeah, I’m tough like that, you know?”
She knows the opposite, but she sort of owes it to me not to laugh so she mumbles something about hoping I feel better and then goes back to sleep. Next contact:
*ring, ring*
A groggy voice answers the phone. “…hello?”
“Matt, I’m dying I need you to take me to the hospital”
“…”
“…”
“…really?”
“Well…” It seems like too much work to explain. “Yes.”
“Shit…” A few moments. “Do I have time to shower?”
I tell him he probably has time to shower, and while he does I try to drag myself to the stairs but don’t quite make it so I wait until Matt arrives and helps me out to his Rav 4. “Beutel?”
“Beutel.”
Beutel is the name of our on-campus health clinic. Driving to the clinic I actually begin to feel a little bit better about my eye. It’s not that I know I’m going to be healed soon, it’s because I begin to feel afraid I’m going to catch something much worse: like the Ebola virus or mononucleosis (this actually happens later). The unofficial student motto of the place is “If you aren’t sick coming here, you sure as hell will be when you leave.” As long as it’s not my eye that is sick when I leave however I’ll be ecstatic.
Eventually we arrive, and I make it up the steps to the clinic without too much assistance. The smell of Lysol and rubbing alcohol hits me like a dirty mop upon entering the complex, but I shrug it off. Matt grabs a handful of free condoms from the Planned Parenthood bowl and sticks them in his jean pockets while I approach the student worker at the reception desk. “Hi, I’d like to get my eye fixed, please.” The girl looks up from her organic chemistry homework like I had been specifically employed to ruin her day.
“Fill out this form and have a seat over there.”
I feel like my case warrants immediate emergency care, but I am in a forgiving mood so I fill out her stupid forms anyway.
The waiting area is fairly typical, row of chairs against either wall separated by surfaces on which to stack magazines. Matt and I choose chairs on the far end of the room and try not to make eye contact with the other patients in order to avoid infection. One has the audacity to cough as we pass him, so we make some offhand remarks to each other graphically depicting his murder.
Matt: “Matt draws his katana and makes a single clean slice diagonally through the cretin’s mid-section.”
Me: “The victim pauses for a moment in shock, and tries to assess the damage as the top half of his body slowly slides off of the bottom half. His body erupts in a fiery explosion.”
Matt: “Matt coolly flicks the blood off his katana and re-sheaths it. The room applauds.”
This goes on for about 20 minutes until my name is finally called by an obese geriatric lady wearing a hideously noisy blouse, presumably so that she can be recognized as a legitimate healthcare professional. I tell Matt if I’m not back in 15 minutes to call the police and follow her to a small uncomfortable room where she begins taking my blood pressure and interrogating me overly loudly.
“WHICH EYE IS BOTHERING YOU?”
There is now a thermometer in my mouth, so I just point to the eye that is still crusted shut. She does not understand, although she is looking directly at me. So I mumble, “muh uft”. This works somehow, as she nods and scribbles something down and removes my thermometer.
“ALLERGIC TO ANY MEDICATION?”
“No.” There is something off about her.
“WHEN DID YOU FIRST NOTICE A PROBLEM WITH YOUR EYE?”
“About 40 minutes ag…”
“WHICH EYE IS BOTHERING YOU?”
I begin to have nightmarish fantasies about accidently getting a spleenectomy or something. “My left…”
“OH MY GOD…YOUR EYE LOOKS AWFUL!”
I think I notice her clipboard is upside down.
“OK, YOU’RE DONE”
There’s no way this was my doctor. “Wait…what’s wrong with me?”
“I THINK THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR EYE. YOU’LL HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE A DOCTOR. YOU CAN GO TO THE WAITING ROOM NOW.”
“But I just came from the waiting room.”
“NO, THAT’S JUST THE PRE-PROCESSING HALL. THE WAITING ROOM IS OUT HERE.”
Sure enough there is another goddamn waiting room. This one is even more populated then the pre-processing hall, which I return to briefly to fetch Matt and inform him of the situation. He sees me coming, “Victory?”
I shake my head. “No, I just beat level one. It turns out the princess is in another castle.”
He nods, this requires no explanation. We enter the level two waiting room together and find some new isolated chairs. The time on my phone says it’s after nine o’clock now, and then my phone begins to vibrate. I have an incoming call from Autumn. I sort of remember that I’m supposed to be mad at her, but I don’t really have the conviction required to hold things against people.
“Hellooooo?”
“Hey cutie. Did you make it to the doctor?”
“Yeah. Matt drove me.”
“Good, I wanted to check and make sure you were ok. I’m driving to school now. I have an exam today. Am I going to see you later?”
“Yeah, they’ll probably call you to identify my body. I hope that’s not during your exam.”
“Haha, that’s not funny.”
“You should take me out for ice creams when I get out of here. This whole ordeal is very traumatic to me.”
“Aww…I would but I wanna look over my flash cards again a few more times before the test. How about tonight?”
“Yeah ok…”
“Bye lover!”
“Bye.”
After hanging up I remember that my eye is damaged and feel sick again, so I lie down in my chair. I want my mom.
Matt, who had been playing flash games on his iPhone while I was talking to Autumn, leans over to show me what level 67 of his tower defense game looks like, and isn’t his helicopter unit that transforms into a giant robot the coolest thing ever? I agree that it is, and then my name is called again by the loud obese woman. Matt wishes me luck and I am lead to a slightly larger but even more uncomfortable examination room to wait for the doctor. The wall is saturated with posters detailing genital diseases, and I have to lie down on the table to stop from vomiting.
Finally, the door opens and my doctor enters the room. I hate her immediately.
“So,” She looks down at my seven pages of information on her clipboard but then decides it’s too much to read. “What seems to be the problem, Michael?”
I point to my eye (which is still crusted shut because I haven’t been brave enough to touch it). “My eye is stuck.”
There must not still be twelve other students in the waiting room, because she begins wasting time having a conversation with me. “You are from the northeast, aren’t you?”
I nod.
She waits for me to ask her how she knew that. I don’t, so she asks for me. “Do you know how I knew that?”
“Umm…it has my place of birth on that information sheet?”
Disappointment shows on her face as she glances back down at the clipboard. “But I could tell before I saw that.”
“Oh. Ok, how?”
She beams. “From your social security number! The first 3 numbers are a regional code. Most people don’t know that.”
I start to wonder if she is really my doctor or just an autistic woman who memorizes social security numbers playing dress-up. “That’s pretty cool, I guess.”
Satisfied, she gets down to business by putting on some spectacles. “So what seems to be the problem with this eye of yours?”
This information must not be encoded in my social security number, or in the fluid visibly dripping from my eye socket. “I think it’s infected.”
The part where she examines my eye goes by too quickly for me to notice. The waiting room must be full again. To save time, she simultaneously begins to perform some medical procedure on my eye while explaining to me what the problem may be. A vial of terrifying red liquid appears in her hand and I find myself pinned to the examination table with the other. I am afraid. “There may be something stuck in your eye.” The cap on the vial has been removed, and I instinctively recoil. “I am going to drop this dye into your eye, it will let us see if there is anything stuck inside.” The vial is directly above my eye, I try to edge away but she pins me tighter. “Open your eye.” Although I try my very best to do this, I am psychologically completely unable so she takes the liberty of prying it open herself. I stifle a scream, and tears begin to flow as I feel the dye enter my eye and she releases her hold on me. It’s over. She shakes her head and writes me a prescription for antibiotic eye drops. “I don’t see anything in your eye, just put these drops in your eye every day and come and see me in a week if it’s not better.” Before she exits, she turns around and says to me: “Jesus…I’ve never seen anyone who is so squeamish about their eyes before.” I am left on the table, broken and crying.
I recover myself and stagger, in a stupor, back to the waiting room. Matt gets up and follows me to his car. “Ice creams?” He says.
I smile. “Ice creams.”
