The Eyes That Could Not See
Dr. Gustave Stine was given the difficult task of breaking the bad news to the young patient, Melinda Woodward. Being the bearer of bad tidings was no rare occurrence for the psychiatrist; in fact, it was part of his job description. As the psychological adjustment counselor of the Zebulon Pickering Institute, it was his responsibility to help patients with physical disabilities adapt to normal life, at least from a mental health standpoint.
When Gustave entered Melinda's room, he found her sitting up in bed, her eyes covered by thick bandages.
"Hello, Miss Woodward," he said in a mild voice that conveyed no emotion. "I'm Dr. Stine."
"Stine? You're the shrink in this place, aren't you?" the patient asked, barely concealing her cynicism.
"Yes, I am," he replied taking no offense at her colloquial reference to his profession. "Do you mind if I call you Melinda?"
"Suit yourself, Doc. You don't mind if I call you Doc, do you?"
"Not at all. I've come to talk to you about your operation."
"It didn't work, did it?" she asked with a brittle laugh.
"Technically, no."
"What exactly does that mean, Doc? I'll either be able to see or I won't."
"Melinda, you mustn't get discouraged. There is always hope for the future. In the past five years alone the advancements in medical science ...."
The psychiatrist was interrupted by her sudden laughter.
"Discouraged?" the sightless girl repeated, laughing hysterically. "Doc, you need to brush up on your textbooks. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm delighted that I'm blind."
"People in your situation often find denial the easiest route."
"You do understand English, don't you, Dr. Stine?"
"Yes, I do. And what's more, I understand what you're going through right now."
"I don't mean to be disrespectful, Doc. I know you mean well and that you are only trying to help me, so please don't be offended by what I say."
"I assure you I'm not offended."
"Good. Because then I won't hurt your feelings if I say that you don't know Jack shit about what I feel right now."
"Thank you for your concern, but it's your emotions that interest me, not my own."
"I told you. I'm glad the operation failed."
"No one wants to be blind in a world full of so much beauty. You must have wanted to see or you wouldn't have gone through with the operation in the first place."
"Now I get it," Melinda declared with a smug smile. "You never read my file, did you?"
"Of course, I've read it. I wouldn't be here talking to you if I hadn't."
"I'm not referring to my file here at Pickering, Doc. I'm talking about the one on the years I spent at the Hastings School for the Blind."
"I'm afraid I didn't have access to those records. Only your current medical information is kept at this institution."
"I think you had better request a copy of those records from Hastings. You'll be saving us both a lot of time."
* * *
"Here are the files you requested, Doctor," Nurse Zelma McLean announced, as she handed Gustave Stine several overstuffed manila envelopes.
"All those?" he asked incredulously.
"I assume so. This is what the Hastings School sent over."
"I guess I've got my work cut out for me," the psychiatrist said with a sigh as he reached for the top envelope and removed the folder inside.
By midnight Gustave had read through four of the six files, but he had learned little other than the fact that Melinda was born blind and that her wealthy parents enrolled her in the exclusive Hastings School at an unusually young age. Most of the school's records dealt with the girl's extraordinary intelligence, excellent grades, keen adaptability and positive outlook.
Positive outlook?
Gustave's eyebrows rose with skepticism when he read that notation.
It was the fifth file that proved most enlightening. In it, her doctor noted that eighteen-year-old Melinda had formed a bond with one of the teachers at the Hastings School. Their close friendship continued for some time, but that was not unusual in such institutions. The young, visually impaired students were frequently cut off from a normal social environment, and most of them interacted only with their families, other students and the staff. What was unusual in Melinda's case was that the teacher in question later committed suicide.
It was well after midnight when Gustave removed his bifocals and rubbed his burning eyes. He was about to close the file and call it a night when he spotted, at the bottom of the page, a reference to experimental laser surgery.
Did Melinda have her hopes of seeing destroyed once before? he wondered. If so, that would certainly contribute greatly to her current negative frame of mind.
Intrigued, Gustave got himself a hot cup of coffee, took off his jacket, loosened his tie and read the information in the remaining file.
* * *
"Hello, Melinda. How are you feeling today?" the psychiatrist asked as he entered the patient's room the following morning.
"Ah, Dr. Stine, I presume. I'm doing all right, which by my definition means 'same shit, different day.'"
"I guess to you one day is pretty much the same as any other."
"You can say that again, Doc."
"Of course, some days are slightly better than others. Take for instance the day the doctors removed the bandages from your first surgery. That was the day you first saw colors, wasn't it?"
"The Hastings School records. You've been doing your homework, I see."
"Yes. You did see—literally. Your surgery was not only a success; it was somewhat of a miracle. Your doctors were frankly amazed at such dramatic improvement."
"Naturally, they'd look at it that way. Two points for modern medicine."
"Regardless of how you feel now, I'm sure at the time you were overjoyed by the gift of sight."
"Gift? I'd hardly call it that. It was like giving a bicycle to a goldfish."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"It's not important, Doc," Melinda replied. "Besides, I'm sure you are a very busy man. You must have a lot more important things to do than listen to me piss and moan."
"As a matter of fact, I don't," Gustave insisted, pulling up the visitor's chair. "I don't have a thing to do this morning and nowhere to go. I want to hear about the months when you could see—and about the accident."
"Oh, yes, the accident. I'll bet you're very curious about that."
"I admit I am."
"Well, I don't feel like talking about it."
The psychiatrist was being dismissed. He could hear it in the condescending tone of her voice and see it in the stubborn set of her jaw. So many patients in her elevated social and economic class treated their doctors as they did their domestic servants. Even at her young age—she was only twenty-two—Melinda Woodward had that air of privilege, wealth and superiority.
It's time to bring her back down to my level, Dr. Stine decided.
"Perhaps you'd rather talk about Ryan Kincaid then."
"How did you learn about Ryan?" she asked, her lip quivering.
"It was in your file."
"What did it say about him?"
"That the two of you were close friends."
A tear fell from beneath her bandage.
"And?"
"That he committed suicide."
She turned her head away, but Gustave could still hear her gentle sobs.
"Melinda, I know it sounds like a dull cliché, but if you talk about it, you just might feel better."
"Nothing can make me feel better, Dr. Stine. Now please go and leave me alone."
Her voice held no trace of bitterness or superiority, only profound sadness.
* * *
Every day thereafter Dr. Stine faithfully visited Melinda. Each time he did, she exhibited either cool condescension or morbid self-pity.
That's quite all right, Gustave thought. I can afford to be patient; time is on my side. The Pickering Institute will not release Melinda until I give my approval.
Dr. Stine soon learned, however, that time was not necessarily on anyone's side. One evening just after eleven, he received an emergency telephone call at home. Melinda Woodward had attempted to take her own life.
"What happened?" he asked the nurse on duty at the hospital as he waited to speak to the emergency room physician.
"She broke a drinking glass and tried to slit her wrists with one of the fragments."
Gustave was shaken. He had never had a patient so distraught that he or she tried to commit suicide.
If Melinda had died, I would have been responsible, he thought with horror. I knew she was depressed, but I never dreamed she would attempt to take her own life.
Through the difficult months that followed the failed suicide attempt, Gustave desperately tried to reach his patient, to break down those defensive walls she was hiding behind. But the harder he tried, the more she withdrew, and the more she withdrew, the less patient he became.
"You know, Melinda, if you would only open up and talk to me, you would be able to leave here and go home to your family."
"Lucky me," she replied sarcastically.
"It doesn't sound to me like you want to go home."
"Why bother? My parents will only send me somewhere else. Oh, it will be first class all the way, no doubt. Some outrageously expensive place where I'll be well taken care of—someplace where I won't get in their way is more like it."
"I don't think your parents sent you to either Hastings or Pickering to get you out of the way. They wanted you to have the best possible care, to give you the chance ...."
"Oh, what the hell do you know, Doc?" Melinda shouted angrily. "My parents sent me away before I was old enough to walk. For twenty long years, they only came to visit me on Christmas and occasionally on my birthday—when they could remember what day it was, that is."
"Is that why you've become so bitter? Because you feel neglected by your parents?"
"Good question. But then that's your job, isn't it, asking questions? That's part of the shrinks' stock in trade. I have one for you, Doc. Why are you trying so desperately to save me? Are you afraid that losing a patient will look bad on your resume?"
"Partly yes," he admitted truthfully. "But I also don't want to see you make the same mistake that Ryan Kincaid made."
That statement struck a nerve, as Gustave hoped it would.
"You don't know anything about Ryan, so just leave him out of it."
"I know he took the coward's way out."
Melinda blindly swung out at the psychiatrist, and Gustave had to grab her before she fell off the bed.
"Ryan was no coward. He was warm and loving and sensitive, not like the rest of us."
"It was more than a close friendship between you two, wasn't it?"
When Melinda did not answer, Gustave reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders.
"Wasn't it?" he repeated, the volume of his voice rising in urgency.
Dr. Freud would hardly have approved of his methods, but then Dr. Freud had never had to deal with Melinda Woodward.
Her tears started to fall, and that internal wall began to crack.
"How could I help but fall in love with him? He was the most wonderful person I had ever met. In addition to Braille, Ryan taught me to see. He introduced me to Shakespeare and Shelley, to Beethoven and the Beatles. Every day brought new and exciting experiences. For the first time, I smelled lilacs and roses; held a warm, soft kitten; tasted a double chocolate sundae; listened to bagpipes; and learned to play the harmonica."
"He must have been very special, indeed," Gustave agreed.
He phrased his next question carefully.
"Did the other students enjoy his teaching methods as much as you did?"
"I assume what you're trying so delicately to ask is whether there was anything sexual between us."
"No, Melinda. I just wanted to know if yours was a special friendship he didn't share with the other students."
"At first he treated me no differently than he did the others, but as we spent more and more time together, we fell in love. It was no adolescent crush, Doc. Ryan asked me to marry him."
"And what was your reply?"
"I said, 'yes,' without any hesitation. He didn't have to ask me twice! What I couldn't understand was why such an intelligent, loving, wonderful man would want to be tied down to a blind wife."
"In case you weren't aware of it, Miss Woodward, you are a very beautiful young woman."
"Only on the outside, Doc."
"What went wrong, Melinda?" Gustave asked, ignoring her observation.
"I'm glad it's Melinda again. A minute ago we had regressed to Miss Woodward. Since I'm about to bear my soul, I'd like to think we were on a first-name basis."
Gustave took her hand and held it in his own, a most unprofessional gesture, but what she had to tell him was no doubt going to be exceedingly painful for her.
"We had been engaged about two months when the administrator of the school paid me a visit. He told me of a new procedure that might give me partial vision. You were right; I was overjoyed at the thought of being able to see. Not only for myself, but I believed that if I were no longer blind, then I wouldn't be a burden on Ryan."
When Melinda began to cry, her soft sobs were barely audible.
"But I was shocked when I learned that Ryan was less than thrilled about the operation."
"He was probably afraid something might go wrong."
"No. Just the opposite: he was afraid the operation would be a success."
"You're not making any sense. Why wouldn't he want you to gain your eyesight?"
"Remember when I said I couldn't understand why a man would want to be tied down to a blind wife? After the operation, I found out the answer to that question. Ryan wasn't there with me when the doctor removed the bandages. I didn't see him for the first time until later that evening, in the darkness of the hospital room. He came in when the lights were out. When he took me in his arms and held me close to him, I could feel him trembling. I reached over and turned on the light."
Melinda couldn't go on for some time.
"What was wrong with him?" Gustave finally asked.
"He had been badly burned as a child. What was left of his face was monstrous. Even I who had been blind my whole life found him hideously ugly."
"What happened then?"
"I stared at him in horror and then I ... I ... Oh, God, forgive me! I pulled away from him. Ryan ran from the room. I never saw him again."
"How did he kill himself?"
"Does it matter? An overdose of pills, slit wrists, a gun to the temple, a noose around the neck—dead is dead. What really killed him was a broken heart, and that was all my doing."
"It wasn't your fault. You had no idea what to expect or how to react."
"Don't you get it, Doctor? If I hadn't gotten my vision back, Ryan would still be alive, and the two of us would be happily married."
"Is that why you didn't want to try the second surgery after the accident? You felt guilty about Ryan's death?"
"What accident, Doctor? Are you as blind as I am? There was no accident. I put the acid in my eyes on purpose."
* * *
Melinda Woodward stood in the lobby of the Zebulon Pickering Institute, her parents on her right side, her seeing-eye dog, Shakespeare, sitting patiently on her left.
"Are you ready, Melinda?" Horace Woodward asked, glancing impatiently at his new Rolex. "You do have a plane to catch."
"He said he'd be here. Can't we wait five more minutes, Father?"
"This must be him now," Mrs. Woodward said when he saw a man running from the parking lot.
"Sorry, I'm late. I was afraid I wouldn't make it here in time. The traffic was horrendous," the doctor apologized, trying to catch his breath.
"I'd just about given up on you."
Melinda introduced Dr. Stine to her parents, who, anxious to be on their way, insisted on taking their daughter's bags out to the car while she said her farewells to the psychiatrist.
"Are they gone yet?" she whispered to him.
"Yes. They seem to be in a bit of a hurry."
"They always are. After they put me on a plane to Boston, they're going off to France."
"What's in Boston?"
"College. An institution of higher learning for the visually impaired, or so my parents claim. It's actually what I told you it would be: an outrageously expensive place where people will watch over me, so my parents can go about enjoying their lives."
"At one time I would have thought that comment reeked of self-pity, but I know now it's just your no-holds-barred honesty speaking. Still, even if you're not going home to the arms of your family, at least you're getting out into the world where you belong."
Melinda bent over and patted Shakespeare's head.
"And I'm not entirely alone. I've got man's—no make that person's—best friend here to keep me company."
"He'll take good care of you, won't you, Willie?"
"Willie? How common! It's William, or Will, perhaps, but never Willie."
Melinda was silent for a few moments and then held her hand out to Gustave.
"I want to thank you, Dr. Stine. It took a lot of patience to put up with me."
"It was worth it. You're an incredible woman, Melinda. In your few years on earth, you've lived through some pretty tough experiences and survived. I don't think you'll have too many problems living with your blindness."
"Well, Doc, at the risk of sounding morbid or depressed, I find my blindness a comfort. I've found out the hard way that vision can distort a person's perception. When I saw Ryan with my eyes I reacted with horror, probably in much the same way as most of the people who met him reacted. But before the operation, I saw with my heart all the beauty that was inside him. That's why I spilled the acid in my eyes and destroyed the vision that the doctors had so miraculously bestowed upon me. I realized that it was only when I was blind that I could truly see."
Salem can see and he can hear; he just doesn't listen very well.
