Patient Twelve

Chapter Three

"Bring your knees down," Sweeney told me.

I lowered my knees so that I was sitting straight with my legs crossed underneath me. Sweeney shifted his weight across the bed. He traced his fingers along the gauze wrapped around my face. His fingers picked at a section of the gauze on the side of my head. He picked off the tape that was securing it.

He unraveled the bandage. My heart was pounding harder in my chest as he took more and more of the gauze off. A dim light was creeping into my complete darkness. The light was pouring in from around the edges, but the middle of my vision was still black. The pressure of the gauze around my head was gone, but I could still feel something over my eyes. Sweeney grabbed whatever it was. I squeezed my eyes shut, and pain ran up my cheeks and into my temple.

Sweeney pulled back the coverings on my eyes and it pulled on my eyelashes. Sweeney gasped.

It seemed as if my eyelids were glued together. I struggled to peel them open. The wider I opened my eyes, the more the pain in my forehead grew. The skin around my cheeks and above my nose was tight.

Everything around me was blurry. I never needed to wear glasses before, but now it looked like everything was in a haze. It seemed like there was a film over my eyes.

A middle-aged man was sitting on the bed in front of me. This must be Dr. Sweeney. He had dark hair that looked like it was sprinkled with grey. He had thin wire glasses on. A large white lab coat was over his plaid shirt. This weird film over my eyes made colours appear softer. Sweeney's thin lips were spread into a wide smile.

I looked past him to see a wooden staircase leading up to a door. I squinted to try and see better. Far away was so blurry. I managed to decipher that there were two hallways leading to behind the stairs.

I could see my IV pole. I furrowed my brows and turned my head. The metal pole was slightly behind me. I shouldn't have been able to see that when I was staring straight.

"Can you see?" Sweeney asked.

"Yeah," I said. "But it's really blurry."

Besides me, it looked like a doctor's office. There was a large counter with a sink, and cupboards hanging above. There was also a large desk, and behind it was a worn-down office chair. This must be the chair that I listened to squeak.

"Look at me, Diana," he said.

He put his hand under my chin and tilted my head up. His eyes scanned my face. He brought his thumbs up to my cheeks. He pushed on the tight skin, and I hissed out in pain.

"Incredible," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "There is quite a bit of swelling, but nonetheless it seems to have worked."

"What did you do?" I asked.

The beeping of my heart monitor grew faster. Sweeney ran his thumbs up to the taught skin above my eyebrows. I gritted my teeth as the pain radiated into my temple.

"What do you see?" he asked me.

"Everything far away is blurry," I said. I squinted my eyes to see Sweeney better. His elbows were resting on his knee. He was leaning forward and inspecting my face. "Colours look weird too. They are so...dull."

I blinked a few times to try and remove the film from my eyes. It reminded me of when I would first open my eyes in the morning and I see the world in a haze. That would usually only lasts for a fraction of a second, but now I seemed to be trapped in it.

Sweeney lifted his finger up in front of me.

"Follow my fingers with your eyes, but don't move your head," he instructed me.