The Kleenex Box

The minute the optometrist plopped a box of Kleenex tissues down between us, I knew I was in trouble.

Yep, that's me... The genius. Nothing escapes my notice and sharp, analytical mind.

Although, I probably should have wondered about things when he asked me to step into his office for the results of my eye exam.

But what could be wrong? This was a normal, routine visit. You know the kind. I'd started college a few days before and this, the eye exam as part of the requirements of attending. I'd aced the physical - perfect health and a trim, athletic body - and now I just needed a sign-off on the vision exam.

No worries.

I'd had a vision problem in high school, but it was correctable with glasses.

The school I attended had switched from traditional blackboards to this weird green board my senior year. The yellow-colored chalk the district purchased seemed to blur into the new color of the board. Plus, the opthalmologist explained to my mom at that old appointment, I was working too many hours, performing two nights a week, active in church... "Give your eyes a break once in a while," he'd advised. And that had been that. I'd gotten glasses and gone on about my way.

But that was then, I suppose.

I was known for my sharp eye, both in sketching and photography. In fact, I'd decided to major in commercial art, minor in photography, and then grab a teaching degree as a backup.

"You need a back-up," my daddy told me when I unveiled my spectacular plan to him. "Art and photography are fine, especially since you're going the commercial art route, but you still have to pay the bills once you're done. Teaching is a good back-up."

But now, as I sat in this tiny office, watching as the young, just-out-of-college optometrist set the tissues between us and avoided my eyes, I felt like things might not be so spectacular, after all.

The silence spanned minutes, hours, decades... It began to push toward eternity before the doctor took a deep breath and looked at me.

"I've checked and checked and re-checked the results of your exam," he began.

In the back of my mind, auto-pilot-denial took over. the second check would be the recheck, I thought. That makes the third check... What? A re-re-check? A tri-check? Anal?

He shoved the box a little closer to my side of the desk, gently, as if he was dealing with a delicate, fragile thing instead of a strong, healthy 18-year-old. His hand hovered for a minute and then he snatched a tissue out of the box. It fluttered in the air for a second as he withdrew his hand and then flew toward him. He clutched it in tight fingers.

I took a deep breath. "And?" I thought the prompting would help, but still, he sat frozen, his face a mask of so many emotions... I tried again. "And?"

"It's not cancer, not anything like that," Dr. Weaver said, his voice rushed and raspy.

Cancer. Great. That hadn't even crossed my mind.

Breathe, I thought. He said it wasn't cancer. Nothing will be worse than the--

"Your retinal nerve is deteriorating." He clutched the tissue in claw-like fingers as he spoke. He looked at the poster directly above my head.

I tried to remember what the poster said, the image printed on it. A cut-away view of the eye, if I remembered correctly. I wondered which part of that poster had let me down in my own life, in my real body.

Dr. Weaver cleared his throat. "If my estimates are right, I believe you'll be blind by the time you're twenty-five."

I shook my head, the leaned it against the high, cool leather back of the chair. "Blind..." I echoed. My voice sounded soft and defenseless in that tiny office, barely a mouse-whisper.

Clearing his throat, the man sitting across from me continued. "Yes." He looked down at his notes again. "I'm afraid so."

I thought about the glasses I'd gotten a few years before. "But there's some correction ... right?" I breathed, the moments trapped in my mind. The clock behind him confirmed the movement of time, but I had no sense of it.

He cleared his throat again. Clearing the throat, my mind informed me. A bad sign.

"No. No, I don't believe so." He looked directly at me. "I want you to see an opthalmologist," he said. His tone was light and gentle but it felt like nails in the coffin of my future. "I want you to see someone who knows more than I do. And new treatments are coming along all the time. This isn't hopeless."

"Really?" I tried to laugh but realized my face was bathed in tears. I swiped at them with my hands, then accepted the tissue he offered - a new one from the box, not the one he still held like a security blanket. "It feels pretty hopeless to me..."

He nodded. Another long, eternal pause. "Is there anyone I can call for you? Your mother, maybe?"

"My mom died last year. In November." I don't know why I felt like he needed to know when she passed, but I almost told him the date.

He flinched like I'd struck him in the neck and said, more to himself than to me, "Not a year yet..." and then louder, "Your father?"

"No." I stood and pulled my car keys from my purse. "I just live right there." I pointed to indicate the three blocks to my home. "Just there and a turn onto the back road."

He nodded again, as if he couldn't think of anything else to do with his head. "And you're okay to drive?"

"For now..."

He reached out to shake my hand. I took it and I realized this was probably the first time he'd had to give truly bad news. His hand was shaking worse than mine. "Thank you," I said. And I meant it.

But he was shaking his head. "I didn't do anything."

I nodded toward the tissue box. "For the Kleenex, then."

"Okay," he said and walked me to the door. As I left, I heard him say, "I'm so sorry."

I didn't cry until I got into the car.

Ju