I let out a nervous laugh.
“What does that even mean?”
But my heart was racing.
He didn’t explain.
His hands started moving again. Slower now. Shaking so badly I could feel it through the gauze.
The last layer came away.
Light pierced through my eyelids.
I gasped.
At first, everything was a blur of white and gold.
It felt like staring straight into the sun. It hurt. It was the most beautiful pain I’ve ever felt. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I blinked, and blinked, and blinked.
Shapes began to form. Soft at first. Then the edges started to come.
Lines sharpened.
And then colors flooded in. All at once. Like someone had knocked over every can of paint in the world.
I could see.
I could see the world for the first time in thirty-eight years.
A blue curtain. Gray machines with little green lights. A pale ceiling with a water stain in one corner shaped like a kidney bean. A window with white blinds, and through it, a slice of sky.
