Corpse & Crown by Alisa Kwitney

Author:Alisa Kwitney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Published: 2018-11-28T21:13:03+00:00

19

The first forty-eight hours after Aggie’s surgery passed like a fever dream as she drifted in and out of sleep. Her eyes were bandaged to prevent any inadvertent rubbing and she was told to remain lying on her back, keeping as still as possible. Aware of Justine in the iron lung beside her, Aggie didn’t want to admit how trapped she felt as she slipped from memories to dreams and back again.

Sometimes Justine talked to her, mainly about politics, which sent her off to sleep again. At other times, Shiercliffe or one of the other nurses woke her to put drops in her eyes. Some of the drops burned, but this was to be expected.

At one point, Dodger came by to take her on a guided tour of the East End, but wound up getting them both lost in a maze of narrow, winding streets as a fog rolled in, obscuring everything.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m blind, anyway.” He turned to her, revealing marbles where his eyes ought to have been.

She woke up in a cold sweat from that dream, only to find Dodger sitting on her bed. “You’re not dead,” she said. “I dreamt you were dead.”

“Me? Nah,” he said, taking off his top hat. “Never happen. Want to know why?” He pulled an eye out of his hat, then another, and held them up to show that they were all Bio-Mechanical eyes that could blink at her from the palm of his hand. “I got eyes in the back of my head.”

She woke up with a shout, then lay there, feeling her own hands and throat, trying to decide if she was in another dream.

The bandages came off, and at first Aggie assumed the transplant had failed, because her vision was as blurry as it had been before. “Be patient,” Grimbald told her. “It will take at least a few weeks to see any improvement. As long as you’re not experiencing any new pains, we’re considering this a success.”

She was allowed to attend lectures again, wearing a pair of dark tinted glasses to shield her eyes, but not permitted to read or take notes. She kept the tinted glasses on all the time, even though they dimmed all the colors in the room and made her feel as though the world was permanently stuck at fifteen minutes before sunset. They protected her eyes, and that was more important than seeing colors.

After a fortnight, Aggie thought she noticed a slight sharpening in the outlines of things, and Grimbald proclaimed her well enough to remove the stitches.

Then, to her dismay, he ordered her back to bed rest for another twenty-four hours. She compromised by resting in the recovery room for an hour, and then removed the bandages from her eyes and began getting dressed. Lizzie knocked and opened the door to the recovery room without waiting for a response, making Aggie clutch her petticoat to her chest.

“Oh, thank heaven,” she said. “Thought you might be Grimbald for a moment.”

Lizzie walked over.

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