Other Days, Other Eyes by Bob Shaw

Author:Bob Shaw [Shaw, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1972-07-03T18:12:33+00:00

Chapter Seven

Eric Hubert was a surprisingly young man to have reached the pinnacle of his profession. He was plump, pink and probably had lost his hair prematurely, because he was wearing one of the ultra-new spray-on wigs. A black organic adhesive had been painted over his scalp, forming an exaggerated widow’s peak, and black silky fuzz had been air-blasted on to it. Garrod found it difficult to cast him as one of the best eye specialists in the western hemisphere. He felt obscurely glad that Esther could not see Hubert as she sat bolt upright at the other side of the huge, smooth desk.

“This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” Hubert said in a deep, drawling voice which was completely at variance with his appearance. “All those tiresome tests are behind you now, Mrs. Garrod.”

This sounds bad, Garrod thought. If the news was good would he have started off like that? Esther leaned forward slightly, her small face apparently composed behind the tinted glasses. Hubert’s relaxed tones seemed to be providing comfort in her darkness. Garrod, escaping into irrelevancy, remembered a middle-aged friend of his Aunt Marge’s who wanted to learn the piano and, being self-conscious about her age, had chosen a blind tutor.

“What did the tests show?” Esther’s voice was firm and clear.

“Well, you’ve taken a real punch on the jaw with this one, Mrs. Garrod. The cornea and lens capsule of each eye have been opaqued by the flash, and—at the present state of the art—there is nothing that optical surgery can do for the condition.”

Garrod shook his head disbelievingly. “Surely people get cornea transplants every day. And the opacity of the lens—isn’t that the same as a cataract? What’s to stop you performing both operations at suitable intervals?”

“We’re dealing with an entirely new physical condition here. The actual structure of the cornea has been altered in such a way that grafts would be rejected within a few days. In fact, we’re lucky that progressive degeneration of the tissue hasn’t taken place. We could, of course, remove the lens capsules in the same way—as you quite rightly pointed out—we treat an ordinary cataract.” Hubert paused and fingered his incongruously demonic widow’s peak. “But without a healthy, transparent cornea in front to transmit light your wife would be no better off.”

Garrod glanced at Esther’s peaceful face and quickly looked away again. “I must say I find it utterly incredible that a pig’s heart could be put into my chest almost as a matter of routine, yet a simple eye operation…”

“In this case the operation would not be simple, Mr. Gar-rod,” Hubert said. “Look, your wife has taken a bad kick on the shins, and now she’ll just have to get up and keep right on walking.”

“Is that so?” Hubert’s trick of using analogies like punches on the jaw and kicks on the shin when referring to the catastrophe of being blinded suddenly enraged Garrod. “It seems to me that…”

“Alban!” Esther’s voice was strangely regal. “Mr. Hubert has given me the best attention and advice that money can buy.

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