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Neither one of us corrected her.
“Now, step here on this scale,” the nurse said as she directed Viddy to the scale. “And we’ll get your weight, and then your blood pressure.”
“Close your eyes, Trance!” Viddy called.
Why I closed my eyes, I’ll never know. Maybe because she asked me to. Maybe because I knew it mattered to her. Whatever the reason, I closed my eyes until I heard her step back off the scale and the nurse move the weights back to the side.
After the nurse took Viddy’s blood pressure, followed by her pulse, she led Viddy into a room that had a ton of posters on the walls. One showing the nerves in the head. Another one telling what part of the brain did what.
The one that really interested me was the one that spoke about all the common types of blindness.
Walking over to the chart, I called over my shoulder. “What kind of blindness do you have?”
“Cortical Visual Impairment.” Viddy replied quickly. “Why?”
My eyes flicked over the multiple names until I found the one she was speaking of and started to read.
“This says here that the vision loss sometimes can be permanent, but most cases that isn’t so. What happened to you, exactly?” I asked over my shoulder.
“Viddy has nearly complete blindness in both eyes. When she was in her youth, she had a motorcycle accident that caused her head to make contact with a brick wall. All the swelling on her brain caused pressure to be put on her optic nerves, which in turn, cut off blood flow to those areas that needed it. The tissue became hypoxic and degraded until it only functioned minimally at best. Viddy’s case is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.” A man’s voice said from behind me.
I turned to stare at the older man. He reminded me of my pops.
He was older with nearly white hair, and a beard that was completely white. His eyes were a cool piercing green, and he was about my height, maybe a fraction of an inch shorter than my 6’0.
He was wearing bright purple scrubs with yellow trim. “A LSU fan?” I asked, extending my hand to him.
He smiled and shook it back. “Down to my marrow, my boy. I’m Dr. Morris. I’m Viddy’s neurologist. Are you her husband?”
“Ah, no. I’m just a...” I hesitated, looking over at Viddy. “Good friend.”
He smiled wistfully as if remembering a ‘good friend’ of his own before turning and regarding Viddy, who was now sitting on the exam table.
“Viddy, my dear. How are you doing?” He asked, taking a seat on the round stool near her feet.
She smiled, but kept her head pointed at me. “I’m well, Dr. Morris. How is your wife?”
“She’s doing perfectly. We have a new grandbaby we get to see all the time. It keeps her lively.” He replied. “So the nurse tells me you’ve been getting headaches. How about you tell me what’s been going on.”
Her head dropped as if collecting her thoughts, before she looked up again. This time, though, she turned her head in the doctor’s direction.
“Well, for the past six months or so...I’ve started seeing...things. Lights. Movements. The shadows have become a little more defined. Like right now I can tell that you’re in front of me, and Trance is against the wall. Radar is laying in the middle of the floor. Anything in high contrast has become much, much easier to make out. And my good spot over here,” she said indicating the left side of her face. “Has gotten sharper. I can see almost perfectly out of that one little sliver.”
My heart had started pounding when she started her explanation, and by the time she finished, I was in shock. I hadn’t realized she could see at all. Then again, I hadn’t really known what, exactly, ‘blind’ meant until I’d read the definition just a few moments ago on the poster.
Dr. Morris stood, going over to Viddy and shining his pen light over her eyes.
I moved to get a closer look, stopping just at the edge of her left side. I studied her pupils as the doctor shined it in first one eye, followed by the other.
“Tell me about these headaches. Do they happen towards the end of the day, when you first wake up? Or are they all the time?” Dr. Morris asked.
Then he took his hand and started at one side of her face, circling it around her head.
“I can make out that you are moving your hand. I can see that Trance is at my side. As for the headaches, they mostly start at the end of the day. The only time I get them when I wake up is if I’ve left my glasses on all night.” Viddy sighed.
“How do you know I’m the one at your side?” I queried.
She snorted. “You’ve got a lot more bulk than Dr. Morris does.”
