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I called Lucien back into the room and asked him to show me how the software Charlotte sent worked on my laptop. Lucien was pushing seventy-five, but he was still sharp as a whip. He got it up and running, and showed me how to speak into it, and how to have that read back to me. Then he left me to it.
I toyed with the mic for a good ten minutes, feeling supremely stupid. But the question needed answering.
You want to learn how to live blind? Then fucking learn, snowflake. There is no other way.
Except that wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’twantto learn to function blind. I didn’t want to be blind at all. My grief wasn’t deep or poetic. It was sinister in its simplicity. I wanted to see again and I never would. That was my torment: two implacable forces, smashing up against one another like tectonic plates along a fault, waiting for the other to give. My blindness couldn’t and I didn’t want to, so I remained caught between them. And it was crushing the life out of me.
“I don’t want to be blind,” I said aloud.
Tell us something we don’t know, genius.
Apparently, my inner editor had become an asshole since the accident.
But it wasn’t the crux of the problem. Itwasthe problem. I didn’t want to be blind. I wished I’d never fucking jumped off that cliff. Or that I had jumped at the right time, or a different time and suffered a different injury. Something that wasn’t so goddamn life-altering.
Without realizing it, I began to speak, soothing my bitter anguish with an alternate reality. A fantasy of what might’ve been…
I dove too late. I know it even as my feet leave the rocky outcropping. I have time enough to think ‘This is going to end badly’ and then I’m in the water, curving into the dive. The water tosses me, and I slam against the rocks. Pain explodes up my right side. It feels as if a giant steel trap has snapped over my leg from ankle to hip. Or maybe a shark bit me. The pain is both the deep agony of shattering bone and the burning fire of torn flesh. Panicked, I nearly inhale ocean water as I claw my way to the surface.
Local divers haul me to the shore. I suck in deep breaths to calm myself and then nearly lose it all over again to see my right leg. It’s a fucking horror show; there’s no other way to put it. Bent and twisted, skin torn away, it looks like I have three knees instead of one, and blood is seeping into the sand. The sun is hot on my damp skin, but I begin to shiver.
An ambulance arrives, and I’m whisked to the naval hospital, then airlifted to UCLA Medical Center the next day. Three surgeries later, I wake up to Lucien and my parents around me, all of them trying really hard not to look at my leg. I don’t want to look at it. It’s caged in metal scaffolding from my ankle to just above my right knee. Steel pins from the scaffold penetrate my bloated, bruised skin in eight different places, holding my bones in place, though I have more titanium rods than bones now.
I want to vomit, but the doctors tell me that while it looks godawful, I’ll be able to walk and run and live a normal life again, given time and a shit-ton of rehab.
“It could’ve been worse,” they tell me over and over.
It could’ve been worse. A-fucking-men.
When I’m able, they fly me to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City for another few weeks, until the pins come out. My imprisoned leg is free, and then I head to White Plains for physical therapy. My therapist is a great guy named Harlan Williams. We talk and joke around—nothing serious—as I work to get my leg back to where it was.
Two weeks later, I’m in an ankle-to-hip leg brace and hobbling around on crutches. The brace can’t come off for another six weeks, so my parents lend me their townhouse in New York City and Lucien hires an assistant to help me out around the house. Some guy named Trevor. He’s okay, but I don’t give him much to do. I want to regain my independence as fast as I can and get back out there forPlanet X. Yuri, my editor, is griping that he needs me back, and I’m more than happy to oblige.
But I still need to recuperate, and I’m bored as hell cooped up in the townhouse. Some buddies of mine fromPXstop by and we head out to a brunch place on Amsterdam Street my assistant sometimes orders from.
Deacon, Logan, Polly, Jonesy, and I take a table in Annabelle’s Bistro and settle in for a good two hours, running our waitress ragged. She’s a cute little brunette doing her best to stay cheerful for us while we give her a hard time with endless coffee refills, loud laughter, swearing, and general obnoxiousness.
Her nametag says Charlotte, and Deacon calls her “Sweet Charlotte” and ogles and teases her, sometimes inappropriately. She has pretty eyes, I muse, but otherwise pay her no mind. I have my leg up on a chair in the corner, leaning back, as if I haven’t a care in the world. And I don’t. I’m going to make a full recovery and pick up my life right where I left off.
Finally, a manager with a severe hairdo and too much makeup, politely, yet pointedly, inquires if there’s anything else we need, and we take the hint. We gather our shit and Deacon picks up the tab. We file out, through the maze of tables, and I’m last, hobbling slowly on crutches.
I’m halfway out when I realize I left my Yankees baseball cap on the table. I return to get it and find the waitress staring at the check with tears in her eyes. She snaps the black leather book shut when she sees me and hurriedly turns away.
“Forget something?” she asks with false cheer and a shaky smile.
“My hat,” I say. She’s short and I’m tall. I tower over her. “Did Deacon leave a shitty tip? He does that.”
“Oh no, no, I mean…it’s fine,” she says, turning away to wipe her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I just…um, kind of a rough month. You know how it is.” She glances me up and down in my expensive jeans and designer shirt. “Or maybe you don’t.”
The waitress realizes what she said, and another round of apologies bursts out of her as she begins stacking our dirty dishes. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Really. I have this bad habit…blurting. I don’t know why I said that. Anyway, um…”
I laugh, and fish into my back pocket for my wallet. “Don’t worry about it. And take this. For your trouble.”
I offer her sixty dollars and her eyes widen. Up close, her eyes are even prettier—large and luminous, but sad too.
A blush turns her skin scarlet. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. No, please. It’s fine, really.” She bustles even faster now, not looking at me.
I shrug and drop the twenties on the table. “I hope your month improves.”
