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Four hours later they continued the conversation they’d been having for most of his life face to face. Lina was behind her desk after putting him through a range of tests. “Hopefully within the decade they’ll have isolated a cure for this.”
“That’s your version of making me feel better, right?”
“When we finally got your diagnosis correct, all those years ago, I hoped there might be a treatment to halt the progress of the dystrophy. A cure seemed too much to hope for, but with stem cell research moving ahead, it’s only a matter of time before they isolate the faulty gene.”
He slow blinked. Lina was a white blur. “There should be courses you can take to help understand doctor speak.”
“You don’t want to hear what I really have to say.”
“Nope.” He did Jack Nicholson, the line about not handling the truth from A Few Good Men.
“Tough luck, tough guy. You’ve got random patches of vision up close like a jigsaw and you’re very good at filling in the blanks. In other words you’re a superb cheat. Otherwise it’s shapes and shadows aided by good lighting. You might retain a sense of light and dark, but in all likelihood you’ll see nothing at all.”
“Got it.”
“Soon, Damon.”
“Right.”
“It’s natural to find that depressing.”
“Right.”
“Damon.”
He stood up. He was out of here. The tests were a waste of time, waste of money. They told neither of them anything they didn’t already know. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to see you making plans to manage this.”
“Shit, Doctor Pentecost. You want to see me acting more like a blind guy.”
“That’s not what I said. Sit down. Don’t insult me by playing that line.”
Sitting didn’t suit him. He moved around the desk to the window behind Lina. So long as he had the sense of light and dark, he didn’t feel blind. He’d talked himself into believing this would be as bad as it got, that’d he’d continue to be an exception to the usual rule, but knowing his luck had run out made him tight in the chest. Lina was worried about him being depressed. She should be more concerned he was going to hit someone and end up jailed for assault.
“Damon, don’t be a twit. Things could be much worse.”
“Yeah, yeah. I should be grateful.” Yul Brunner from The King and I, “Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”
“You know you only do this voices thing with me when you’re upset and trying to deflect, or you want me to forgive you for something.”
He turned from the window and Lina was standing behind him. She’d stood behind him on the progress of his disease since he’d first had vision trouble as a snotty kid. She was irritatingly correct about everything. “Yes, doctor. Carry on, doctor. Can I have a hug, doctor?”
She grunted. “You can be very irritating.”
But she was so easy to rile up. “Yeah, all right. I’ll be good.”
“I want to see you again as soon as anything changes.”
He nodded. She reiterated what she’d just told him about cheating, depression and getting his act toget
her, in case he didn’t get the message the first time, and he was back out on the street hailing a taxi and trying to be grateful for the fact he had income enough in the bank and secured work in the pipeline not to have to catch a bus or genuinely miss owning a car.
The cartoon cat was devious and grumpy, the character matched his mood. He phoned Les and made him the happiest agent on the voice actor block by agreeing to voice Harley in Street Tails. Then he went back to bed with a book.
By Wednesday morning he was less sour lemon and more zesty lime, not a cough or a throat clear to be heard and his mood restored to normal enough. Knowing he was going to see Georgia helped. Last thing he wanted to project to her was sad sack, victim.
Seems she’d had enough of that in her life.
