Page 71 of A Sight to Behold
“You don’t want to operate on me?”
“No.”
“Why not? I’ll pay. I can pay, Nick!”
“I don’t want your money. I never asked for it.”
“Then why not operate on me? Take them out!” Lance stood abruptly and cramped his hands into claws over his eyes as if he could tear them out and sprout a better pair. “Please!”
“Why do you want the lenses out so badly? It’s not something anyone has ever asked me for. People don’t just come to me and say, ‘Doctor, slice into my eye and take my lens out, please.’”
“They don’t understand. It’s physics, Nick. Clarity won’t come in if you don’t let the light through. It’s easy.”
“The theory is, yes, but the procedure is not.”
“Except that your surgeries always go well.”
Nick shrugged. It had been a close call with the Earl of Langley recently, but he’d fully recovered by now. Sometimes, the cases were so complicated that he feared losing touch and breaking the streak of immaculate surgeries. One lousy surgery and he feared he’d lose his footing from the slippery top of this mountain. And with the pressure from the quack and the threat of his slander looming over him, Nick feared he might not perform as well as he should. And it was never more critical than right now.
“You’re renowned like a puppet master of the eye, Nick. Don’t you know?”
Nick mumbled, “No.”
“I have read your papers. Isabel read them to me. The journals write about your papers after they publish them. There are seminars at the University in Vienna with hundreds of men discussing your calculations. How do you not know?”
Nick thought about it. Wendy did bring him correspondence with invitations for lectures sometimes. He never gave it much thought because he had surgeries scheduled.
“Your track record is perfect.”
“Because I pick my cases.”
“Based on which criteria?”
“Well, the case has to be serious enough to warrant surgery.”
Lance waved his hand impatiently to nudge Nick on. “What else?”
“The patient has to be healthy enough to recover from the surgery. I need to know that it can heal.”
“Fair enough.” Lance squared his shoulders.
“The patient needs to understand that the risk of failure is blindness.”
“Check. Already there.”
“Lance,” Nick exhaled.
“I’m already blind.”
“You see a light sometimes.”
“Fantastic. I can tell when the world has daytime, and I’m still at night. But I want to wake up, Nick. I am only twenty-seven. My wife… Isabel… I’ve never seen her, Nick. I want to see her when I kiss her, and she lays in my arms. You should know. How would you feel if you held Pippa, and you couldn’t see the expression on her face when you made love to her?”
A flash of an image came before Nick’s eye. Pippa was atop him, glistening with sweat from their lovemaking. He brushed some hair from her face, and she gave him one of those dreamy looks. The innocent ones that first made him fall in love with her. Then he closed his eyes. If he couldn’t see her, how would he feel?
He’d love her just as much. But seeing her meant the world.
“Life’s incomplete without seeing your love, isn’t it?” Nick asked.
