Page 22 of A Sight to Behold
“Ten minutes you said?”
“Indeed,” he answered as he capped the vial and set the pipette aside into a small metal bowl with a clink.
The air hung heavy with unspoken words, as the quiet settled between them like an unwelcome intruder. Pippa wished to know more about the handsome doctor. Their eyes sought refuge in anything but each other’s gazes, and the ticking of the clock became painfully audible. Nick cleared his throat and shifted in his seat across from Pippa.
“Have you always wanted to be an oculist?” Pippa asked in an effort to bridge the awkward silence.
“No. I didn’t know I’d specialize in the eye until later at university.” He hid something, Pippa sensed.
“So, you always wanted to be a doctor?”
“A surgeon, yes.” He looked away as if he was trying to turn from something dreadful in his past. For some reason he held back, avoiding sharing with Pippa what or who the reason as that Nick focused his work on the eye.
“You seem to be very good at your work.” Pippa wanted to pay him a compliment, and he looked at her again. “Your family must be very proud of you.”
Oh no, he cringed.She’d touched on something terrible, but what?
“Teach me how to examine your eyes,” Pippa said as she clasped both hands together. Her eyes had stopped tearing by now, but her body throbbed with desire to be close to him.
He batted his eyes at her incredulously. “You. Examineme?”
She beamed at him.
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“Really?”
“Sure. I have eyes…”
She clapped excitedly and rose from the stool. “Let me sit there.”
He got up, and they switched seats. On his side of the table, was a wooden knob and a drawer. Pippa pulled it open and saw a velvet tray with many lenses in two neat rows. “What do I do with these?”
“The left ones are concave, the right ones convex. You check if any of those complement my lens, and if my vision improves with any of them, you read the number on it. Here, use this one, it might make up for your lens’ curvature and give you enough magnification to see into my eyes.” He handed her a thick lens. “It would tell you, the refractive index for the eyeglasses I need but I don’t because this is also a magnifier.”
Pippa tested the heavy lens in her hand and looked through it like a monocle. He burst into a wide smile. Gorgeous. A radiant spectacle illuminating his countenance like a diamond would its setting. Pippa couldn’t tear her eyes off him and probably ogled him for a moment too long until he changed his expression to a knowing and much slower pace. His smoldering smile exuded such an irresistible allure and an undercurrent of steamy potential that Pippa felt instantly flushed. “And what’s this big one for?” She picked the large sickle-shaped lens that looked like the large piece inside a magnifying glass.
“It’s a loupe,” he said. He leaned in and reached for Pippa’s left hand. “You prop my face up and make me keep still with this hand,” he guided her, resting his chin on the flat surface her fingers made. “Then you adjust the light to hit my eye, and then you hold the loupe until you see the optic disc.” Nick adjusted the gas lamp on the desk to light up his right eye.
At first, everything looked as if it were underwater and doubled, as if she could just squint just right, it would come into focus. Then she held the lens up to her eye and closed the other. She gasped. The image in the center of the lens was clear, but the rims remained blurry. Still, she could not just see but lookinside him. Pippa gulped.
“What does it look like?” Pippa whispered, leaning so closely that she could feel the cool air when he inhaled and the heat of his exhalation. He smelled deliciously like buttery vanilla and yet earthy like sandalwood. With the thick and heavy lens in front of her eye, Pippa could see better and even magnified what was small.
“It looks like many paths leading to a bright dot. Like a spider with lots of red legs.” He held his eye open, and she leaned in closer. “You may have to tilt the loupe until you see it.”
She came even closer until the tip of her nose almost touched his. Then she saw some red lines deep in the back of his eye.
“If you see some blood vessels, follow them to the spot where they grow denser.” How did he know? Oh right, he was the doctor. The oh-so-smart and tantalizing oculist who made her heart lurch when she imagined how much training he must have gotten to be able to teach her, the layperson, how to find the nerve of her eye.
“There it is!” Pippa suddenly marveled at the dot at the center of a network of thin red lines. “There’s blood circulation.”
“It’s called vascularity; the vessels nourish the eye.” Then he pulled his head back and blinked, brought his right hand up and rubbed his eye. “How did that feel?”
Pippa froze for a moment.
Kiss me. Hold me.
She had the impulse to nestle under him, languid and naked.
