Ch.9: The Vision Issue

Day four.

I am back in the chair.

Aris brought it down an hour ago—a padded, reclining examination chair he salvaged from the old wing of the hospital. He strapped me into it, adjusting the restraints so they dig into the soft flesh of my wrists.

"Verticality is good for circulation," he said as he hoisted my dead weight into the seat. "Don't want you getting bedsores."

He wasn't being kind. He just needed the bed.

Isabella is lying on it now.

She is wearing a silk nightgown, pale pink, expensive. It contrasts sharply with the industrial grime of the basement. She looks like a princess held hostage by a dragon, except the dragon is holding her hand and cooing at her.

"It's blurry, Aris," she whines. She squeezes her eyes shut—tight, angry squeezes. "Like looking through dirty water. And the left one... the left one keeps going dark at the edges."

Aris frowns. He is in full doctor mode now. Lab coat on, headlamp adjusted, gloves snapping against his wrists.

"Open," he commands softly.

Isabella opens her eyes.

He leans over her, shining a penlight directly into her pupils.

I watch from the chair. My head is strapped to the headrest, but I have a direct line of sight.

Her face—my face—is still swollen, a landscape of purple and yellow bruising. But the graft is taking. The skin is pinking up, the blood supply establishing itself.

But the eyes...

I squint, trying to see what he sees.

The skin around her eyes is red. Angry. Inflamed.

"Look up," Aris says. "Look down."

Isabella tries to comply. But her left eye lags. It doesn't track properly. It drifts lazily to the side, like a marble rolling on a tilted table.

"It hurts when I move it," she whimpers. "A pulling sensation. Deep inside."

Aris straightens up. He clicks off the penlight. He strips off his gloves and tosses them into the biohazard bin.

He paces the small room. Three steps left. Three steps right. He is agitated.

"The orbital floor was damaged in the crash," he mutters, talking more to himself than to her. "I rebuilt it with titanium mesh. The structural integrity is sound."

He stops. He looks at me.

He stares at my skinless face. He stares at my unblinking, raw eyes.

"But the soft tissue," he whispers. "The innervation."

He walks over to me. He grabs my chin—rough, no gentleness now—and tilts my head back. He peels back my eyelid, even though it’s already retracted due to the lack of skin.

He stares into my eye.

"Perfect," he murmurs. "Clear. Responsive. Vascular."

He lets go of my face. My head lolls back against the restraint.

He walks back to Isabella.

"The graft isn't the problem, Bella," he says, his voice flat. "The skin is fine. It's the underlying connection. The nerves from the new eyelids aren't shaking hands with your ocular muscles. And the tear ducts... they aren't draining."

"So fix it!" Isabella snaps. She sits up, clutching the sheet. "You said I would be perfect. You said I would be beautiful. I can't be beautiful if I'm half-blind and weeping pus!"

"Calm down," Aris says sharply. "Stress increases cortisol. Cortisol inhibits healing."

"I don't care about cortisol! I care about seeing!"

She starts to cry. Real, ugly tears.

But they don't flow down her cheeks. They pool in her eyes, filling the lids until they spill over like overflowing cups.

Aris watches the tears fall. He watches them track through the sutures.

"The drainage is blocked," he observes clinically. "The scar tissue from the burns... it's too dense. It's choking the ducts."

He sighs. He runs a hand through his perfect, styled hair.

"We have to operate again."

Isabella screams. It’s a short, sharp sound of frustration. "No! No more cutting! You promised!"

"Do you want to go blind?" Aris asks. His voice is cold now. "Do you want the infection to spread to the brain? Because that's what happens when the eyes can't drain, Bella. It becomes a swamp. A bacterial breeding ground right next to your frontal lobe."

Isabella goes silent. She trembles.

"What... what do we do?" she whispers.

Aris looks at me again.

A slow, terrible realization dawns on his face. It isn't fear. It isn't horror. It’s calculation.

It’s the look a mechanic gives a car when he realizes he needs a spare part he thought he could do without.

"The burned tissue is useless," he says. "We can't repair it. We have to replace it."

He walks over to the metal cabinet. He opens a drawer and pulls out a scalpel. A fresh blade.

He holds it up to the light.

"We need fresh tissue," he says. "Healthy, unscarred, genetically compatible tissue. Specifically, the lacrimal sac and the surrounding ocular muscle."

He turns to me.

He smiles.

"We need the whole unit."

My heart stutters.

*No. No, you can't.*

He isn't talking about skin anymore. He isn't talking about a surface graft.

He's talking about the eyes.

Not the eyeballs themselves—not yet—but the housing. The machinery that makes them work.

"Aris," Isabella says, her voice trembling. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Aris says, walking toward me, "that your eyes are rejecting the new face because they don't belong to it. The geometry is wrong."

He stands over me. He looms like a dark tower.

"But her eyes..." He reaches down and traces the rim of my socket with the back of the scalpel blade. The cold steel sends a shiver of terror through my entire body. "...her eyes were made for that face."

He looks back at Isabella.

"The graft is rejecting the eyes, Bella. We need a fresh pair. Genetic match."