Heartsight

Excerpt

Chapter One

Sounds filtered through first: the rhythmic squeak of a cart being wheeled through the hallway, the low trill of a telephone at the desk just beyond the door. The shrill ding of an alarm warned that an IV needed attention. The beep-beep of a telemetry machine signaled his heart still beat steadily. Muffled voices hovered at the edge of his awareness; people speaking in hushed whispers, as if afraid they would wake the sick and the dying.
Or the blind.
Dan raised his hands to the patches taped to both eyes, stroking the bandages, itching to yank them off.
Smells edged their way into his awareness. The sterile scent of disinfectant and antiseptic soap mingled with the nondescript aroma of bland food and the tang of encroaching humanity in a disharmonic mix peculiar to the medical profession. His stomach churned.
Even without the sounds and scents or the painful memory of the events that brought him to this place, Dan would have known he was in a hospital. The mattress beneath him had a wrinkle the size of a speed bump, and the sheet covering his bare legs was the equivalent of starched paper. The pillow on which his head rested might as well have been a log with all the sharp bark-like ridges. He was fairly certain he'd slept on softer rocks when he'd been on his last mission in Afghanistan.
He clenched his teeth against the memory of the mission that had ultimately landed him in this place.
Footsteps crossed the threshold to his room and a particular scent caught his attention, a combination of spicy aftershave and flowery perfume. It seemed both doctors were paying him a visit this time. That probably wasn't good news. Previous unveilings after surgery had been accomplished by either one of the two high-profile eye specialists on his case. Never both.
They stopped talking abruptly when he turned his head in their direction.
"Captain Conway, I see you're awake," said the female voice. Dr. Matteson, kind but blunt, as he recalled.
"The procedure didn't work, did it?" He phrased it as a question, but it was really more of a statement.
A man cleared his throat. Dr. Negi. Tentative and apologetic, always skirting the issue. Of the two, Dan had always preferred the directness of Dr. Matteson.
But it was Negi who spoke, his Indian accent giving his words a sing-song cadence. "The preliminary testing right after surgery was promising. But the nerve conduction tests we did yesterday were inconclusive. There is still a chance you will have recovered some sight when we take the bandages off today."
Impatient with the reticence, the placating, and the hope that inevitably turned out to be false every time, Dan reached up with both hands, sliding his fingertips beneath the gauze covering his eyes.
"Captain Conway, you mustn't—" Dr. Matteson's hands were soft on his as she tried to stop him.
Dan ignored the doctor, shrugging away from her touch and peeling the patches from his eyes in one swift motion. He flung the bandages aside, not knowing or caring where they landed.
Blinking twice, Dan wished with everything in him for just a glimmer of light to cut through the black, to see a vague shadowy outline, anything but the utter darkness in which he'd lived for the past four years.
Nothing happened. No light poked a finger through the veil. No shadows formed. Nothing spun into focus.
Dr. Matteson's familiar hands touched his face, turned him as she did whatever it was she typically did when examining his eyes. "What do you see?"
Dan drew a deep breath, stemmed the bitter disappointment. He went for flippant, not quite hitting his mark. "Same color of nothing I saw two minutes ago."
Dr. Matteson moved again. Dan heard a clicking sound like something being turned on. If only it were that simple. Click, here's your life back in living color. He'd even take living black and white.
"What about now? Anything?"
"No." Dan sighed. It wasn't the doctors’ fault his eyes weren't responding to the surgeries and treatments. It was time to stop treating them to his foul mood. But he needed to get out of there before he swung the other way and started apologizing because the surgery to restore his sight had failed.
Dr. Negi spoke. "We shouldn't give up yet. I can give you the name of a specialist in Dallas who's developed a technique for cases like yours."
Cases like his. Dan's bitterness surged anew. Optic nerve damage sustained in a traumatic explosion. Cases like his. War injuries.
"Save it," he ground out, his frustration back in full force. "I'm done."
Matteson tried reason. "Captain Conway, there really is a lot of promise with Dr. Kellerman's new procedure."
Dan's allowed a chill to seep into his voice. "Just sign my discharge papers, please, so I can get out of here and get on with my life."