Eyes in the Palms of Her Hands

August 15, 2005

They were a veterinary ophthalmologist’s hands. Anyone who could end up pursuing something so specific would have the ability to make movements of infinite precision. They could have been the hands of a hand model. These perfect hands now moved expertly to remove the eye. The eye was ghastly and enucleation was required before the virulent infection spread to the brain. She had performed these things hundreds of times. The eye was beyond repair and had to come out. It’s hard to insure a dog’s eyes. Dogs run madly off into most anything and every mother’s warning is never heeded. You definitely could lose an eye. There are branches, spear grass, cat claws, fences, and squirrels that just won’t give up. The mouth is a dog’s means to empowerment in the world and the eyes are so close to all the action. Nobody was sure how this dear soul received the puncture wound. As the doctor worked the scalpel she could swear she heard a boy crying. It wasn’t a toddler. The boy was older. He was crying that, “I am alone in the world” cry. She looked around the little operating theatre and it was just she and Jennifer the assistant. As the fetid gelatinous orb was placed in the pathology jar the crying finally stopped and the Luxtec 300 watt xenon operating lamp seemed to notch down into a softer golden hue. What was radiant blue-white entered the mellow yellow spectrum. An odd glow was thrown around the room and for a minute the vet stopped working and entered the enlightened zone. It was a “non-thing” she felt. All of her worries and complex mental associations vanished for a second and she was a molecule floating in amber space. The temperature was perfect. She was on the other side of happiness. She was beyond happiness into full resolution. Safety. Fading back into the operating room she smiled and went back to stitching up the dog. Vital signs checked out. It was a successful operation and she scrubbed up without saying much to Jennifer.

The dog dreamt the deep anesthetized dream that nobody can ever remember. She remembered playing by the lake and heading off into the woods because she smelled sunscreen in there. Sunscreen is what people smelled like this time of year. People were generally good to her and she wanted to play. She heard the crying and ran with full excited power around a stand of blackberry bushes to get to the sound on the other side. There he was. A red haired boy was trying to burry his sobs in two chubby freckled hands. The dog was colourblind but she understood colour in the way it radiated and absorbed light in different ways. Colourblind dogs can tell it’s a red haired, 12-year old boy wearing a navy blue polo shirt. It just looks different than what we see. She ran in and nuzzled the back of his hand and gave it a lick. Salty. Some say dogs just like the salt of tears but this dog aimed to please before she thought of herself. She was a mangy haired, 30-kilo, Disneyish mutt with every colour, close to black, standing at attention in her fleecy shag. The boy muttered, “Fuck off dog” and gave her a shove. He stood, turned and trudged off into the bush toward the distant road on the other side of the park. The dog wheeled and ran back around the blackberry bush and as she cleared its perimeter, leaping over a log on the adjacent trail, a lone thorny blackberry branch whipped out across her right eye. There was a quick comet of painful stinging and she did what most dogs do…she ignored it. A dark smear remained in her peripheral vision as she entered the light outside the forest, bolted down the beach and plunged back into the lake with her other dog friends. She put her head under to look for a stick and that underwater lake haze merged with her post-operative waking vision. She was coming to consciousness in a new fluorescent world.

The vet owned a German car. It wasn’t a new German car but she rationalized that it was plenty reliable to get her home when she was alone and on that remote highway. She wanted to live in this beautiful holiday town and keep her house on the lake but she had reservations about late night drives alone on that road when she’d been working a twelve hour shift. Coffee. She needed one first. She pulled in to get gas and a coffee at the place she liked just inside the park entrance. It was a mom & pop place with cedar siding and a funky neon aura. The Sheriff’s car pulled up beside hers and the deputy hopped out of the driver’s seat at the same time she did. He said, “excuse me ma’am but have you seen a red haired boy around 12-years old wearing a navy blue shirt anywhere near this store?” She smiled and said, “Sorry…no…I just pulled in here myself. Should I be looking for him?” “Yes please”, he replied, “He’s run away from home and his mom says he may be trying to head out of town somehow”. The vet said she’d call in if she saw anything. Back in her car with the coffee she tapped the big knob on the radio with her right hand and out came the Ennio Morricone soundtrack to “Once Upon a Time in the West”. She wasn’t sure why she liked it so much but it ate up the drive home and made her mind alert yet calm. There was enough odd and melodically rich about it to pique her interest but then again it conjured a lot of indecipherable subtext the way most soundtracks do. She was entering the “long distance driving headspace”. You can arrive at your destination and not really remember the whole drive but that doesn’t mean you were not in the here and now. She entered a surreal wash of amber light in the section of the road that passed the lake. These were the new halogen lamps they had installed yesterday. Everything was clearly articulated and awash with a golden sepia tone. There seemed to be about two miles of this amber gauntlet ahead of her. The pines were lit to their tops and it was as if all colour had been altered. It was a type of glorious colourblindness like the kind provided by orange-lensed sunglasses. Was it a deer moving in her peripheral vision? No. Too dark. A deer would be tawny and camouflaged somewhat by this wash. It was the red-haired boy with the navy blue shirt. How could she tell what colours were which in this light? She just could. He was on her side of the road, wringing his hands and walking slowly with his head down. His back was to traffic. She picked up her cell and dialed 911 as she pulled over down the road from him. It took a minute to let them know where the boy was and this was enough time for the boy to reach her back bumper. She got out slowly and said, “Are you alright honey?” He said, “I’m lost and I really want to go home”. The veterinary ophthalmologist’s hands turned upward with their palms to the street light and she said, “lets get you home then”.