“Good,” she said. “Anything else, before we go ahead?”
Sidlo nodded. “The lights should be turned off. All of them.”
“Really?” This from Simon, who now stood hovering at Sidlo’s shoulder. “I was under the impression filming without light made things kinda, y’know, hard to see.”
“I wouldn’t worry, Mr. Burlingame, given nothing literally visible will be recorded,” Sidlo replied. “In this case, I am the camera—the images pass through me, into the film I hold. And since I already know you think me completely deluded on the subject, what can it matter whether the lights stay on, or off?”
“Good question,” Simon muttered, but I shot him a look—of the fairly classic just go along with this, okay, honey? please variety—and he subsided. I sat, reaching to let Sidlo take hold of my hand again, as Safie began turning lights down around us. Meanwhile, Simon covered the areas beyond her immediate reach: bedroom, closets, kitchen, Clark’s room. The apartment was submerged into dimness by increments, cold late-morning sunlight narrowing to leak ’round the edges of the blinds like fire.
“Okay, we’re dark,” I reported to Sidlo.
“Very well.” He closed his eyes and lowered his head, breath slowing, finding a long, slow rhythm. “Miss Cairns, do not let go; Miss Hewsen, please continue your recording. If you see anything unusual, be sure to tell me.”
“Okay. Unusual like . . .?”
“I believe the sort of thing I mean will very quickly become apparent.” To Simon: “Mr. Burlingame, I must ask you to make sure we are not interrupted before the process is concluded.”
“How’m I supposed to—”
“Stand by the door, that’s all; stay alert. Do not let anyone enter once we begin. The results might be catastrophic.”
Simon’s eyes flickered back to mine, as though checking for any sign I thought Sidlo might be joking. When he didn’t find one, however, he simply nodded. “Understood,” he said, turning his back on all three of us.
He passed me on his way to the door, Safie would tell me, and you weren’t looking, so you couldn’t have seen . . . all caught up with Sidlo like you were, studying him like you thought if you watched him close enough you’d be able to see what was happening inside, reflected on his eyes or something. And your husband, he was putting up a pretty brave front, but if you got in closer, you could see he was starting to get sc
ared. Same as a little kid who’s just realized they’re lost and can’t see their Mom or Daddy anywhere—he didn’t look like him anymore. Know what I mean?
I do, yes. Did then, too. But I didn’t see it. I don’t know what I saw, really; can’t remember, not even in my dreams. Unlike—
(other things, so many other things)
“I’m going to start now,” Sidlo said.
You think that being blind is darkness, and sometimes that’s true, yes. Mostly. Not always, though.
When I woke up back in St. Mike’s, Mrs. Whitcomb’s ghost voice in my ear and her bony hand in mine, the world around me had all gone hot and stark, consumed by the idea of brightness without any of its effects. Reduced to a vague tint of red, polluting an otherwise unbroken absence. And what I found was that this would wax and wane as time went on, with no apparent consideration for what time of day it was supposed to be, outside my own head—that ’round midnight I often seemed to orbit a weird, unblinking light, pitiless as some supermax prison cell’s single bulb, while at noon things became still and quiet, colourless, nothing but gloom on gloom.
“Hysterical blindness,” said Dr. Harrison’s disembodied voice, intruding to anchor me where I floated, abandoned by everything. “Acute onset, since you don’t seem to have any other type; probably an accompanying seizure, taking your additional memory loss into account. Conversion disorder, that’s what Freud called it—apparent neurological symptoms with no identifiable systemic cause, produced by converting intrapsychic distress into physical symptoms.”
“So it’s all in my head, huh?”
“To some extent. The brain subconsciously disables or impairs a bodily function as a side effect of the original repression, thus relieving the patient’s anxiety.”
“I don’t really feel all that relieved, per se.”
“Well, no. You wouldn’t.”
Dry Dr. Harrison; thank Christ for him and his refusal to let me feel sorry for myself. If I hadn’t had his snark to bounce off of, I don’t know what I would’ve done.
He told me they’d given me another MRI, run all the same tests as before, plus more—stuff they hadn’t thought of the first time ’round. Told me I was otherwise fine, no ill effects, aside from a certain basic inability to see any-fucking-thing. While I just sat there thinking about poor Derek Jarman, about that last film of his, Blue. What I’d have given to see a colour of my own, any colour, beyond red and black.
A blind filmmaker—that’s a joke, right? That’s irony. And a blind writer, one specializing in writing about film . . .
“What’s the prognosis? Treatment?” I asked Harrison, who paused before answering, possibly to think. “Or . . . should I even . . .?”
“Oh, always better to know, Ms. Cairns,” he responded crisply, over the slight break in my voice. “Nothin’ get ya nothin’, after all, as my old granny would say. So, for treatment—physiotherapy where appropriate; occupational therapy to maintain autonomy, as regards activities of daily living; treatment of comorbid depression or anxiety if present, which I’d say they are. Yes?” I nodded, throat tight, useless eyes burning. “As to prognosis, meanwhile . . .”
“Don’t hold back, doc.”