Easy on the Eyes

Chapter Seventeen

I’ve been home a week now and I’m still insanely jet-lagged, eating and sleeping at hours not at all conducive to good work habits.

In the past I’ve always dealt with jet lag the way I’ve always dealt with everything, by plunging into work. Unfortunately, my work is full of footage of Michael, and it’s excruciating going through hours and hours of Michael working, talking, healing. All I can think of is how hard I fell for him, how much I wanted to be with him. I even invited him back to my room.

Oh God.

I spend the rest of the week working with Howard. During the day we’re side by side in the production control room, and then at night I write my introductions and voice-overs and return to the studio in the morning to have one of the show editors help me piece together the final story.

Glenn, Harper, Libby, and Mark have all stuck their heads into the editing room during the past week to see what we have so far, and they’ve all been impressed.

Libby, someone I think of as very nonemotional, is teary when the Lusaka hospital piece with Jean is done. “They’re dying from dirty water?” she asks.

Harper sees footage of Michael, and her eyebrows arch. “He’s hot. Who is he?”

“Some doctor,” I respond, turning my attention to the chimp story.

“He looks familiar,” Harper adds, leaning low to get closer to the screen. “Why do I know him?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug, and Howard darts me a glance.

“I think he’s familiar because he’s an L.A. plastic surgeon,” he says, shifting in his chair. “He had a show a couple years ago called— ”

“Dr. Hollywood!” Harper exclaims triumphantly. “My God, he’s hot. Look at that body! He’s a total fox. He should be in People magazine’s hot bachelor issue— ”

“Harper.” I give her a look. “If you want his number, I can ask Madison to track it down for you, but otherwise, can we get back to the story?”

Harper gives me a funny look in return. “You’re crabby.”

“I’m jet-lagged. I’m fighting a bug. And we’ve got just a few more days to get these stories together before I head to Tucson. Once I’m back from Tucson I have the big meeting with Glenn and the studio heads. Glenn says they’re going to make me a proposal, but I don’t think it’s going to be one I like.”

Near the middle of the week, Glenn appears in the production room and stands behind us, watching the video monitor wall where we’ve been integrating the videotape, graphics, still frames, and sound. We’re just putting the final touches on Jean’s segment, and Glenn’s been observing for seven minutes without saying anything. The nearly finished story includes pieces of the interview I did with Jean at the PSI office and then touring the hospital in Lusaka with Dr. Paul, Michael’s friend.

Jean’s story is really about how one person doing just one thing can make a difference. She’s talking about a treated net, and the segment ends with the shot of a child in a Lusaka teaching hospital bed, sitting up and looking at the camera with huge shy eyes and a shyer smile. It was Howard’s idea to use U2’s song “One” in the background as we fade out. “One love, One blood, One life, You’ve got to do what you should….”

The studio goes quiet when the music ends. Howard and I just sit and wait for Glenn to speak. But Glenn isn’t in a hurry to say anything, and his silence makes me nervous. “Hate it?” I ask.

“No.” Glenn shakes his head. “It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and hopeful.” He pats each of us once on the shoulder and walks out.

Howard and I look at each other and smile. The boss approves.

We’re down to just three days now before my trip to Tucson for the career lifetime award. Howard and I have finished the shows on Darlene and Jean at PSI, which just leaves the Rx Smile footage. And there is so much of it. Seven days, to be precise.

Seven days of Michael talking, working, comforting. Seven days of Michael and his doctor friends. Seven days of memories.

Africa changed me.

I learned so much about myself during my time in Zambia. I learned that I’m still a good writer and reporter. I learned that I still care passionately about people. I learned that I’m strong and yet hopeful. I learned that I have deep convictions.

I believe we each must try to make a difference, and there’s not just one way to make a difference. Everything counts. Everything adds up, big and small, because our efforts aren’t isolated and we aren’t alone, not ever, not even if we want to be. For better or worse, we’re part of this community called life.

And in that vein, I concentrate on putting together the Rx Smile segments. I’ve mapped out three different shows, including two episodes that focus on the children before and after their surgery. The final episode of the three looks at the volunteer medical stuff. I’d interviewed the Irish nurses, the Canadian speech therapists, the international doctors and dentists. I have footage of them all working, too, and I weave their stories together, talking to me about why they’re there, sharing their personal history, touching on how they came to be involved. What’s interesting when you add up all the interviews is the one common element— the volunteers are there because it makes them feel good to do good.

“I’m here for purely selfish reasons. When I contribute, I feel good about me.”

“Whenever I do something like this, I’m happier for months.”

“Being on a mission changes you forever.”

“I like me better when I’m reaching out to others.”

“Helping these children makes you realize it truly is better to give than to receive.”

Michael had so many pithy quotes that I struggle with which of his to use, but when I do select one it becomes the quote for the closing shot’s final voice-over. The shot is of a mother leaning over her toddler as he wakes from surgery, and the baby boy is smiling and the mother is smiling, eyes bright with tears of happiness.

Michael’s words are perfect for this clip: “I do what I do in my private practice so I can come here. I like being a surgeon, I’m proud of my practice, but this, this that we do here, it isn’t work. It’s joy.”

I have tears in my own eyes as the story ends with Michael’s voice and the mother’s and baby’s smiles.

He’s right. What they did, that medical team, was joy. And being there, part of it, witnessing it, was my joy.

Friday morning, I’m sitting with my coffee and my stack of papers at the long counter that runs along the window of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

This is a rare treat for me— out early in the morning with nothing to do but sip my coffee and read the paper. Usually mornings are working mornings, hectic and shadowed with too much to do in too little time; but all our stories are in and done. I leave for Tucson later this afternoon, a day early so I can indulge in some much needed spa treatments at the Ventana Canyon Resort before tomorrow night’s dinner fund-raiser.

And just look at this beautiful morning. The sky is a pale lucid blue thanks to the Santa Ana winds. Light gold sunshine reflects off the cars passing outside. And here inside the coffee shop I can smell the rich, dark aroma of ground coffee.

As I look back down at my paper, something in orange catches my attention. I glance to my left and see a little boy in an orange polo shirt with his nanny at a table just to my left behind me. The little boy has spilled his Mango Tango smoothie, and he’s now drinking it off the table with a straw. The nanny is leaning

forward whispering something even as she tries to scrape some of the smoothie back into the plastic bottle, but the boy pushes her off. He wants it all. He’s not going to let it go to waste, and he drags his straw across the wood table, slurping it up.

It’s both funny and awful. It’s something only a kid would do, and I shudder to think of the germs on the table. I’m sure the boy’s mom wouldn’t approve of her son drinking his smoothie off the table, but mom isn’t here and the nanny has given up and is calmly sipping her coffee and looking the other direction.

I laugh to myself and return to my paper. I’m still smiling when I hear a shout. I look up. A blue car flies at me through the window. There’s no time to run or scream. Instinctively, I throw up an arm to shield my face.

I hurt. Everything hurts. I open my eyes. A woman in blue is leaning over me. She’s holding my head and telling me it’s okay, it’s going to be okay, even as another woman stands above me, crying.

I don’t know why she’s crying. I can’t see. Something dark blurs my right eye and slides down my face. I try to wipe it, but moving my arm sends such hot, sharp pain through me that I gasp at the shock of it.

“Don’t move,” begs the woman in blue.

“I can’t see,” I say, looking up at the woman holding my head. “Can you wipe my eye for me?”

She shakes her head, says something about an ambulance, and then I hear the siren. It’s coming closer, and for some reason the sound comforts me.

Moments later the paramedics and police are swarming inside, and that’s when it all gets blurry. There are men in black and men in blue and a blond woman in a navy jumpsuit with her hair in a ponytail who’s taking my vitals while others talk to people standing around.

The woman in the blue shirt moves away, and as she steps back I see a huge stain all over her chest, the blue covered in dark red.