Eye Contact Read online

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  I held it together quite well for the most part, explaining to Mr. and Mrs. Goff that their son would never be able to survive his injuries. They could opt to keep him on life support for however long his body would allow it, but funds would quickly be eaten away and his quality of life would never be any better than his current vegetative state. They were devastated, rightly so. I allowed them their moment to grieve and they thanked me for doing everything I could for their eldest son, eventually choosing to allow for his organs to be donated to others who needed them so desperately.

  They consented to everything—organs, corneal tissue, even skin—and due to their financial situation, they wouldn’t be able to afford a traditional burial, so cremation was the next best option and definitely more affordable. I was able to set things in motion fairly quickly and felt a huge weight off of my shoulders knowing their selfless decision would be saving multiple lives within the next twenty-four hours.

  Once all my paperwork was done and all the appropriate calls were made, I had one more piece of business to take care of. I shed my white lab coat, hung it on the hook of the physician’s lounge, confidently walked up to the intensive care unit, and turned the corner leading to room seven. But, when the room came into view, there was only a housekeeper making an empty bed, readying the room for the next patient in need.

  “Excuse me,” I called to the nurse walking by. “Where’s the patient that was in this room?”

  “I think he was downgraded to tele earlier.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe two hours ago. Our unit clerk should be able to tell you his new room.”

  I smiled in gratitude and made my way to the nurses’ station.

  Once I trekked over to the telemetry unit, which was located in a completely different tower of the hospital, I confirmed with the secretary that he was in fact assigned to the room I’d been told but was currently downstairs for a repeat chest X-ray.

  Perfect! I thought, feeling almost giddy that I wouldn’t have to face him. I quickly dropped my items off in his room, propping them up on his bedside table so he couldn’t miss them when he got back.

  Chapter 16

  Vaughn

  As the kid who was transporting me parked the wheelchair and locked the brakes, I picked my head up to prepare to get back into the bed and was met with a beautiful surprise. On my bedside table sat a brand new sketchbook and a forty-eight pack of professional Prismacolor Premier colored pencils with a manual sharpener.

  “That didn’t take long,” my nurse rumbled behind me as she entered the room. “Let’s get you back into bed—or do you want to sit for a while?”

  “I’d love to sit up for a while, please.”

  “Sure. I’ll help you get over to the chair. Let me grab your crutches.”

  The crutches were much easier for me than the walker, plus I didn’t feel as old and crippled using them.

  “Oh, look! Who brought you these?” she asked innocently. “Do you like to draw?”

  “I guess you could say that,” I answered, immediately disappointed at the insolent tone in my voice. I knew exactly who had brought me the gifts. It had to be her. Who else there would know? I hadn’t spoken to anyone else about my art.

  It was surely her, and that meant she knew. I wasn’t dreaming. I had drawn a sketch of her eyes and she had somehow seen it. She had been the one to take it, which meant she’d come back to see me after our conversation. I must have been asleep.

  My heart raced with excitement and my mind spun in circles trying to make heads or tails of what this meant for me—for us.

  Once I was seated and settled with my broken leg propped up, I asked, “Can you please hand me that stuff?”

  The bubbly nurse said, “Sure! Let me just bring your whole bedside table over so you’ll have a hard surface to draw on.”

  “Thank you so much. I appreciate that.”

  “No problem. Is there anything else I can get for you? How’s your pain?”

  “It’s fine,” I lied. Every muscle in my body was aching in protest of all the moving around, but I didn’t want any more of those drugs. If I just relaxed, it would be fine in a few minutes—or at least that was what I tried to make myself believe.

  “Okay, darlin’. Call me if ya need anything at all,” she urged. “I’ll leave you to your doodles then.” I nodded and she left the room.

  I opened the sketchbook, running my fingers along the thick paper and appreciating that she’d selected that particular brand, an artist series I preferred to use and bought often. The paper was eleven by fourteen inches with perforated edges. She had to have asked someone which one was a good one to purchase because there were a ton of different varieties, or maybe she was just that in sync with me. That was probably wishful thinking.

  She hadn’t included any kind of note, nor had she written anything on the inside, but it had to have been her, and I would have to answer and show my appreciation with another drawing.

  Immediately getting to work, I put pencil to paper and my hand sketched the shape of her face like it had been created to do just that, like its sole purpose for existing was to draw her. My fingers gripped the pencil as it moved furiously, the pigment forming each of her features exactly as I saw them when she was in front of me. She flowed onto the paper with ease and soon enough, I was filling in her eyes, which I had left for last. I tried to capture the coloring as truly as possible—a perfect shade of blue, not blue-gray like a stormy sea, but bright, clear, peaceful. Her eyes were the blue of vacation, crystal-clear island waters that lower your blood pressure and stress level. I colored in each stripe of tissue, every striation of shading like my life depended on it. It wasn’t even the color of her eyes that was so astonishing, it was what was behind them. They were endless, rich with life, containing a depth I was dying to know.

  She was staring back at me in no time and I smiled, pleased with my portrait. She was breathtaking.

  Her face was round and pale, framed by wispy blonde hair, dominated by eyes that told an entire story without her mouth ever speaking a word. Her lips, plump on the bottom and uneven, were closed, her expression somber, almost inquisitive but timid. She was so self-assured in the way she carried herself but reserved when it came to interacting with people on a personal basis—at least with me. I put the last few touches on the drawing, finishing it by shading in the tiny heart-shaped freckle above her left eyebrow and shading in parts of her hair.

  The depiction was pretty spot-on and I was proud of it, wanting to show her, but confusion and doubt coursed through me like a virus. I wanted to apologize for coming on so strong. I wanted to show her I wasn’t a creep. Would she think drawing pictures of her was too forward and offensive? She wouldn’t have brought me a sketchbook and pencils if she wasn’t impressed with my little sample of artwork, would she? Didn’t it mean she wanted to see more? I had to take a chance and risk it.

  The next few hours were spent with me drawing all sorts of things to pass the time. I drew my hospital room in the ICU exactly how I saw it, staring up from the bed, but with the bottom of the bed and floor melting into a blurry pool of water. It was how I felt: trapped and helpless, sinking into nothing and sure to drown. I truly only felt like I had been able to surface when I finally saw her face.

  I drew a scene from my perspective, of when I was on my motorcycle watching the SUV approach, illuminated by my headlight as it was about to plow into me. It was the last thing I remembered seeing clearly on the night of my accident.

  I drew random things around my room, still-life images, boring and mundane, completely indicative of how my days felt spent in that hospital. The only bright spots were when she rounded on me. I all but counted down the seconds until she came back, and I really needed to get it together because I was even beginning to creep myself out.

  Chapter 17

  Vaughn

  It had been two days. I wished I could say they flew by, but the seconds ticked away at sloth speed, e
ach and every dull moment dragging along slower than the second coming of God. The hope that she would come by had long diminished, and I was questioning whether she had actually been the one to bring me the art supplies since there was no follow-up at all. She hadn’t even rounded or checked on me from a medical standpoint. The insecurity coursing through me felt awful, and I loathed the feeling of doubt I had allowed to creep in.

  Every day was the same. Shift change was at 7 AM, which meant shortly after the nurses gave report to each other, they would barge in to wake me up whether I cared to be woken or not. It was always not, but my preference didn’t matter. They spoke to each other in whispered tones about my IV fluids and Is and Os, but they might as well have been yelling. There was nothing quiet or subtle about their early morning invasion. The dayshift nurse would often apologize for waking me and promise to let me rest a little longer, only to reemerge thirty minutes later to do an assessment. It was especially my favorite when they would lift my gown with their freezing cold, freshly washed hands to check my abdominal incision. Everything was cold—their hands, their stethoscopes, their rushed demeanor. I was so ready to get out of there.

  Except, once I left, would I ever see her again?

  I needed to talk to her, needed to set things straight, explain, and convince her to give me a chance. If nothing else, I needed closure. If she didn’t want anything to do with me and truly wasn’t willing to carry on any kind of interaction outside the hospital setting, I needed to know and force myself to close that door.

  Just as I was pushing away my lumpy, mushy, and—of course—cold oatmeal on my hospital-issued breakfast tray, a new face entered my room.

  “Mr. Bennett? Good morning. My name is Dannielle Dryna. I’m the caseworker assigned to you.” The woman looked to be in her early thirties, dressed nicely in a tight pencil skirt and annoyingly loud high heels that clacked obnoxiously as she entered the room and moved around my bed. She sat right down in the chair, making herself at home. She was attractive with long wavy brown hair, so dark it was almost black, and she had bright red lipstick on.

  “Oh. Okay. Hi,” I responded, not really knowing why I needed a caseworker, caught off guard at her attractiveness, and thankful she was seated so I didn’t have to listen to her high heels anymore.

  “How is your recovery going so far? Are you feeling better?”

  “I guess so. Every day is a little better, a little easier.”

  She smiled kindly at me, her eyes turning to slits. “It will take a while to feel back to normal again. I spent the last hour reading your chart and all you’ve gone through. You experienced quite a trauma.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  She let out a chuckle that didn’t seem genuine. “Well, you may be wondering why I’m here.” I sat quietly, waiting for her to go on. “Assuming everything continues to go well in your healing process and rehabilitation, you’re going to be getting out of here soon. My job is to help facilitate meeting any outpatient needs you may have once you’re no longer a patient here.”

  “Oh. Like what?” I had thought I would just be going home.

  “Things like whether or not you can go home or need to go to a rehabilitation center for inpatient physical therapy first.”

  “I’d really like to go home,” I insisted.

  “I understand, but with that right leg broken, you’re not going to be driving for a while still, so getting back and forth to appointments is going to be a challenge.” She opened a folder in her lap and poised her pen to write something down. “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “I see. Do you live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any local family that may be able to stay with you for a while? Just until you get back on your feet?”

  I didn’t really feel lonely in my everyday life, but as she asked me these perfectly normal questions that really mattered for my care, it all sank in: I was alone.

  “I’m sure I can work that out.” I sounded gruff and slightly offended.

  She set the pencil down on top of her yellow memo pad and looked up with…was that pity?

  “I know these are personal questions, but I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t do everything in my power to make sure you have all the appropriate resources available to complete your recovery. I’m not here to judge. I just want to help.”

  “No, I appreciate it. I just…I don’t have any family, not here locally,” I lied, not wanting to involve Ms. Hattie. She was too old to be carting my crippled behind around town, and she had her own life. She had stopped being responsible for me many years ago. “I’m sure I can get a friend to stay with me or at least come by to check on me. My assistant can drive me to appointments, or I can catch an Uber. I’m sure it’ll work out.”

  “Okay, sure. May I have the name of your assistant? I’d love to talk with him at some point soon so we have all of our ducks in a row.”

  “Oh, right. She’s Angela—her name, I mean. Angela Ellis.”

  Danielle jotted it down on her paperwork. “And how can I get a hold of her?”

  “You can just call my office number. I work out of my home, sort of.”

  She paused, tilting her head in confusion. “What do you mean sort of? What kind of work do you do?”

  “I’m an ocularist, an artist specializing in the design and construction of prosthetic eyes.” Her reaction was one of shock and fascination. “My studio is in a warehouse space in the Riverside area and I live in an adjacent apartment. Angela is usually there four days a week. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind taxiing me to physical therapy.”

  “What a cool profession!” she exclaimed. “That explains the sketchbook,” she said, moving her hand forward, clearly intending to pick it up. “Do you mind if I have a look?”

  “No!” I barked. “I mean, yes—yes, I mind. Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but that…those are personal drawings.” I sounded like a bumbling, grade-A dick.

  She withdrew her hand and nodded respectfully. “I apologize.”

  I gave her the office number and thought it best that I call Angela first and give her a heads-up. I had left a message days ago saying I had some personal stuff going on and she would have to hold things down on the business end for a few weeks, but she wouldn’t be expecting a hospital caseworker to bother her. I had definitely downplayed the severity of my circumstances, and she deserved to know what was really up. With a few more questions and details taken care of, Ms. Dryna left her business card behind and assured me she would be back the following day to check on me.

  After three rings, Angela’s low, flat voice came over the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Angela? Hey, it’s Vaughn.”

  “Oh, hey,” she replied tightly. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay, a lot better than I was.”

  “What happened to you? You’ve been gone for like two weeks.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I know I have a lot of explaining to do, just disappearing like I did.” I shifted in bed, not able to disguise the grimace in my voice when the sharp pain in my rib cage erupted. “I was in a pretty bad car accident.”

  “Oh my God. Where are you?”

  “I’m still in the hospital, at Springfield.”

  “What the hell? Why wouldn’t you tell me that?” she shouted, pissed off. I could picture her stomping her combat boot-clad foot on the ground in a petulant tantrum at that very moment. “You just conveniently left that out of your messages.”

  “I know. Listen, I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything later,” I pleaded. “Is there any way you could come up here? I need you to bring me a few things.”

  “Of course. Let me grab some paper to make a list.”

  I waited patiently for her to speak again, hearing the rustling of movement as she searched for a paper and pen. I knew exactly where she was sitting in the studio, which was a mess of paint, plastics, and acrylics, all the materials I used to form the init
ial shell of a prosthesis. Angela had come to me fresh out of college, a brilliant mixed-media artist and incredibly weird. Her sarcastic dry wit and nerdy disposition had made me like her instantly. She was as smart as a whip, only needing you to tell or show her something once before grasping the concept. She didn’t need her hand held and was quiet so she didn’t get on my nerves. She’d originally come to me as an intern, referred by my original mentor as a way for me to have a little more help around my studio without having to hire someone. I mainly needed help with the IT side of things and desperately required more organization, which she gracefully delivered, so I eventually hired her. I now had a website, a calendar, and a professional office space to meet with clients in that wasn’t a dusty warehouse area, and all of that could be attributed to her. We worked well together, and in exchange for her assisting me with the everyday ins and outs of the business aspect of things, I let her use my studio whenever she wanted for her own art, as long as it didn’t conflict with my time or space. She’d been with me for almost two years and was well paid for her help.

  “Okay, boss man. What do you need?”

  “Well, to start, I need my laptop, but it’s in my bedroom. Should be on the side table by the window. Don’t forget my charging cord.”

  “Got it. What else?”

  “Please also bring me my pillow, and I could use some clothes, maybe a few pair of shorts and a couple t-shirts. I know that’s asking you to dig through drawers and stuff, which is sort of personal. We don’t really have that kind of relationship, but I—”

  “It’s cool, Vaughn. Don’t worry. I’m not going to go through your underwear drawer,” she interrupted, laughing at herself.