Blind Date

by Bruce Richards

  "We're not going to find him in this soup, you know," Scott said, slowing down slightly, then speeding up again. "He's probably back home by now. I'm running out of gas, by the way."

  They had driven past Evan's house several times but saw no signs of life.

  "Can we go back to the party now?" Scott asked in a grumpy voice. "I'm missing out on all the fun."

  "You're lucky I'm even talking to you after what you and your friends did to Evan," Alicia countered. "At my party. So sorry you're missing out on your fun."

  "That's right, Alicia. Your party. Your friends. Your friends did it to Evan."

  They weren't her friends at all, Alicia realized. Tiffany was probably just using her birthday as an excuse to throw a big party. And Ellen certainly wasn't her friend — not the way she was making passes at Scott. And Boomer and Johnny and Charlie were barely human. Alicia just had to find Evan. She'd never forgive herself if something terrible happened to him and it was her fault.

  The sky was illuminated briefly by white lightning, then faded back to a gloomy charcoal color. The car lights barely cut through the murk. Thunder cracked all around them, and pounding rain continued to wash over the windshield, obscuring their view.

  Scott drove faster. The car skidded against the curb as he lost control for a second.

  "Stop the car and let me out," Alicia said flatly.

  "Oh — don't have a cow," Scott said. The rain drummed noisily on the roof of the car.

  "This is the last time I'm driving anywhere in this car with you," Alicia threatened.

  "I don't know why you're mad at me" Scott said. "I didn't do anything to your nerdy friend."

  "You knew about it."

  "I did not."

  "Don't lie to me, Scott. I heard you go 'oh no' up on the stairs." And I saw you put your arm around Ellen, she thought.

  Scott was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I may have known about it, but I didn't help plan it. The truth is, I didn't actually think they'd go through with it…"

  "Scott…" Alicia let out an exasperated air. "Do you think I'm blind? I saw it in your eyes. You probably masterminded the whole thing."

  The worn-out wipers clacked rhythmically over the windshield, which was now covered in a veil of white steam. The defroster was useless.

  They approached the intersection where Dr. Hawke had almost hit them yesterday morning. Scott wiped away some of the steam with the palm of his hand. He tried tuning the radio again before finally jamming in a cassette. The Grateful Dead blared through the speakers.

  A flash of lightning outlined the large black blur hurtling toward them.

  Scott never saw it.

  A scream caught in Alicia's throat as the crunch of metal drove her into a world of darkness.

  Chapter 18

  The car filled with acrid, gray smoke. Choking her, blinding her. When she tried to move, every part of her body hurt. She heard footsteps, each click echoing and merging with the next. The vibrations made her head throb.

  "Help us," she groaned through the smashed side window. She imagined the steps belonged to someone big and strong and brave. Someone who could rescue her. Pull her out of this nightmare.

  The smoke got thicker. "We're trapped…"

  A cackling laugh sent a bitter chill through her. In that moment she had an awful gut feeling — whoever belonged to that laugh wasn't there to help her. "No!" she screamed.

  No! No! No! her mind cried out even as her voice gave up the battle.

  That was the last thing she remembered.

  That and the rain thundering off the car roof.

  Then everything went black.

  Chapter 19

  The lights swirled relentlessly. Alicia felt the play of the light along her eyelids, as soft as the footsteps of mice. Around and around they went.

  Where was she?

  She tried to think, tried to remember.

  A sickly, sweet-smelling smoke hung in the wet night air. She heard a bustle of activity nearby, the urgent shouts of men's voices.

  Then she heard another voice.

  A familiar voice.

  Evan's voice.

  Evan was talking excitedly to someone, explaining how the car had hit them and sped away. He had pulled her from the wreckage just before Scott's car had exploded into a fireball.

  His voice cracked as he spoke.

  Then she remembered.

  Scott. Is Scott all right? Did Scott make it?

  Why can't I see?

  She tried to sit up. Everything hurt. She moaned in pain and lay back down. The rain was still coming down on her face.

  She felt someone's arms wrap around her and felt comforted. "Alicia, lie still. You've been hurt," Evan said. "I'm here for you now."

  The soothing tone of his voice was oddly hypnotic, like the swirling lights.

  I'm here for you now… I'm here for you now… I'm here for you now…

  The words kept spinning around in her head, like water going down a bathtub drain.

  She felt Evan gently wipe the rain from her face.

  There were footsteps and more voices, and she was placed on a gurney. She felt the gurney moving under her and heard doors close with a bang as the rain stopped hitting her face. Then the ambulance's engine roared to life as the vehicle lurched away —

  — she heard the cackling laughter again —

  She heard a piercing wail and realized it was coming from her own mouth.

  She felt a sharp poke in her arm, as someone muttered something about going into shock.

  And then she fell asleep. Mercifully asleep.

  Until the nightmares came.

  Chapter 20

  Alicia opened her eyes.

  She had drifted in and out of consciousness, like a drowning swimmer surfacing and gasping for air, before sinking down again into a sea of black dreams.

  And each time she surfaced, she saw a hand reaching out to help her. Reaching, just inches away, but she couldn't grasp it.

  And each time, the hand belonged to Evan.

  Never Scott.

  Always Evan.

  She blinked several times, waiting for things to come into focus, but they didn't.

  Oh, God, no, I'm blind!

  How?

  The accident, she remembered.

  She tried to sit up, and everything that had hurt before hurt even more now. Her head felt stuffed with cotton, her throat was parched and dry, and there was a throbbing numbness from somewhere behind her eyes.

  Where am I?

  How long have I been here?

  She heard soft whispers nearby.

  Someone was whispering about her in the hushed tones usually reserved for the terminally ill.

  Then she recognized her mother's voice, and another voice that sounded vaguely familiar — Dr. Harrison's voice, Boomer's dad.

  They sounded somber, serious.

  The smell of alcohol invaded her nostrils, mixed with the cheap perfume her mother wore on those rare occasions when she left the house. She heard some kind of faint beeping in the distance. Soon, she was noticing muted voices from all around her.

  She was in a hospital room filled with a lot of people. Sickness was in the air.

  A rustling sound next to her startled her.

  She sat up — it hurt!

  "She's awake, everyone!" Evan's voice boomed right next to her.

  "Well, welcome back to the real world, Alicia!" Dr. Harrison said brightly.

  Alicia sensed her mother hovering around her, fluffing pillows to help her sit up, running nervous fingers through her hair, pushing it out of her eyes, out of her sightless eyes. "You're going to be all right, sweetie," her mother said.

  "How long have I…" been dreaming? "…been out?"

  "For quite a while, but everything's going to be all right now," her mother prattled on.

  "How long?" she insisted.

  "Just a few days," Dr. Harrison said calmly.

  A few days…

  "You've
had quite a shock," Dr. Harrison continued, his voice sounding professional. A doctor's voice.

  The memory of the accident came back to her like an ice pick to the brain.

  "Why can't I see?" Alicia asked, reaching her hands up to her eyes. Her eyes were still there, just sightless.

  "Dr. Harrison says your eyes are fine, dear," came her mother's unsteady voice. "He's had specialists and all kinds of doctors in here while you were asleep. They took X rays and…"

  "How can you tell me my eyes are fine?" Alicia howled loudly, painfully. "I'm blind!"

  The room fell suddenly and absolutely silent. She guessed she was in a room with other patients. Other patients with other problems. She wondered for a moment if any of them were blind.

  The voices slowly started up again. Softly at first, gradually less tentative.

  Somewhere in the distance she heard a doctor being paged.

  "How can you tell me my eyes are fine when I can't see?" Alicia asked again, this time in a softer voice.

  "The force of the collision caused some damage to your retinas. But not enough to cause blindness," Dr. Harrison said uneasily. "So we think the cause may lie elsewhere — traumatic blindness is not so much a problem with your eyes as it is with your brain. Your eyes could see, but for some reason, your brain won't let them."

  From somewhere in the room, Alicia heard soft sobbing.

  "Will I be able to see again?" Alicia asked.

  The sobbing grew louder.

  "You've have quite a shock," was all Dr: Harrison would say.

  "You talked quite a bit in your sleep," her mother said, her voice trembling.

  "What did I say?" Alicia asked.

  No one would answer her.

  "Evan! Tell me what I said!"

  "You mumbled something about Freddy Krueger," Evan told her.

  So there it was. The man no one wanted to talk about. No one wanted to think about.

  "S-so what you're saying is…" Alicia stopped, groping for words. "So what you're saying is that my blindness is all in my head and that I could see if I wanted to, but I don't want to because I'm afraid of what I might see and that the shock of… the shock of…" Alicia couldn't go on. She tried to picture Scott in her mind, but his face was obscured by a thick curtain of smoke.

  The sobbing in the distance was louder than ever. A telephone rang, giving Alicia a start. Someone on the other side of the room picked it up and answered in a cheerful voice.

  "As I said, we believe that your blindness is trauma induced," Dr. Harrison said.

  "And what does that mean?" Alicia asked shrilly. "That I'm just imagining that I'm not seeing?"

  "It means," Dr. Harrison said slowly, "that there may be some… some… psychological force at work that is causing your blindness."

  Dr. Harrison's voice droned on like a warped audio tape playing inside Alicia's head. Maybe because she didn't believe a word he was saying. She couldn't be blind. Not for real. She was going to art school next fall — she was going to be a painter. This had to be a bad dream.

  "You're going to see again," came Evan's voice out of the blue, blotting out the doctor's voice. "Trust me, Alicia. You will see again. These doctors are full of…"

  "Young man, perhaps you should wait outside…" Dr. Harrison began.

  "No, I want him here," Alicia said firmly. Evan was the only one being honest with her. She needed him there.

  She could hear Dr. Harrison exhale noisily.

  "Dr. Harrison just doesn't want your friend giving you any false hope," Mrs. Norris said.

  Of course not, Alicia thought bitterly. They want me to reconcile myself to being blind.

  "My uncle can help you," Evan said confidently. "So don't believe them when…"

  "Your uncle was once a very respected doctor, young man, but he has long since retired, and he's totally out of touch with the advances modern science has made in eye care. In fact, he should consider himself lucky to even be alive after the way his heart stopped…"

  "My uncle's fine now that he's out of this hospital," Evan said in a nasty tone of voice.

  Dr. Harrison exhaled heavily again. "Perhaps what you need right now is some rest," he said to Alicia. "I'm going to prescribe a mild sedative to help you sleep…"

  "That's all right," Alicia said curtly. "I would prefer to stay awake." The last thing she wanted to do was sleep. As bad as things seemed to her now, she knew her nightmares would be even worse.

  "I know my uncle can help you," Evan said again.

  "Perhaps you should do as the doctor says," Mrs. Norris patted her daughter's shoulder with a trembling hand. "Get some rest, dear."

  "I want to get out of here — now," Alicia said sharply. "And I want to take my X rays with me."

  "There's really no need for that…" Dr. Harrison began.

  "Now!" Alicia said emphatically.

  "Dear…" her mother began to say.

  "Now!"

  After a pause, Dr. Harrison said to Mrs. Norris, "If she would feel more comfortable at home we can check her out this afternoon. There's really nothing more we can do for her at the moment. She can come back for a follow-up exam when she's calmed down."

  "The sooner I'm out of here, the better," Alicia said. "I have things to do."

  She felt Evan's hand squeeze her shoulder. The fingers were long and slender and soft, so soft for a boy's hand, soft and warm like her mother's hand. But without the trembling.

  "We have things to do," Alicia said, placing her hand over Evan's.

  Chapter 21

  Alicia tried everything she could think of to help herself. She tried crying, hoping that the tears would soothe her eyes and wash away the blindness. She tried smiling and laughing, hoping that her good humor would force down the psychological barrier that stood between her eyes and her brain. She asked her mother to get articles about her condition and read them to her. But her mother was in worse shape now than she had been before the accident.

  The nightmares followed her home from the hospital. Every night she struggled with demons that grabbed her, shook her, poked at her eyes, and swore to never give her any rest.

  Without her sleep, she began to feel increasingly paranoid. She went back for an office visit with Dr. Harrison, who offered her no hope. "Tincture of time," he told her. "Just wait and see."

  Alicia resented his choice of words. She resented him, and her blindness, and a lot of other things, including her mother's depression, her father's death, her stupid friends, everything. She let out a good long scream in Dr. Harrison's office, and was sent home with a prescription for sleeping pills.

  She wished she had someone else's opinion. Someone she trusted. Someone she still loved… Scott.

  Where was Scott? Where was her boyfriend? Where was the guy who was supposed to love her? All of her questions about Scott were met with vague responses. He was okay but he was still recovering; he was in a different wing of the hospital; he was home recuperating and he'll see you when he can.

  See me when he can? At first, Alicia couldn't believe he would abandon her. She wondered if he was dead. Maybe everybody thought she wouldn't be able to handle such a shock, though she couldn't get much more blind than she already was. She made her mother swear to her that Scott was still alive.

  She remembered their last night together — Tiffany's party. She had yelled at him and dragged him away on a wild goose chase. He was probably relieved to be rid of her. But then it dawned on Alicia that Tiffany wasn't coming to visit her either.

  It was Evan who finally confirmed her fears and told her the truth: Scott had dumped her for Ellen. Alicia was wild with anger. Well — ha ha — she had seen it coming. She started to think of ways to punish him. She had terrible visions — ideas more clear than real sight. But they were nightmares by day, added to nightmares by night, and now there was no escape to be had at all! She thought she would lose her mind.

  If only she could see! Then she could do something about her pathetic life. She begged her
brain to let her eyes do their job. But the harder she tried, the more frustrated and depressed she became. Alicia suspected that the doctors and her mother and everyone else were all hiding something from her. They all were lying to her — about Scott, about her eyes, about God knew what else.

  Only Evan would tell her the truth.

  Loyal Evan, faithful Evan. She clutched his arms at last and begged him to take her to his uncle. And the next day, they went.

  It was a cool, breezy autumn morning, and Alicia thought of other autumn days when she had taken her paints out to capture the colors of the leaves. That was before.

  She held Evan's arm now as he led her up the flagstone walk to his house — the broken flagstone walk, she realized as she stubbed her toe — where his uncle still kept his office even though he was retired.

  Evan's faith in his uncle bordered on reverence. Alicia decided that Dr. Hawke was probably a victim of quacks like Dr. Harrison. Dr. Hawke would be able to offer her more than sleeping pills, she was certain. Evan had already given his uncle Alicia's X rays, so he would be familiar with her case before he even began the examination.

  Evan swung open the door to the ramshackle house he called home. For a moment Alicia felt as if she were stepping into the gaping mouth of a primeval beast. It was probably just a fear of the unknown, of things she could not see.

  The floorboards creaked wherever they stepped. The carpet felt threadbare beneath her feet, and Alicia detected a funny smell to the house. A stuffy, moldy smell, like something or someone had died but the odor still lingered. And then they went down the stairs to where Dr. Hawke kept his office — in the basement.

  It was hot in the basement.

  The doctor must have the furnace going full blast, Alicia guessed. Well, old people don't like the cold, she figured. But for some reason she couldn't quite pinpoint, the intense heat gave her a creepy feeling. Like many things did, now that she was blind. Sound, smell, touch, taste, and fear — everything was magnified now.

  Especially fear.

  "Uncle Manfred, this is the girl I was telling you about," Evan said.