Sleep With The Lights On by MAGGIE SHAYNE Read Free Book Online Page A

ordering takeout. Her twins were texting nonstop—I could hear the tapping, soft as it was—and sucking down vitamin water. I could smell it. Misty had Berry Blast, and Christy had Mango Peach. They were trying not to let me know that their social lives were positively wasting away while they were doing time at their blind aunt’s bedside, but their frequent sighs were audible, and their impatience wafted from their pores like B.O.
    When a nurse tried to object to all the activity in the room, Sandra laid down the law. “Do you know how many times my sister has been on TV?” she asked. “She’s important. She needs her people around her.”
    My people. My entourage. And every one of them so devoted they would take a bullet for me. Well, except for Misty and Christy, who would take a slap for me, max. Maybe. As long as it wasn’t in the face.
    Moreover, the people in this room were the only people who knew that the real me was not the feel-good guru who showed up in my books and on talk shows. And they not only loved me anyway, they loved me enough to not sell the truth to the tabloids. That was devotion right there, because that information would’ve been worth a significant bundle.
    There was a tap on the door before someone came in. I smelled her and heard her signature footsteps, soft and close together, and I knew her instantly. “Hold up, hold up.” I tapped Mott’s knee as I spoke, and he stopped strumming.
    “Doc Fenway?”
    “You amaze me every time, you know that?” she said with a smile in her voice.
    “I do it on purpose,” I confessed. “So are you here to visit, or did this little accident have some kind of impact on my eyesight? Please don’t tell me I’m going blind!”
    Obediently, my entourage laughed. But only a little. There was still noise all around me. Amy’s clicking keys, Sandra talking on the phone—“Ham and pineapple, extra blue cheese and the hottest wings you’ve got” — Mott still picking a string over and over as he tuned the guitar, because apparently he thought as long as he wasn’t playing an actual song he was in compliance with my “hold up” order of a moment ago.
    And then Doc Fenway went on. “Actually, I came with some good news for you.” And then she said it. One sentence that changed everything. “You’re going to see again, Rachel.”
    The room went silent. I flinched as the words exploded inside my brain. “I...um...how?”
    “We have a brand-new healthy set of corneas for you. Private donor. Wishes to remain anonymous, and—”
    “No.” I shook my head and kept on talking before the arguments could begin. “I’m not putting myself through it again, Doc. You know I reject every set I get. It’s too much to—”
    “Just hear me out, Rachel. Let me explain why it’s different this time. Then make whatever decision you want.”
    I bit my lip. I didn’t want to let my hopes start to climb. So far, they hadn’t, but if I let her talk they might, and I didn’t like the crushing disappointment of failure. I’d had transplants before. My body rejected them. Violently. I was sick all over. I know, another one of my endearing quirks. I’m a unique individual.
    “If everyone could leave us for a few minutes...?”
    “They can stay,” I said. “They’re just going to torture it out of me later, anyway. Go ahead, Doc, give it your best shot, but you know how I feel about beating this particular dead horse.”
    “Okay.” She cleared her throat. “It’s been several years since we’ve tried. There’s a new procedure. Descemet’s Stripping Endothelial Keratoplasty.”
    “Oh, well in that case, let’s go for it. Anything with such an impressive sounding name is bound to work.” I loaded on enough sarcasm to clog up a black hole.
    Doc Fenway sighed, then repeated herself, but in English this time. “We transplant a thin layer of the graft, not the entire cornea. The risk of rejection is minimal. Recovery time is faster. It’s