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

light-years beyond what we’ve been able to do before. And I think it just might be your answer.”
    My heart gave a ridiculously hopeful leap. I told it to lie back down and shut the fuck up.
    “The donor chose you specifically, Rachel. And we can do it today.”
    “Oh my God.” That was Sandra, and the words were damn near swimming in tears. “Oh my God, ohmyGod, ohmyGod! ”
    I wasn’t quite as impressed. “Today? You want me to decide this today? Are you fucking kidding me?”
    Meanwhile Sandra was still going on, “You’re going to see! You’re going to see, ohmyGod!”
    The twins started with the teenage-girl squealing thing that sounds like giant mice having their tails stepped on. Really, someone ought to be researching a cure for that. Screw Descemet’s Stripping-whatever.
    “This is a miracle!” Amy cried. And then she and Sandra were hugging and hopping around in what sounded like a circle. I don’t know. Blind, remember? Everyone was talking and crying and laughing—and squealing, let’s not forget the squealing—at the same time.
    I held up my hands. “Stop. Just stop.” I had to speak very loudly.
    They all stopped, and I felt their eyes on me. “Okay. Okay.” I took a deep breath, but I wasn’t processing this. This wasn’t real yet. I didn’t get it. “I do need everybody to get out, okay? Except you, Doc. Everybody else, just...just go get a coffee or something. Give me a minute here.”
    I heard a keystroke and whipped my finger toward Amy. “Don’t you even think about tweeting anything about this. Understand?”
    “Yeah. No, I wasn’t—”
    “Close the lid, Amy.”
    I heard the laptop close.
    “Come on, everyone, let’s give her some space,” Sandra instructed. She was a little hurt that I’d asked. I could tell by the texture of her voice.
    “Yeah. I need space.”
    Mott leaned in close. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, you know.”
    “Right. Like you wouldn’t?”
    “No. I wouldn’t.” Petulant, maybe a little combative? What the fuck?
    I frowned. I mean, I knew he thought of the blind as a minority group and himself as our Malcolm X, but I didn’t think he’d want to stay sightless if he had a choice. Then again, he’d been born blind. I hadn’t. I’d had twelve years of vision. Eleven of them twenty-twenty. And I’d had blurry, half-assed eyesight three times, after the last three transplants, a few days each time before my body threw a full-on, no-holds-barred revolt. I knew what I was missing.
    Mott kissed my cheek, and everyone left the room. Shuffling steps, grumbling complaints, whispers and finally the door closing behind them. I lay there in the bed, listening to Doc Fenway come over, sit in Mott’s former place, clear her throat.
    “What do you need to know?” she asked.
    I thought for a long time, and then I said, “Is this for real?”
    “Yes.”
    “Will it work?”
    “Almost certainly. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it, Rachel. This might be the miracle you didn’t think you’d ever get.”
    She was telling the absolute truth, as she saw it. Lies were one of the easiest things to hear in people’s voices. I felt tears brimming in my stupid sightless eyes. Damn, I did not cry. Not ever. And if I ever did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be in front of anyone. Thank God I was still wearing my sunglasses. “I don’t want to believe it just to have it go bad again, Doc. Not this time. It would be more than I can take.”
    Revealing my soft underbelly was not something I did often. But she wasn’t allowed to tell, right? She was a doctor.
    “But you have to believe if you ever want anything to change. Isn’t that what you’re always writing about? How it’s the belief that creates the reality, and not the other way around.”
    Right. Like I was twelve and somehow believed my way into twenty years of blindness right? I would probably go to hell for the bullshit I sold to the gullible.
    “How long before