Sisters

“No, it isn't, baby,” Sabrina said softly as she held her. “It isn't. It feels that way, but it isn't. I'm sorry. I know this is hard. It's awful. But we love you, and you're alive. You're not brain-damaged, you're not crippled or paralyzed from the neck down. We have a lot to be grateful for.”

“No, we don't!” Annie shouted at her. “You don't know what it's like. I can't see you! I can't see anything …I don't know where I am … everything is gray and black …I want to die….” She sobbed in her sisters' arms for hours. They took turns consoling her, and finally a nurse came in and offered her some mild sedation. Sabrina nodded—it seemed like an excellent idea. This was just too much for her. Losing their mother and finding out she was blind, all within a week. After listening to Annie cry for three and a half hours, she felt as though she needed sedation herself.

Annie lay in Tammy's arms, crying, as they gave her the shot. Twenty minutes later she was nodding off, and the nurse said she would sleep for several hours. They could leave and come back, and on tiptoe they left her room, and said nothing until they reached the parking lot. They all looked as though they had been beaten up.

Tammy lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, and sat down on a large rock next to their father's car. “Jesus, I need a drink, a shot, heroin, a martini … the poor kid …” It had been awful.

“I think I'm going to throw up,” Candy announced as she sat down next to her, took one of Tammy's cigarettes, and lit it, while Sabrina looked for the car keys. She felt as shaken as the others.

“Just don't throw up on me,” Tammy warned her. “I couldn't take it.”

The doctor had given Sabrina the name of a psychiatrist earlier that week, who specialized in working with blind people. After what they had just been through, Sabrina was going to call her.

She finally got the car keys out of her bag, and opened the doors. The others got in, and looked as though they'd been through the wars. It was two o'clock, and they had been with her for four hours, three and a half since she heard the news. Annie had sobbed nonstop. The three sisters didn't even have the strength to talk to each other on the way home. Tammy said she wanted to go back at four, in case she woke up then from the sedation. Sabrina said she'd go with her, and Candy said she wouldn't.

“I can't stand it. It's too awful. Why can't they give her someone else's eyes?”

“They just can't, there's too much damage. We have to help her make the best of it,” Sabrina said, but when they got home, they all crawled out of the car, and walked into the kitchen, looking totally disheartened. Their father and Chris were just finishing lunch. It was easy to see how the morning had gone. Both men looked stricken when they saw the three sisters' faces.

“How was it?” Chris asked softly.

“How did she take it?” her father asked them. He felt like a coward now for not going with them. He knew Jane would have, but she was their mother and so much better at that kind of thing than he was. He would have felt like a bull in a china shop at her bedside. And Tammy and Sabrina reassured him that it wouldn't have made a difference. She wanted her eyes, not her father.

“Can she see anything?” Chris asked, as he put a plate of sandwiches on the kitchen table, but none of them could eat. No one was hungry. Candy disappeared and came back, said she had thrown up and felt better. It had been an awful morning for everyone, but especially excruciating for Annie.

“Just grayness and a little light apparently,” Sabrina answered. “He said she may see shadows eventually, or even some color, but that's not even a sure thing. This is pretty much the way it's going to be forever, a gray and black world and nothing she can distinguish.” Chris shook his head as he listened, and touched Sabrina's cheek with gentle fingers.

“I'm sorry, sweetheart.”

“Me too,” she said sadly, moving closer to him with tears in her eyes.

“How was she when you left her?”

“Sedated. She sobbed for hours and the nurse finally offered to give her something. I was ready to take some too. This is going to be a nightmare while she adjusts to this. I have to call that shrink he recommended. I'm worried she's going to wind up in a major depression, or worse.” People had committed suicide for less, which was now her greatest fear. No one in the family had ever had suicidal tendencies, but none of them had ever lost their mother and their sight either. She wanted to do everything possible to help and protect her sister. That was what sisters were for.

Tammy went upstairs to lie down, and took Juanita with her. Candy went outside to stretch out at the pool, and Chris and Sabrina went with her, with Beulah and Zoe. The Yorkie jumped into the pool and looked like a drowned rat when she came out. Beulah liked walking across the steps at the shallow end to cool off, but preferred not to go swimming. It made Sabrina smile to watch them, and lightened the mood of the hour.