Page 54 of Waves of Time
“If all goes well,” Aria continued, “things will be blurry for her for about a month.”
“But her eyes won’t be fully healed for twelve weeks,” Marc finished, proof that he’d read the same websites Aria had.
Aria and Marc stopped at a vending machine, where they purchased Combos and Reese’s, neither of which they could bring themselves to eat. It was a beautiful day in early September, and they stepped out of the hospital and roamed the parking lot, both thoughtful, swimming in worries.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Aria said finally.
Marc nodded and met her gaze. “I can’t believe I ever left Nantucket.”
“What about San Francisco? What about your job?” Aria asked. “I mean, they can’t just let the CFO of the company go, can they?”
Marc set his jaw. “I’m forty-three years old. Over the past twenty-one years, I’ve done a lot to make myself and others money. But I haven’t exactly enjoyed those years, you know? I think I learned the hard way what most people know intuitively— that life comes down to the people you spend it with, not how much money you spend.”
“Sounds like the moral at the end of a Disney movie,” Aria teased him.
“I know! I should have paid more attention to stuff like that as a kid,” Marc said.
“Mom and I watched all of them when I was little,” Aria said, her eyes smarting at the memories of her and her mother— a sacred time when it had been just the two of them against the world. It felt surreal to stand in the hospital's parking lot with her mostly absent father as her mother’s eyes were cut open.
So many things could go wrong in life, in relationships, and in surgery. Gosh, it was so hard to think you were worthy of the best— that you were different. That it wouldn’t go badly for you.
“So, you’re going to quit?” Aria asked of her father’s job.
“I might start something of my own,” Marc said. “Maybe something that makes the world a better place somehow.”
“Oh!” Aria’s ears perked up, and she stopped walking and looked at her father hard. “What kind?”
Marc listed several options, many of which, he hoped, would help solve crime, drug abuse, and homelessness, both in San Francisco and the rest of the country.
“These are huge issues,” he said, palming his neck. “But after living in San Francisco for so many years and seeing the city change and abandon its poorer people, I feel like something needs to be done. And maybe I can help.”
Aria and Marc returned to the waiting room and remained quiet, staring at their phones or out the window, until the ophthalmologist came to tell them the surgery was finished.
“So far, everything looks good,” she said, her eyes very small yet sincere behind her glasses.
Aria and Marc breathed a sigh of relief and returned to the waiting room, remembering that Hilary needed another hour or so before she could return home. When the time came, a nurse brought Hilary down the hallway in a wheelchair. There were bandages over her eyes, but otherwise, she looked serene and beautiful, her dark hair cascading down her shoulders.
“Hi, Mom!” Aria’s voice broke with emotion as she touched her mother’s hand.
“Hi, baby.” Hilary smiled.
“How do you feel?” Marc asked as he took control of the wheelchair from the nurse.
“It all happened really quickly for me,” Hilary said wistfully. “I felt like I was in there for fifteen minutes, maybe.”
Aria and Marc exchanged glances. Anesthesia was a powerful thing.
Once they reached the car, Aria helped her mother get into the passenger side, then returned the wheelchair to the hospital. On the drive home, Marc played soft jazz on the radio, and Hilary looked calm.
“It’s strange how much more I notice about the music when I can’t use my eyes,” Hilary said. “It’s almost like my eyes have been distracting me from my ears. That must sound funny, coming from an interior designer, but it’s true.”
Aria laughed and closed her eyes, trying to imagine what the music sounded like to her mother. “I think I know what you mean,” she said.
Back at home, Aria had set up Hilary’s bedroom to be a comfortable safe haven for her healing. Directly next to her bed, she’d placed lotion, snacks, pain relievers, and water in a water bottle so that it wouldn’t spill anywhere, a music speaker that she could play whatever she wanted, and a little buzzer so that she could call Aria and Marc whenever. This first day post-surgery, all Hilary really wanted to do was rest, and after Marc and Aria led her to the bedroom, she undressed and donned her pajamas easily, then tucked herself into bed.
“It won’t be so bad,” Hilary assured them, although there was still terror in her voice.
In truth, they just didn’t know what was on the other side of this. But at least they’d gotten through the first few hours as a family. That counted for something.