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red when something slammed into her and the colours around her
flashed that very colour before fading to black.
II
She should’ve seen it coming. The quiet sobbing of her mother had
been a clear giveaway. Perhaps she’d been too groggy to realise.
When the words escaped the doctor’s mouth, however, Anthea
snapped to attention. “Your occipital lobes that contain your visual
cortex were damaged quite badly when your head hit the road,” the
doctor told her. She sounded regretful, but Anthea couldn’t tell
without seeing her face. “I’m sorry, but you’ll be permanently blind.”
The diagnosis shook her to the core.
Blind.
The word echoed through her head. She was shocked,
speechless, but her mind was racing. To Anthea, blindness was
hollowness. Everything she valued had been centred around her
ability to see and now all of it had been sucked into a void; stripping
her of her identity. Who was she without sight? What was the
point? Her throat closed up and hot tears spilled from her unseeing
eyes. It seemed their only purpose now was for crying.
III
The first few mornings had been the worst. She’d woken up and had
opened her eyes to enjoy the view of the sun painting her walls gold,
momentarily forgetting. Instead, she’d been greeted with an empty
nothingness and the crushing realisation that she would never see
that view again; that she would never see again. In lieu of the
beautiful world of colour she had known and loved, she was faced
with a world of darkness. She was now too far below the sunlit ocean
surface to even get a glimpse of the waves, surrounded by murky
water that suffocated her. It took her breath away, but not in the way
that she loved.
You’ll be permanently blind.
Anthea lay awake at night, waiting for the water to pull her under.
It never did.
Wednesday
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