he jerked his silver thumb up at his artificial eye“— would do the job just as well. No need, and no money.”
“ Why not now, then?”
“ The accident that cost me my eyes also cost me nearly half my head. It’ s stable enough now, but if I ever had it opened up, chances are my brains will start leaking right through my skull.”
“ And then, after the accident and your training, you came here?” Malcolm was writing down the doctor’ s words and his own observations as fast as he could.
“ And then I worked on Earth for nearly a decade,” the doctor corrected.“ I was quite good, I suppose. Never an operation failed. Never a patient unsatisfied.”
“ So why did you come here?”
The doctor snorted.“ So many questions. You would not understand why, not now. Perhaps one day.”
He pulled something from his coat pocket. A worn sliver of metal, a ragged mirror image to one of his artificial fingers.
“ I carried this since the day I woke up in the hospital,” the doctor said quietly.“ I never meant to keep it, not really. But it has stayed with me since then.”
He passed the metal piece to Malcolm, who held it gingerly.
“ This is where I needed to be,” the doctor said.“ It is where I can remember what I was, and what I am now. That is worth more to me than the blue seas and golden fields of the Earth. That is worth more to me than the wealth and glory of all the kingdoms of the world.” He tapped his eye.
“ I do not know,” he said.“ When I first awoke in the hospital, I could not see at all. All I could remember were the terrible things I had done before— things that you would not believe if I told you of them. And then I was alone in the dark until my sight was given back to me. I do not know if I could be a doctor, had I not lost my eyes, and my hands. I do not know if the prisoner recovering in the inner medical ward would still have that tumor in his neck if I were still entirely flesh and blood. I do not know if I still would have drunk from this cup had it not been given to me. All I know is that I am a doctor, and there are men and women here in need of healing.”
Malcolm nodded. The doctor looked up at the glowing screen.
“ Curfew starts soon,” he said.“ You had best be on your way, or the prison warden will have you sent back to the main colony in a waste container.”
“ Is there more to your story?” Malcolm rose, keeping a firm grasp on the stylus and pad.
“ No,” the doctor said.“ Write it, for your newspaper on the Earth.”
He held out his hand. Malcolm shook it, and turned to leave. The doctor’ s voice froze him before he could step out in the hallway.
“ And remember, young man, to blink. You still can.”
David Ferranti is a junior concentrating in Biology.
“ It does not blink,” the doctor continued.“ It can focus amazingly well, and see much better in the dark.”
The glowing red artificial eye dimmed, then intensified. The doctor looked down at his silver hands.
“ And these do not tremble.” The sharp metal fingers opened and closed.“ Not like my old hands. Even when I was young, I could not hold them so steady.”
“ Does it help with your medical work?” Malcolm held the metal shard up. The doctor took it, and slipped it back into his coat pocket.
18 Spring 2018