Summer Light: A Novel (39 page)

“I don’t want Genny and Ray to know,” Martin repeated.

Staring at the phone book, May wondered how in the world to make an informed decision on choosing the right doctor from a list in the yellow pages, when the answer came to her.

“I think I might know someone.” She reached for the phone.

“Who?”

“An eye doctor in Boston. She’s very well known, almost famous. She must be quite old by now, though—I wonder if she’s still practicing. Dr. Theodora Collins.”

“How do you know her?”

“She was one of my mother’s brides,” May said.

Dr. Theodora Collins had an office in her home at the very top of Beacon Hill, overlooking the Public Garden and all of Back Bay Boston. The family had flown home right away, and Kylie was staying with Tobin and Aunt Enid. The day was hot, and the sun made all the colonial brick buildings look dry and red. Here on top of the hill a breeze blew, lifting flags just slightly.

Sitting in her waiting room, Martin was drenched with sweat. The air-conditioning was on, but he felt drops running down his back between his shoulder blades. Shaving that morning, he had nicked himself in four places. Coming into Boston in the middle of summer felt wrong. He didn’t want to waste one day away from Lac Vert. Soon hockey season would start, and another year would pass until their return.

“She’s late,” Martin said.

“Our appointment is for two. It’s five after.”

Martin picked up a copy of
Boston Magazine.
It was hard to read, but as soon as he opened the cover, he saw a picture of himself. He was dressed in his Boston Bruins uniform, his arm around Ray, grinning at the camera. He had a vision of the Stanley Cup, how he’d lost it for his team. And he hoped he’d get one more chance to play another season, to finally win the Cup next year.

“There you are,” May said, looking over his shoulder.

Martin nodded. He stared at the picture, trying to make it come into focus. The pit in his stomach was growing deeper. What was this doctor, this stranger he’d never met, about to tell him? He played games in his mind. If she comes out before two-fifteen, everything will be fine. If she’s smiling, it means I’m going to be fine.

Glancing around the waiting room, he tried to make sense of it all. He saw leather chairs, a bright hooked rug, a low table covered with magazines. A blue vase filled with yellow flowers. Large black-and-white photos of lighthouses hung on every wall. The place seemed homey, less professional than the optometrist’s office in LaSalle. What could she tell him that he couldn’t? Martin had come because May suggested Dr. Collins, but was he on some endless merry-go-round, being shuttled from one specialist to the next?

The door opened, and an elderly woman stepped into the waiting room. Any hope that she might be the doctor’s secretary was quickly dashed when Martin noticed her white coat and the way she regally crossed the room—smiling, he noticed as his stomach flipped.

“May, is it really you?” the woman asked.

“Dr. Collins?”

“Yes. Oh, my dear. You’re all grown up. Oh, it’s been such a long time…” The doctor embraced May. They held on to each other for a long time, giving Martin the chance to figure out how long it would take to be introduced, let her give him a cursory exam, and politely say good-bye.

“How is your husband?” May asked as they broke apart. “I remember your wedding so well. It was in the Old North Church, and you hung lights in the bell tower just like Paul Revere…”

“William died,” the doctor said, her eyes wide and steady. “Just last year. We had thirty wonderful years together. How I miss him…”

“I’m sorry,” May said. “I remember how he looked at you. I was only seven, but I’ve never forgotten.” She had told Martin that although her family had overseen so many New England weddings, from Greenwich, Connecticut to Bar Harbor, Maine, some stood out more than others.

The doctor turned her gaze on Martin and took his hand. He felt a powerful current flowing from her fingers into his, but even more, he felt the warmth of her gaze. He blinked, wanting to see her better.

“You’re Martin,” she said.

“Yes, Martin Cartier.”

“I’m so happy to meet you. William was a great hockey fan. We watched you play many times. And now, to know that you’re married to May.”

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Collins,” he said.

“Call me Teddy,” she said. “May, you too. Your mother called me that. Your grandmother always insisted on Theodora, but that’s just the kind of woman she was. Correct and formal on all occasions. Let’s not stand on ceremony around here. Okay?”

“Okay,” May said.

Martin stared at her. She had to be sixty-five years old. Her hair was pure white, swept up and twisted behind her head. She wore pearls at her throat and ears. Her eyes were bright blue, wise and youthful at the same time. Something about her reminded him of his mother. But wouldn’t he want someone young, aggressive, at the top of what had to be a changing field for eye doctors?

“Come on inside,” she said, holding the door so they could walk in.

Through the white door was another world entirely. Instruments and machines were everywhere. A massive microscope sat on one desk, a computer terminal on another. Martin felt as if he had walked into the inner sanctum of a top scientist, not a gentle old lady who wanted them to call her “Teddy.”

“This is my research office,” she explained. “I write most of my papers here at home, and I like to have the equipment I need right here.”

“You do research?” May asked.

“Yes. I teach at Harvard, and I need to stay ahead of my students. My practice is affiliated with Boston Eye Hospital, and I see most of my patients there. But I thought, considering your high profile, Martin, that it would be more private for us to meet here first.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Martin told her.

Teddy didn’t say anything, but she gestured for him to take a seat. May and Martin sat side by side, Teddy across from them. She took a detailed medical history, from childhood diseases to torn ligaments. She paid special attention to allergies and medications, his surgeries to have his tonsils removed and ankles repaired.

“Ever had any head injuries?” she asked.

“About ten thousand,” he said.

“Can you remember them all?”

“Every one.”

“Name them.” She smiled, starting a new page.

Concussions, a fractured skull, broken cheekbones, a shattered eye socket, a detached retina, a dislocated jaw, lacerations of the scalp, forehead, chin, and cheeks. He showed her his scars, and she seemed to admire them. He had a story to go with each one, the memory of various opponents in different cities. But especially, his eyes told the tale of Nils Jorgensen.

“Tell me what brings you to me,” she said.

“Well, my eyesight’s been a little blurry,” he said.

“Blurry?”

“Yes. Not always. Sometimes it’s fine. But sometimes it’s like looking through…” He searched for the right word, as if by calling it the wrong thing he might make his problem worse. “Fog. Or a curtain.”

“Both eyes?”

“It’s worse in the left,” he said, without looking at May.

“When did it start?”

“A while ago,” Martin said, still avoiding May.

“How long? A month, two months?”

“A year,” Martin admitted. “It started then.”

He had first noticed a problem just before the play-offs last year, during a regular season game against the Rangers, a few weeks before he’d met May. It had seemed almost like nothing, especially compared with what had happened three years before, when Nils Jorgensen had clocked him and the world had gone dark.

Martin had had a shattered eye socket and a detached retina. He had missed half a season, but surgery had repaired the damage, and by the next year he was as good as new. At first he had been religious about his eye exams, but once he had his 6/6 vision back, he had started slacking off.

And, until a year ago, his eyes had seemed perfect. But one day his vision had blurred. It happened suddenly, for no apparent reason, and at first he’d thought he had something in his eye. Distracted from the game, he had caught a stick in the side of his head, Lefebre had scored for New York, and Martin had learned a lesson: Keep playing hard whether you can see straight or not.

That wasn’t much of a challenge. Martin had discovered long ago that on the ice he could adapt himself to many things. He had skated through his father’s abandonment, his divorce, his mother’s and Natalie’s deaths. Every day he hit the ice with pain in his ankles and knees—pain his doctors told him would cripple some others. So blurry vision in one eye was no big deal; it had slowed him down just long enough for him to learn to compensate for it.

But now, hearing himself say this had been going on for a year, Martin felt a kick in his stomach. Why had he ignored an obvious problem for so long? What if it had been fixable then, but not now? Teddy made notes without expressing concern or judgment. Martin didn’t want to look at May, to see the dismay reflected in her eyes, but she reached over to touch his knee, and when he looked into her face he saw her smiling with encouragement.

Teddy had him face the eye chart, and he repeated the process he’d gone through with Maurice Pilote. Both eyes okay, right eye okay, left eye nothing.

“All right,” Teddy said. “Come sit with me over here, and I’ll examine your eyes.”

“I can do exercises,” Martin said, crossing the room. “Whatever you tell me. I know I should have started them earlier, said something at my last physical. I guess I thought, if the doc notices, I have a problem. If he doesn’t, I must be okay. I’ve always had six/six vision.”

“That’s right, you’re Canadian.” Teddy was smiling as she gestured for him to take a seat across the exam table from her.

They faced each other with the Haag-Streit slit-lamp biomicroscope between them. Teddy directed him to lean forward, placing his face into a masklike contraption. She explained that she was going to project a beam of light onto and into the eye, thereby getting an optical cross-section under high magnification.

“Can you see what’s wrong?” he asked after she’d been staring for a while.

She chuckled. “Patience.”

“Not my strongest suit.”

“No, I wouldn’t think it would be. I’ve seen you play, remember.”

“Right.”

The air-conditioning hummed. Martin tried to sit still, but he felt anxiety rippling through his body. He felt like jumping up, grabbing May, running out onto the street. He had never been any good at staying in one confined spot—an airplane seat, an easy chair, on the bench—for very long. His muscles ached, and his brain screamed for him to run.

Teddy told him to breathe deeply, and he did. The panic faded out.

“You’ve had some scarring,” she said.

“I have?”

“Yes. I can see where your retina became detached in your left eye. That’s where you suffered the blunt trauma?”

“Madame, I suffer blunt trauma for a living,” Martin said.

“I suppose you do,” Teddy said.

Now she explained that she was going to put drops into his eyes, to dilate his pupils. The drops stung, but he didn’t even flinch. Using the Goldmann aplanation tonometer, she measured the pressure in each eye for glaucoma. Finally, using a high-powered camera mounted on the slit-lamp, she took a series of photographs.

Sitting up straight, she smiled at him, indicating that the exam was over. She made a few notes, and Martin glanced over his shoulder at May. She had been sitting quietly across the room, and Martin tried to bring her into focus. The drops and strange light in his eyes had temporarily clouded his sight even more, and all he could see was a dark shape sitting near the window.

“What did you find, Teddy?” he heard May ask.

“Well, there’s evidence of the retinal detachment Martin told me about.”

“That’s the problem, then?” Martin asked, somehow relieved. “That happened almost four years ago—Nils Jorgensen getting me back for some damage I laid on him. I was playing for Vancouver at the time, and I had laser surgery up there. The doc told me he did ‘spot welds,’ and I’d be fine. I was—no problems at all. I got Jorgesen back, he got me again.”