“Joe!”

Joe Hardy turned over in his bed, dimly hearing his mother’s voice calling him but feeling too comfortable and drowsy to respond. 

“Joe, time to get up!” 

He didn’t want to get up; and why was it time to, anyway?  It was still summer vacation, he and Frank had two and a half more weeks before school started.  ‘And we’ll be in the same school,’ the ten-year-old thought sleepily.  The thought was enough to make him smile despite his dislike of school.  Only a week ago he’d been miserable at the thought of attending a different school than his older brother...

Reminded, Joe stiffened in his bed, the sudden fear clutching him.  What if-?  With a gasp, the boy jerked his eyes open- and then sighed in deep relief as his familiar room formed around him.  After a moment, a shaky smile crossed his face; once again, his fear was groundless.

It had been more than a month since Joe had lost his sight after a neighborhood bully had flung a firecracker in his face.  For weeks, he’d lived with absolute blackness, struggled with the fear it roused in him.  He’d hoped and wished and even prayed for his eyes to get better, but it had seemed as if all his longing was for nothing.

And then, somehow, the darkness had seemed lighter.  There had been flashes of color, flickers of motion, grayness where there had been solid black.  Joe had decided those fragmented glimpses were his own imagination at work, due solely to his desperate longing to see something- anything- again.  It had gone on for almost a week, until- three days ago- Joe had opened his eyes and seen, almost as if he’d never gone blind in the first place. 

If his sight could come back as suddenly as that, there was no reason why it might not leave again the same way.

Mom and Dad and Aunt Gertrude had warned him to let them know if his head or his eyes hurt, or it ‘anything else’ happened.  That meant the adults were also concerned about the possibility that his sight might go away again.  But they never talked about it, and Joe was afraid to bring it up.  He knew that if he admitted his fear, they would just say the same things they’d said the first day: “That’s very unlikely to happen.” Or “You don’t need to worry about that, Joe.”  That hadn’t helped him before and it wouldn’t help now.  Saying something was 'unlikely' didn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen, and it wasn’t easy to just stop worrying because someone told him to. 

But at least Frank had understood why Joe was afraid to go to sleep at night and open his eyes in the morning.  Frank knew how scared Joe was of the dark; he’d helped Joe deal with the fact that he was stuck in a pitch-black world while everyone else had light and color.  And Frank had gently persuaded Joe, not that it was silly to be scared of losing his sight while he slept and that he shouldn’t worry about it, but that there was a different way to look at it.

Your eyes aren’t getting worse while you’re sleeping; they’re resting and getting better, and stronger.  So the more nights pass, the better they’ll be- not the worse.  It’s the same as putting a bandage on a cut, or not walking much when you’ve twisted your ankle.  You let it rest and it heals.  I know it’s scary at night, ‘cause it’s so dark, but when you lost your sight, the nighttime didn’t have anything to do with it.  It didn’t reach into you and pull your vision away before, so it won’t do it now. 

After thinking about that for a while, Joe had decided he agreed.  It was reassuring reasoning, it made perfect sense.  And it had kept the fear from chasing him down the hall into Frank’s room the last two nights.  That was definitely good, for he’d spent the night before those with his brother and had nearly fallen out of the bed a few times.   

Joe turned onto his back and tucked his hands behind his head, drinking in the sight of sunbeams shining across his bed and floor.  His fear already half-forgotten when he started at a tap-tap noise and turned quickly towards the door.  “Joe?” came his mother’s voice again from the other side of the door.  “Wake up, honey, we have your appointment with the eye doctor this morning.”

“I’m awake,” Joe replied through a yawn.  “Be down in a minute.” 

“Better hurry, before Frank gets down there first and takes all the bacon,” Mom suggested.  Joe could hear the smile in her voice as he tossed back the covers and scrambled out of bed.  She was right; Frank was very fond of crisp bacon and would take as much as he could get his hands on.

“I will,” he vowed as he dug in the drawer for a pair of shorts.  His mother’s footsteps moved away as she went to wake Frank.  Joe recklessly pulled on the first clothes he found, relieved that his random selection matched pretty well.  He made it into the bathroom before Frank by dint of not pausing to put his sneakers on. 

When Joe got out of the bathroom, Frank was standing outside the door waiting his turn.  He looked a little impatient and not very awake, but he smiled at Joe.  “Hi, brat,” he said, tousling Joe’s just-combed blond hair.

“Fraannnk!”  Joe pressed his hands against his head in annoyance; now he’d have to comb all over again! 

“So-rry,” the eleven-year-old taunted.  “You forgot your shoes,” he added after a moment, looking down.  Joe looked down too, and wiggled his toes in their white socks.

“Yeah.  Frank...”

“What’s the matter?”  Frank paused on the threshold of the bathroom.  Joe fidgeted a little, reluctant to admit his fear.  But Frank would understand.

“I just...I don’t wanna go to that mean old doctor,” he burst out at last, scowling.  Dr. Wilburn had not been kind and Joe had disliked him from their very first meeting.  Moreover, he was certain the feeling was mutual, and had expressed his quiet belief to Frank that the doctor might ‘mess up my eyes’ if Joe made him angry.

“Maybe it’ll be a different doctor,” Frank suggested calmly.  “It might be his day off or something.” 

“Maybe.”  That was a hopeful thought and Joe mused on it for a moment before deciding, with a sigh of resignation, that it wasn’t too likely.  A moment later, he was the recipient of a quick hug from his brother.  “Thanks.”

“No sweat.”  Frank smiled briefly.  “It’ll be okay, Joey.  He’s mean, but he wouldn’t mess your eyes up just ‘cause you don’t like him.  If he messed up everyone who didn’t like him, none of his patients would see again and he wouldn’t’ve been a doctor for so many years.  They’re not allowed to do stuff like that anyway, they take a vow to help, not harm.”

Joe cocked his head and considered that.  It had a ring of truth, if not logic.  Whether Dr. Wilburn was capable of keeping his vow or not was a point to muse over, but the smell of bacon was distracting him and he decided musing could wait.  As the bathroom door closed behind Frank, Joe made a dash for his room to get his shoes on.  Having accomplished this, he dashed right back to the bathroom and waited beside the closed door, fidgeting impatiently.

The door opened a few minutes later and Joe nearly collided with Frank as his brother emerged.  “Now what is your hurry?” the dark-haired boy asked tartly.  “You already had your turn-”

“I need my comb, you messed up my hair,” Joe explained, dodging around the barrier his brother presented and grabbing his comb.  Finishing this task, he darted out into the hall, trotted up behind his brother, and leaped onto Frank’s back.  Frank, taken by surprise, stumbled a bit and leaned against the wall to get his balance.

“What do I look like, a horse?” he inquired mildly, tucking his hands under Joe’s knees and hoisting him into a proper piggy-back position.

“Giddyup!” Joe retorted, wrapping his arms around Frank’s neck.  Leaning forward, he felt Frank's fine, dark hair tickle his cheek and forehead.  He loosened one hand to smooth it out of the way. 

“Thank you, my ‘mane’ was in my eyes,” Frank remarked good-naturedly.  “Oops, end of the trail,” he added, stopping at the top of the steps. 

“Um, yeah.”  Joe slid down, preferring to take the steps on his own; they looked way too steep from his perch on Frank’s back.  “Good horsie.  I’ll give you some hay and oats and go have all the bacon for myself,” he teased, and laughed as his brother swatted him on the back of his shoulder.

“Forget it, cowboy, this horse is laying claim to half of it.”  Frank’s dark-brown eyes sparkled with amusement.  Then their mother emerged from the kitchen, bearing the plates, and the boys raced down the steps side by side.

“Goodness, whoever would’ve thought there were any sleepyheads who had to be called to breakfast?” Laura Hardy laughed, setting the plates on the table.  The boys slid into their usual chairs and set to work on their breakfast: bacon, buttered toast with jelly, and scrambled eggs with mushrooms.  “Don’t eat so fast,” she admonished Joe, turning back to the kitchen.  “We do have a little while before we have to leave.  And, Frank, you might want to bring a book to read.”

“A book?  How come?”

“It’s probably going to take a while,” their mother explained. 

“I don’t think that sounds very good,” Joe muttered to his eggs.

“Don’t look so worried, honey,” Mom said kindly.  “I told you, it won’t hurt.  Oh, and I’ll need to stop in the fabric store in the mall afterwards.”

“Can we have lunch at the food court?” Joe asked eagerly.

“I suppose we could do that.”

“Oo!  The ice-cream shop?” Frank chimed in.

“Mayyybe....”  Mom smiled.  “Depends how well-behaved my boys are.”

Joe got back to work on his scrambled eggs, feeling a little better.  A treat to look forward to made the doctor visit seem much less worrying.  Especially if Edwin’s All-Cream Ice Cream store was involved.

***

Frank Hardy settled into the not-very-comfortable chair in the empty waiting room and looked around with interest.  The chairs were wooden with padded seats, but the padding was thin.  The carpet was rough and gray and the walls were white, except where there were a few posters about eyes and eye diseases hanging up.  There was a high counter and two women sat behind it, answering phones and working on their computers.  There were two doors beside the counter, and both were closed.  There were a couple small wooden tables with boring-looking magazines on them, and in a corner was a little red plastic table with two blue plastic chairs.  A kids’ table; there were some baby toys on the floor around it and crayons and kiddy books on it.  Frank regarded these with some disdain and felt his pocket for his copy of  ‘A Wrinkle in Time’. 

Beside him, Joe sat fidgeting: rubbing his hands on his shorts, peering around the room, thumping his feet against the leg of the chair, and turning around to examine the edge of the poster above them.  Mom was talking to the ladies at the counter; after a moment she came and sat down on another chair next to Joe.  “You won’t be seeing Dr. Wilburn,” she said, and Joe quickly turned to look at her.

“Good!  ...How come?” 

Frank leaned forward, equally interested. 

“He’s been suspended from practice.”

“Suspended?”  Joe looked up as though expecting to see the man dangling from the ceiling.

“Not suspended like that, Joe- like, fired.”

“Close enough,” Mom agreed.  “They made him stop seeing patients because he was being so unkind to them.  Several parents complained when their kids came out crying after being checked by him.  There is absolutely no excuse for frightening a child who can’t see right, and what’s worse, he showed almost no remorse.  Insulted a couple of parents, suggesting their children were- were sissies.”

“I told you he didn’t like people.  He didn’t care.  People like that shouldn’t be doctors,” Frank remarked, feeling vindicated.  He’d told that man right to his face that he was nasty.

“You’re right, Frank, they shouldn’t.  So you’ll be seeing Dr. Rosa Alvarado, Joe.  They tell me she’s very nice.”

Joe heaved a gusty sigh of relief and leaned back against the chair.  “Good,” he murmured.  “Good, good...better, best, great...”

“Hey, Mom,” Frank wondered suddenly, interrupting the stream of adjectives; “where was Dad and Auntie this morning?”

“Where ‘were’ they.  Your father went in to his office, Sam called him a little early, needed some help.  And your aunt went to a flower show.”

Joe giggled.  “Do the flowers bark and sit up and roll over and play dead?” he asked.  “Or do they jump over things, like horses do?”

Frank laughed and Mom shook her head with a smile.  “I have a silly boy,” she remarked, tweaking Joe’s ear.  “A very silly boy with a runaway imagination.”

“Yup!”  Joe sounded proud of himself. 

“And I have a silly brother, who thinks flowers are dogs and big brothers are horses.  He’s got horses on his brain, Mom.”

“That’s how my imagination ran away, it got on a horse and galloped off to the ranch, pardner.”

The playful conversation was interrupted when one of the doors opened and a young man with curly light brown hair said, “Joe Hardy?”  Frank didn’t miss the apprehensive look that flashed across his brother’s face as Joe stood up.  He reached up and squeezed Joe’s hand, not surprised at how sweaty it was; received a tight squeeze in return...

And then the door closed behind Joe and the man.  “You’re not going in with him?” Frank asked his mother.  “He’s pretty scared.”

“If he gets too nervous they’ll ask me to come back, but they prefer to have just the patient.  And I would like him to be able to be tested by himself,” his mother replied slowly, the cheerful expression leaving her face.  She seemed almost sad.  “I don’t want to protect him too much, Frank; he’ll get too used to thinking that he can’t do things unless someone’s there to help him.  I don’t mean you shouldn’t look out for him,” she added, seeing Frank’s frown.  “I mean- well, like when he couldn’t see and he kept insisting he could do things for himself?”

“Yeah...like that, then?  Let him do it himself and don’t help him till he wants help?”

“Exactly.  It’s better for everyone that way.”

Frank nodded thoughtfully.  He recognized his mother’s sad look; he’d seen it on her face often enough when Joe had kept insisting that she didn’t need to help him.  She might think it was the right thing to do, but she didn’t like it very much.  Having felt that sadness himself when he’d concluded that Joe wouldn’t need his help anymore, Frank sympathized.  He was lucky; Joe still wanted Frank’s help, or at least his company, quite frequently.  Frank had worried at first that Joe might change his mind, but he was gradually becoming more confident that that wouldn’t happen.  After all, they were partners, and would someday work together as detectives....

Frank dismissed his wandering thoughts, dug out his book, opened it, and began reading.

***   

“Does it always take this long?”  Frank Hardy put down his book and looked at his mother with a troubled frown.  The chair he was sitting on seemed to be growing less comfortable with every passing moment, and there had been an awful lot of minutes passing in this waiting room! 

“I expect so.”  Mom glanced up from her third magazine.  “It’s not your average eye exam, Frank- they have to run some pretty complicated tests to see exactly how strong his vision is now.  He might end up needing glasses, and if that’s so, they’ll need to know what strength to make them.”

“Oh.”  Frank subsided, but eyed the closed door for several minutes.  He wished he knew what was going on back there- he hadn’t heard a thing since Joe went back.  Eventually he got tired of the dull blank white door and went back to his book, but his concentration was faltering.  He kept losing his place, and several times he stopped reading to glare at the stubbornly closed door.  He listened to the nurses quietly talking and answering the telephone, and watched with interest when the door opened and a middle-aged woman led an old man inside.  Frank tried not to eavesdrop or stare, but he gathered from the talk that the man had had something called ‘cataract’ surgery and now he was having his vision checked- just like Joe was.  After they’d talked a while, the newcomers took seats and Frank tried to pay strict attention to his book.

Finally, after what seemed like three or four hours, the door opened and a black-haired woman came out, leading Joe by the hand.  Frank hopped up, dropped his book on the seat, and hurried to his brother.  “Hey,” he began, and Joe started a little. 

“Oh, it’s you.”  The blond boy blinked several times and Frank felt a thrill of alarm as he saw how dilated Joe’s blue eyes were.  “I can see, sort of,” Joe added quickly as Frank took his other hand, “but things are really blurry up close.  And I can’t see things moving too well.”

“How come?” Frank demanded.  His brother had gone in seeing fine- if that doctor had messed his eyes up-!

“It’s eyedrops, Dr. Rosa said they make my- I forget what she called it, the black part- open really wide so she can see all the way in to the back of my eye.  They kinda stung, and light hurts, but she said it’ll wear off soon.”

“Oh.”  Frank subsided, though he still didn’t like it much.  At least Joe wasn’t upset about everything being all blurry; but that was probably because he knew it would wear off.   

“She’s really nice, not like that old guy.”  Joe made a face.  “Where’s Mom?”

“Over here.”  Frank, with the ease of practice, guided Joe over to where Mom and the doctor were talking quietly.  Frank heard the words ‘separated retina’ and wondered what it meant, then dismissed it at the remark, “...Seems to have healed very well, he’s not quite twenty-twenty, but he definitely doesn’t need glasses.”

“We were very concerned when he couldn’t see after the operation,” Mom answered, obviously relieved by the good news.

“Yes, I can understand that.  Retinal repair doesn’t usually include a delay in returning vision, but it’s possible that the nerves suffered a bit of shock- the chart said it was a firework?”

Laura nodded.

“Close range,” Frank muttered, scowling and the doctor glanced at him with a nod.

“So even if the retina hadn’t detached, the nerves probably got shaken up and there might have been a brief period of blindness while they recovered.  Nerves are about the slowest part of the body to heal after a shock or injury.”

“I wish you’d been in the hospital when Joe was there!” Mom exclaimed.  “That Dr. Wilburn had us thinking there was only the slightest chance...”

The doctor shook her head.  “I know the man very well.  He’s an extremely talented surgeon, but his general attitude and pessimism are totally out of place in any medical profession,” she said discreetly.

“He’s a jerk!” Joe stated firmly.  “A mean, nasty, old- bully!”

“By which I would conclude that you’re not very fond of him, eh Jose?” the doctor inquired, looking down with a smile.  Joe opened his mouth again, then laughed.

“Jose?” Frank wondered.

“That’s my name in Dr. Rosa’s language- Spanish,” Joe explained eagerly.  “S-pan-yole,” he added.

“Muy bien, Jose.  Now remember, treat your eyes gently- don’t read for hours or watch tons of TV.  And keep those video games to a minimum.  Wear sunglasses, and if you get a lot of headaches, you come back and see me and we’ll check it out, all right?”

“Okay.”  Joe sighed.  “For a month, right?”

“For a month.”

“And I’ll be back in school, too,” the boy grumbled, not quite under his breath.

“A few headaches now and again are to be expected, especially if he’s doing what I mentioned- TV, videos, reading.  Aspirin and maybe a cold pack on his eyes, if so.  If the pain gets bad or doesn’t respond to the aspirin, call me at once.  If it doesn’t get bad but persists- every other day, every day- make an appointment and we’ll squeeze you in.  It will mean there is trouble with the retina.  I don’t expect any of it, though, knowing what perfectionist worked on him.”

Mom nodded.  “All right.  Thank you, Doctor.”

“Take care, muchachos.”  Dr. Rosa turned to the old man.  “Ah, Senor Carlisle.  Step right back with me-”

“Into the abyss,” the man grunted, smiling as he got up.

“What’s mooy being?” Frank asked his brother as he picked up his book.

“Means ‘very good’.  And muchacho is boy.”

“Oh.  ...Jose, sounds like hose with an a at the end.  Can I call you hose?” Frank joked.

“No!”  Joe punched him lightly in the arm with his free hand.

“Ready to hit the mall, you two?”  Mom led the way out of the office, Frank following with Joe’s hand clasped in his.  He noticed that Joe was keeping his eyes closed as they went along, but didn’t ask about that.  Not yet.

***

“She was nice,” Joe remarked judiciously when they were in the car and driving towards the mall, “but I wouldn’t wanna do that again.”  He kept his eyes closed as he spoke; he wasn’t real happy about the darkness but it was better than the wincingly sharp brightness that shot through his eyes when they were open.  Doctor Rosa had said it would wear off soon; Joe hoped ‘soon’ would be very soon!

“Was it bad?” his brother asked anxiously.

“Well...it didn’t really hurt, but it wasn’t much fun, either,” Joe decided.  “The first part was okay, I guess.  That guy did the reading off the letters chart- you know, he pointed to a letter and I told him what it was.  So that was easy.  But then!  Then he did this other test, and that one was bad.  I had to sit on this stool-thing in front of this machine and put my chin in this sorta- cup.  Like when you put a bike helmet on, the chin part?  Like that.  And then I put my forehead against this bar and I had to stare straight at this red light and not move.  I mean, not move my eyes, at all!  And every time I did move my eyes, that rotten machine beeped at me!  Stop laughing!” he ordered, hearing a soft snicker.

“So what was that for?”  Frank was smiling, Joe just knew he was.

“Well, the guy- he was pretty nice too, his name was Tim- he was making this machine flash white lights beside me, and I had to press a button when I saw them, but not turn and look at them.  Checking my- my side vision.  D’you know how hard it is to make your eyes not look at a light flashing next to you?  And then to press on a button without moving, either?” Joe demanded.  “That took for ever!  And that stupid machine was beeping at me like every single second!”

“Sounds like a real pain,” Frank observed.

“Oh, yeah.  Then Dr. Rosa came in and she did a test to see which eye was stronger, sorta like the first test but more like ‘which side is more blurry?’  After that she put some drops in and that wasn’t a lot of fun either, they stung.  Then she put this weird thing right against my eyeball.  I couldn’t really feel it, though.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.  And the last thing was the second drops, and those took a while to work, Tim came over a couple times and shone this little flashlight in my eyes- and boy, that kinda hurt.  Like staring at the sun.  Then I had to go lay down on a table and hold this big plastic thing, like a big magnifying glass, and they shone light through it right into my eyes and I almost yelled ‘cause it was worse than the flashlight.  Then she kept telling me to look up and look down and left and right- and you know I’m not very good with left and right yet.”

“Jeez!”  Frank sounded a little annoyed now.  “That’s an awful lot of testing.”

“It sure was!  And that last one was the worst.  Dr. Rosa kept telling me to try and hold still and all I wanted to do was get off that old table.”  Joe frowned.  “That took a long time, too.  But she was really nice about it, said she knew how hard it was to lie still when someone was shining lights in your eyes.  And she said when she said left to look towards her, and right to look towards Tim, so that helped a lot.”

“Well that’s good, that she didn’t get nasty at you.  Just think what that old jerk woulda done.”

“Oh, he probably would’ve tied me to the table so I couldn’t move and called me stupid when I messed up left and right,” Joe replied sourly.  “Anyway, Dr. Rosa said I should keep my eyes closed for a while, since I didn’t bring sunglasses- said even a little light’ll probably make my eyes hurt.”

“We can stop in the mall and get you some sunglasses from the drugstore,” Mom suggested from the front seat.  “We’re almost there, in fact.  How’re your hunger levels?”

“High,” Frank replied.

“Very high,” Joe countered, and his stomach growled to back him up.

“All right, we’ll get Joe’s sunglasses, have lunch in the food court, get my fabric, pause for the ice-cream store, and then go home- sound like a plan?”

“Yeah!” the boys cheered simultaneously.  Joe opened his eyes briefly, just long enough to see the red blur that was Frank in his red shirt, then closed them again, comforted to see that the world was still there.