Chapter 2
The ophthalmologist wound the dial on his machine after instructing Caitlin to place her chin on the indented rest and forehead at the bar of his expensive-looking scope with the fancy lenses.
This, he explained, will help him get a clearer picture of what is happening in the back of the eye.
He dims the consulting room’s main light before asking Caitlin to look straight ahead, up, up to the right, and so forth around in a circle before looking back at some blinking dot in the center.
Only Caitlin can’t see any blinking red dot.
She can’t see… anything. The “jellyfish” are so bad she can’t differentiate one from the other.
The lights flick back on and starkly illuminate this clinical little room, dwarfed by a reclining medical chair, a bulky scope machine on a swinging arm, and three other chairs.
The ophthalmologist on a rolling, backless stool, and Mom and I huddled together in the corner on standard-issue waiting room chairs.
“Thank you, Caitlin, you can sit back and relax now,” the gentleman with receding hair and horn-rimmed glasses said, his face pained.
The soft crinkling around his eyes is visible behind the arm of his own glasses, and Mom grabs hold of my hand in search of comfort I’m not sure I can provide.
“Bubble, I’m worried,” she whispers in a hushed tone that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Mrs. Broe, can we talk freely here? With your daughters present?”
“Yes, Doctor,” Mom says, her faded lilt a shadow of its usual tone and candor.
“As I stated at Caitlin’s last visit, the retina has partially detached in her left eye because of the leaking blood vessels there. Too much fluid built up, and the retina was compromised.”
“She didn’t complain of any pain, only more jellyfish.”
“I see,” he says. Not a brilliant line to deliver when your present patient can’t, Doctor. You need to revisit your conversational skills.
“Can that be fixed?” Mom asks, desperate for some positive news.
“It’s unlikely, even with surgery, that she would regain usable vision in that eye. My colleagues and I have discussed her case at length, and she needs to be under the care of a retinal specialist. We suspect uveitis, or perhaps Coats’ disease.”
Mom’s grip on my fingers becomes painfully tight. My sister, the bright and beautiful baby of the Broe family, was losing her vision?
“Uveitis or Coats’ disease. I’ve never heard of them,” Mom stammers, eyeing me for confirmation.
I’ve never heard of them either. When Cait first started having vision problems in elementary school, she was prescribed glasses that, in her own words, sharpened the edges of some close things.
They didn’t allow her to read signs across the rink when we went to watch the boys play hockey, nor certain things on the board in the classroom.
She described a series of brown, jellyfish-like floaters drifting across her vision.
The first doctor stated that these floaters were leaking blood from vessels in the eye as a result of hitting her head and would go away on their own.
Only she hadn’t hit her head or suffered any bodily trauma whatsoever, and the floaters didn’t go away.
If anything, they increased in viscosity and frequency.
On the last visit, the one I didn’t attend because I was employed and blissfully ignorant, the optician had confirmed a series of leaking blood vessels.
These vessels were growing abnormally and were not supposed to be there, and further investigation was warranted.
“My office has brochures on glaucoma and macular degeneration, conditions that can be treated with laser correction. Caitlin needs to see a specialist.”
My gaze oscillates between the doctor tapping away at his keyboard and my sister squirming in the chair, trapped there by the swinging table and scope machine.
“Oh, I apologize,” he says, releasing the locked tray and swinging the whole thing to the side. “Caitlin, do you understand what is happening to you?”
Caitlin nods. It’s a gentle, economical movement. For one so young, she has a maturity beyond her age and the ability to understand complex concepts most adults can’t grasp. “That I’m blind in one eye?”
My throat is constricted with panic and fear for my sister. No, no, no, no. She’s so young, with so many bright dreams and aspirations ahead of her creative soul. If she can’t see, how will she work and live?
The doctor nods, and Mom breaks down into heaving sobs, the hand not entwining mine holding a crumpled tissue to her face.
“Yes. But the disease is present in your other eye, which is unusual. A specialist is the best option to preserve the vision you have, but it is unlikely you will regain any you have already lost.”
My jaw hinges open. I can’t decide if his method of delivering bad news is horrid or blisteringly efficient.
“Oh my God,” Mom wailed, and it was then that the full nature of the prognosis surged in like a wave covering a rocky shore. Every crevice seeps with its watery, frightful fucking news.
“Thank you. Can we go now?” My sister wants out of this room, and I don’t blame her.
Mom has both hands shrouding her face, and her body is still trembling with despair.
The only reason I’m here at all is that I left my last job and am currently unemployed.
Maybe this is fate intervening somehow, and while I’m here, I may as well be of use to someone.
“Can you please provide the details of the specialist you mentioned so we can get Cait in for an appointment?”
“I can,” he says, hesitating, his hand moving the mouse to a new page of her medical information on his screen. “The cost involved for uninsured patients is prohi—”
“We’ll find a way,” I blurted out, unaware of the cost of her treatment and how we’d afford it, but determined she wouldn’t suffer further vision loss. “Can we please just have the details?”
I insisted on a cafe debrief that comprised grilled cheese and an unlawful amount of whipped cream atop our hot chocolates; calories and carbs be damned.
The mugs, loaded with whipped cream, chocolate, and marshmallows, made my sister giggle with pure euphoria.
Comfort food that provided little comfort when the topic of an appointment with the retinal specialist came up again.
“Mom, we will find a way.”
She nodded, poking the foaming milk of her cappuccino with the back of her spoon.
She declared she felt too wound up to eat and just ordered a coffee.
Seems she’s too stressed to drink as well.
Mom internalizes her worries. As matriarch over a family of eight, and only one of two females still at home, she saw her roles as the nurturer, the empath, and the healer.
Her position today no doubt overwhelmed her, as Cait’s plight was well outside Mom’s wheelhouse of boo-boo fixes and hugs.
“We can all pitch in. I’ll put money aside, and the boys will do the same. Together we can cover the cost of her treatment, Mom.” Someone has to voice a plan. Mom can’t clean more than her eleven houses, despite her worries, and Dad already has two jobs.
She sighs a whole-body sigh, one of relegation and resignation. Not on my watch, woman. “All of us are working,” I add, the bitter lie of my resignation wanting to punch through my chest and spill onto the table.
“Together we can do anything seems so insurmountable here,” she says, gesturing to an oblivious Caitlin chasing overflowing cream down the sides of her glass unsuccessfully, and dissolving into giggles.
“Connor, Liam, Ky, me, and Ronan are all going to help. I’ve already sent a message to the family chat.”
“Con has his own family, Bub, and Ro is barely making ends meet as an apprentice.” The spoon clattered into the saucer while she blinked.
“But a rising tide lifts all boats.” Molly Broe loved a rousing phrase, even if John Kennedy’s line from the 1960s was more focused on the economy than pooled funds to stave off imminent, irreversible blindness.
“We can do this. We will do this. I’ll sell my car and take the subway, I don’t care. And I can draw more, maybe sell them in the park on weekends?”
Mom’s watery smile cleaves my chest in two. As one, our focus turns to the spirited teen not chasing waterfalls, but rivers of cascading cream before picking up her grilled cheese and moaning around an enormous bite. For this gorgeous girl, we can, and will, do anything.
I farewelled my mother and sister with drawn out squeezy hugs because the power of love and touch can’t be underestimated.
One stoic, calm, and almost resigned to what is ahead of her, the other a disbelieving mess of tears, parental guilt, and crumpled tissues.
Mom and I are as close as any of my other friends.
She’s the parent, granted, although our bond is defined on an axis that transcends more than providing a stable home environment.
We wear each other’s clothes and even get our nails done together when finances allow or she’s amiable to me paying for her as my treat.
When the cleaning company she had worked with for over nineteen years went into liquidation, she lost her unused leave, benefits, and insurance.
Her dignity and drive remained intact, however, and becoming her own boss of a one-woman house-cleaning operation saw a regular wage, but little else.
Dad was already a sole trader of his home maintenance and repair business, and making custom firepits in the little spare time he had.
As a family of eight, we learned the value of a hard-earned dollar, the importance of resilience, and the need to be thrifty.
All four of my brothers inherited the same work ethic from our parents.
Only Connor, the eldest Broe boy, was married with a family of his own to support, and excess funds might not be so easy for him to find.