The Camera

THE CAMERA

by Teresa Milbrodt

edited by Avi Silver

Content warnings: Mention of death, ableist microaggressions

After a hemorrhage my vision goes foggy, like a pink paisley cloud has settled over my eye. I need my niece or boyfriend to help me at the coffee shop, make sure I add the right amount of sugar and cream to my mug. I take Scott's arm to slalom around other customers as we find a table. The hemorrhages hit me hard. I remember what it’s like to rediscover the world in the smooth ceramic of my mug, scent of roasted beans, bittersweet coffee on my tongue, constant hiss of the milk steamer—details I too often ignore. 

I've been blind in my right eye since birth—it’s normal vision for me—but when the every-other-month hemorrhages started happening in my left eye, I realized it might be nice to have a backup. While I heal, it's difficult to draw or paint for a couple of weeks. I can still teach at the community college because I've memorized lectures about line and color, rhythm, and unity, but my consignment projects and artistic livelihood are thrown off course for about a month. 

There’s an aesthetic allure to this blurred world, but the ethereal rose-colored fog that makes objects hazy and haloed is simply red blood cells floating in front of my retina. 

“Thanks,” I say to Scott, and to my niece Lea, who carried my donut to the table. 

“You two could live with me for a bit if you wanted,” says Scott. 

“We're okay,” says Lea, who is ten and very bright. She’s been staying with me for the past four months, since her mother died. “I don't mind helping.”

She reads my mail and texts, something that I needed Scott or a neighbour to do before she came to live with me. I have a white cane for navigating stairs and sidewalks. My ophthalmologist says the bleeds are caused by over-vigilant blood vessel growth in the back of my left eye, the same kind of growth that made the retina detach in my right eye when I was a baby. For over thirty years the blood vessels in my left eye have behaved themselves, but now they're restless. My ophthalmologist zapped some of them with a laser, but after a couple months they got bored and started growing again. 

It takes a few weeks for my eye to clean itself so I can walk without a cane, but bouncing between levels of sight and sightlessness feels chaotic. I hate the moments of panic when I have another hemorrhage, which starts with a haze that reddens and darkens over the course of four or five hours. I’m more light sensitive after those bleeds; I get frequent headaches, listen to audiobooks with my eye closed, and dream ideas for my next projects. My ophthalmologist says my retina could but probably won't detach during a hemorrhage, though I need to see him the day after one happens to be sure. At each appointment he reminds me to go to the ER if I see lightning flashes, or a lowering curtain that doesn't move. That would be my retina detaching.

•••

I didn't plan my life around the possibility of having a kid—not the tiny apartment, or how I’ve crafted an economic existence around teaching adjunct art classes and doing commission work. For extra money, I sign up for medical tests at the university hospital. Usually that means trying seaweed supplements, sleep aids, and other medications that probably won't kill me. I also have sporadic appointments with my ophthalmologist, and fret about the cost of keeping my sight. My health insurance doesn't cover much.

I'm waiting for a tech to photograph my retina (again) to check for damage after the latest hemorrhage when I hear him talk with someone in the hall about a new experiment. The other guy describes it as “Harebrained, but ground-breaking if it works.”

“How will he find test subjects?” the tech wonders aloud.

“Knock on doors in the vision clinic and ask for volunteers,” says the other guy. His voice doesn't conceal his grin. 

“Test subjects for what?” I ask the tech when he comes back in the room. He pauses for a moment, maybe forgetting I could listen in, but he's prone to be chatty.

“This ophthalmologist, a surgeon, and a few other researchers have teamed up to hook tiny cameras to people's visual cortexes and take pictures,” he says. “It's the first stage in a bigger project to feed those images back into someone’s brain and improve their sight if they’ve had vision loss. I guess the camera worked in rats and the first guy they tried. He was pretty old.”

I ask for the ophthalmologist's number, call his office, and request more information and the pay rate. He asks if I can come for a consultation. Three days later he offers a cup of weak coffee as I explain my variable vision. He's intrigued, says the hole that they’d make in my skull for the camera would be very tiny, and shouldn’t affect my motor control or emotional state. At least it didn't in rats and the human test subject. 

He gives me reams of paper that explain their research studies. I can't read them since the pink paisley fog of my latest hemorrhage hasn’t cleared, but I'm intrigued. It is important for me to be a responsible auntie with my intact brain, but that task includes buying food and paying rent and covering the costs of having a kid. The economic possibilities of lending another snippet of myself to science are interesting. The pay rate is good—as much as I’d make in two and a half months, in addition to covering medical expenses and time lost from work. The camera makes me wonder about aesthetic possibilities. Maybe those photographs could be fit for a gallery show. I could recuperate some of the income I lose when my vision turns rose. 

I show the documents to Scott and Lea while we eat Chinese take-out—beef with broccoli for Scott, chicken with oyster sauce for Lea. Usually I’d get mixed vegetables with tofu and some manner of spicy sauce, but today I need the decadence of fried dumplings. Scott flips through the papers. 

“You’d need a medical degree to read this,” he says.

“It's worked in rats and an old guy,” I say.

Is it wise to ask a thirty-four-year-old computer programmer and ten-year-old kid for their opinions on a sci-fi robotics experiment? Probably not, but I do anyway. My niece reads the paper from my fortune cookie.

“Those who live in straw houses should have good building skills,” Lea says. “I think that means go for it.” 

I'm too curious and frustrated not to. The ophthalmologist said it's a tiny hole. The rats have been okay.  

•••

I should be more worried about the surgery since they’re somehow doing it on an outpatient basis, but the ophthalmologist and his surgical partner remind me for the millionth time that it's a very small hole for a very small camera that shouldn’t affect my vision. They don't tell me exactly how it'll work, just that it's pretty easy for brain surgery, and the camera will be simple to access via my laptop with a password. To take pictures, I tap a tiny button on the side of my head. I can disguise it as a scratch. Or like I'm thinking deeply about something.

“You're lucky to try the prototype,” the ophthalmologist says. “Most people would have to sell everything they own and take out a loan to cover the expense.”

I don't know if this is reassuring, since it’s not the most enviable lotto prize. I’ve won an extremely costly, extremely experimental procedure due to a near-desperate economic situation—I'm scrimping to pay rent, my niece sleeps on the futon, and we’re praying we don't have to move in with Scott. It would be manageable, but a tighter fit.

I don't remember the surgery, though I am technically awake for it—just doped up on pain medications. Later, Scott says that I kept singing “Frère Jacques” in recovery. The ophthalmologist said to call if I didn't stop after a couple hours. When I come back to myself I'm lying on Scott's couch, and Lea asks if I'd like pizza. I shake my head, just wanting toast since my stomach feels odd. Probably the anesthesia wearing off. I finger the bump on the side of my head that feels like a zit. It's tender, but I can't help trying out the camera. The last hemorrhage was two weeks ago, so my world is still hazy and haloed with the remnants of blood. We have established the passwords and laptop link to my brain camera, so downloading photos is too easy.

“Wow,” says Scott when I show him the image. “It's like seeing the couch through a filtered lens.”

“Blood cells,” I say.

“That looks awesome,” says Lea. “Ghost world.”

I agree that it's beautiful when I don't need to read something. Over the next few days, I take pictures and pictures and pictures, but after another week my eye has cleaned itself thoroughly enough that they are less interesting. Since I can read my email and snail mail without assistance, I return to routine, catching up on commission projects and grading students' sketches that have been on my desk for days. For the first time in a year and a half, I wait with slight excitement for the next hemorrhage.

Continued in Augur Magazine Issue 6.1...