Through anothers eyes

The room was quiet; all you could hear was the sound of breathing. Alex was sitting on the side of the exam table waiting for the doctor to come in. His brother Mark was in the room with him along with his mother. It had been what seemed like an eternity since the accident had taken his eyesight. Now after nearly two years of waiting on a donor and 6 weeks after the surgery, he would finally learn if the transplant took, he would finally find out if he can see again. The door opens and the doctor walks in. Hello he says with a cheerful disposition. Alex and his family are on pins and needles; the tension in the room is so thick that you can hardly breathe. The doctor goes on about not getting his hopes, he talks about the preliminary test showing good things, get on with it already Alex thinks, I want to know. Finally, the doctor begins to remove the bandages, layer after layer they come off until the two final coverings are all that is left. At this point, Alex wants to rip the things off and his family is about to pass out with anticipation. The doctor tells him to keep his eyes closed. He then takes off one eye cover then the other, he directs the nurse to turn down the lights in the room. As Alex opens his eyes, the world seems rather dim and fuzzy. Then he begins to focus, little by little, things come into view. Then with a clarity he hasn’t known before, he can see his mother sitting in the corner. He looks directly at her and smiles; she begins to cry with tears of joy that she has been holding back for weeks. The doctor performs a few more checks and gives Alex some dark glasses to put on. The lights in the room are then brought to normal levels, and though the glasses make everything look kind of Blue/Green, Alex has his sight back. He can’t believe that he can see!

   Melanie was a 24 year graduate student with golden blonde hair and sea green eyes. She was scuba diving in the Florida Keys when out of no where a shark rammed her scuba gear knocking her into the reef she was exploring. With her breathing regulator out of her mouth, and a concussion, she sank to the bottom then floated back up but had already inhaled lungs full of sea water. She drowned at 9 am in the morning and was declared dead after she was airlifted to the local trauma center by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter. Along with her body came her personal effects, on her drivers’ license she had signed to be an organ donor. Without wasting any time, the emergency room doctor placed her body in a cold room and began the process of harvesting her organs. Her heart, her kidneys, her liver and her eyes were taken. Each organ was then flown out, each finding a new home in a patient. Her eyes beautiful sea green eyes now belonged to Alex.

   It had been nearly a month since the bandages had come off. Alex was still getting used to seeing again. He didn’t wear the dark glasses inside, but when he went out in the day time, he still needed them. The doctor told him that with any luck, he would be able to get rid of them in another week. All Alex knew was that he was bored and ready to get back to work. He had to take some time off again from work, despite the fact that he couldn’t stand to be out of the office. When his car accident took his eyesight, he was on his way to an important meeting with a very wealthy client. Every since he had gotten out of college, he had been about one thing, work, upward mobility and acquiring as much success as he could. Before the accident, he had been a workaholic. After the accident, he was depressed for the first month, but then he redoubled his efforts and with the help of brail keyboard and voice dictation software, he was back at work in no time. Despite the loss of his eyesight, he wasn’t going to be sidelined for long. Now that he had his sight back, he was determined to make partner in his financial firm.

   Alex was coming home from the office, he had been working remotely some but liked to get in and do things in person. Despite the fact that he was a senior financial analyst and had two assistances and a secretary working for him, there was nothing like being hands on. As he went to open his apartment, a currier came up to him. He turned suddenly as the man had startled him. He had a package for Alex; he signed for it and went into his apartment. He threw the packet on his coffee table and turned on the television to financial news. It was nice to see the television again, even if the eyes weren’t his. He stopped for a moment and went to the mirror, he looked at himself. He used to have dark brown eyes, now he had sea green eyes to go with his dark hair. He didn’t think it fit, but lots of people noticed. They also said that there was something different about him, they couldn’t quite put their finger on it, and he also thought something was off too. He just dismissed it and kept on going. Yet he still felt a lingering sense that something was different, but he wasn’t sure what it was?

   Alex turned off the TV and changed into his pajamas. He still hadn’t opened the package he had received; he was just too tired to worry about it tonight. He had a drink and got into bed. As he was drifting off to sleep, he began to dream. In a vivid dream, he could see himself petting a Golden Retriever. This wasn’t right, he didn’t even like dogs. Yet here he was playing with a dog and enjoying it. He woke suddenly from the dream and dismissed it as nothing, he rolled over and went back to sleep. Morning came quicker than Alex had anticipated; he was up and out of bed at 6 am. He decided to go for a morning run since the weather was cool and he hadn’t been out early in a while. He left his building and began to run on a familiar route, one he had been on before. This morning however, something seemed different to him. Everywhere he looked he began noticing things he hadn’t paid attention to before. He saw the owner of a coffee shop outside greeting customers. He slowed down by a bakery to smell the fresh bread that was coming out of the oven. Then as Alex was getting near the end of his run, he rounded the corner and from the corner of his eye, he saw something in an alley. He stopped abruptly and turned towards the dingy looking alley, there hiding behind a garbage can was the sorriest but most adorable sight he had ever seen. Wait, this can’t be right, what is going on Alex thought? He called out and a dirty half starved black and white dog with stringy hair and a pitiful look in its eyes came out. He bent down to pet it, what I am I doing he thought, but it was too late, he had let the dog sniff his hand. The dog looked up at him with a soulful look and he stood still for a moment. He didn’t know why but he wanted to just hug the animal. He called to it and the dog began to follow him at a short distance. He jogged slowly hoping that the dog would not follow him, but it was too late. By the time he got to his apartment, the dog was keeping pace with him and under his feet. He didn’t know what had come over him, but he now had a new friend and had no idea why.

   Alex called his office that morning and told his subordinate that he would be working from home today. The analyst that answered the phone didn’t give it a second thought, I mean Alex had been through a lot and was the boss. What he didn’t mention was that he had a new house guest and he was going to be busy cleaning the poor thing up. When Alex got off of the phone, the dog was laying at his feet like some kind of child waiting for attention. He looked at it and asks well, the dog sat up and whined a little. The first thought that came to him is the dog is hungry. He went to the kitchen and got some left over food and put it on a paper plate. The hairy, dirty mop lapped the food up and sat down staring up as if to ask for seconds. After three plates full of leftover Chinese food, pizza and half an omelet, the dog began to lick itself. Alex thought he must be going crazy, but he couldn’t help himself, every time he looked at the dog, he just saw something beautiful he wanted to help. He decided then and there to keep the dog for a while, at least until he could find its owner. That would turn out to be the first of many changes that were about to take Alex by surprise. 

   The dog had now become a fixture in Alex’s life. When Kit first showed up, that is what the dogs name is now. It came about when Alex took the dog to a dog groomer and the person who was going to clean the dog up said it will take my whole kit to make you presentable. Alex liked the name and the dog seemed to enjoy being called Kit, so it was a done deal. Since then Alex had made several attempts to find the dog’s owner with little success. Now to his sense of inevitability, the dog was a fixture in his apartment and life. Alex started noticing other changes in himself. One day he was walking his new dog and passed by a pet shelter. He looked inside and saw all of the pitiful looking creatures and he couldn’t help himself. He went in and at first the woman behind the counter gave him a condescending look. He guessed that she thought he was coming to dump another dog off on them, on the contrary. He looked at all of the helpless animals in cages and wrote the lady a 1000 dollar check, then volunteered to come by and help out once a week. As Alex left, he had to find a bench and sit down! He wasn’t feeling well, he was wondering if he was losing his mind. He then looked around and for some reason the world looked different, he thought perhaps he was losing his sight again, but no he could see clearly. Perhaps the stress of work was the issue; a vacation he thought might be a good idea. What was he thinking, he can’t leave work, there is too much to do. He went back to his apartment and poured himself a drink. He noticed his laptop was on but he hadn’t touched it since yesterday. Alex had been working at home 2 days a week since he got the dog, despite being fully cleared to go back to work. He had also been putting more responsibility on his subordinates. Things he used to handle himself, he would now delegate to others. It didn’t seem to affect the quality of his work, it was just not him. He sat down on his couch with Kit lying beside him. He looked over to the coffee table, the package he had gotten a while back that he never opened. He reached over and took it off of the coffee table; he opened it and inside was a letter and a file folder. As he began to read the letter, he found out that it was from the mother of the woman who had donated her eyes for organ transplant. As Alex finished reading, and looked through the portfolio, he suddenly began to feel like a part of him was reawakening. He learned about the person who had lost their life and about how she had lived. He learned about her free spirit and perspective on life. He suddenly came to realize why he had slowly changed from the hyper focused workaholic to a gentler caring person. He hadn’t just received his eyesight back; he had been given a new perspective on life. He could see the world through another persons eyes.