her bedroom. They were getting it set up when her father, coming along the corridor from the bathroom, must have caught sight of them through the doorway. He entered the room, dressed for work, wearing the same brown sports jacket Caitlin had first seen him in.
“Good morning, Malcolm,” Dr. Kuroda said.
“Wait a minute,” her father replied. He went back down the corridor; Caitlin didn’t hear his shoes on the tiled bathroom floor, so he must have gone into his bedroom. A moment later, he returned carrying a large flat rectangular box marked with a strange red-and-orange pattern. Caitlin’s mom was with him.
“No point waiting for tomorrow,” he said.
Oh! It was a birthday present. The colorful box was gift-wrapped!
Caitlin moved away from the desk, and her dad placed the flat box on the bed. The wrapping paper, she saw as she got closer to it, was beautiful, with an intricate design. Smiling, she tore it off the box.
It was a giant, wide-screen LCD computer monitor — twenty-seven inches diagonally, according to the packaging. “Thank you!” Caitlin said.
“You’re welcome, dear,” her mother said. Caitlin hugged her, and she smiled at her dad. Her parents headed downstairs, and she and Kuroda carefully got the monitor out of its Styrofoam packing materials.
She crawled under her desk so she could get at the connectors on the back of her old computer. As Kuroda fed a video cable to her, she said, “I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to get so upset when you said you were going to remove the Wi-Fi capability from the eyePod.”
His tone was conciliatory. “I’d never do anything to hurt you, Miss Caitlin. It’s really no bother to keep it intact.”
She started turning one of the thumbscrews on the cable’s connector so she could anchor it to the video card. She’d done similar things several times before when she couldn’t see; it was a task that really wasn’t much easier now that she could. “I — I just like it the way it is,” she said.
“Ah,” he said. “Of course.” His tone was odd, and—
Oh. Perhaps, having just seen her father, he was thinking that she did have a touch of autism after all: the strong desire to keep things the same was a fairly standard trait of people on the spectrum, she’d learned. Well, that was fine by her — it got her what she wanted.
Once both computers and both monitors were set up, Caitlin and Kuroda headed down to their last breakfast together. “I might not be home when you get back from school,” her mother said, as she passed the jam. “After I take Masayuki to the airport, I’m going to head into Toronto and run errands.”
“That’s okay,” Caitlin said. She knew she’d have plenty to do with the phantom. She also knew that school would seem interminable today. The three-day Canadian Thanksgiving holiday weekend was coming up; she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to return to school until next Tuesday, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. She had missed four of the five days of classes already this week; she would not miss the fifth.
Too soon, it was time to say good-bye to Dr. Kuroda. They all moved to the entryway of the house, a half flight of stairs down from the living room. Even Schrodinger had come to say farewell; the cat was doing close orbits around Kuroda’s legs, rubbing against them.
Caitlin had hoped for another unseasonably early snowstorm, thinking it might cause Kuroda’s flight to be canceled so he’d have to stay — but there’d been no such luck. Still, it was quite chilly out and he had no winter coat, and Caitlin’s father hadn’t yet bought himself one — and, even if he had, it never would have fit Kuroda. But Kuroda had a sweater on over one of his colorful Hawaiian shirts, which was tucked in, except at the back.
“I’m going to miss you terribly,” Kuroda said, looking at each of them in turn.
“You’ll always be welcome here,” her mom said.
“Thank you. Esumi and I don’t have nearly as big a place, but if you ever make it back to Japan…”
The words hung in the air. Caitlin supposed that, at one day shy of sixteen, she probably shouldn’t be thinking that such a trip was never going to happen; who knew what her future held? But it did seem unlikely.
Yes, Kuroda had said he was going to build other implants, and so there would be more operations in Tokyo. But the next implant was slated for that boy in Singapore who had missed out earlier. It would be an awfully long time, if ever, before Caitlin’s chance to have a second implant would come around; she knew she’d probably spend the rest of her life with vision in only one eye.
Only! She shook her head — a sighted person’s gesture — and found herself smiling while her eyes were tearing up. This man had given her sight — he was a true miracle worker. But she couldn’t say that out loud; it was too corny. And so, thinking back to her own miserable flight from Toronto to Tokyo, she settled on, “Don’t sit too close to the washroom on the plane.” And then she surged forward and hugged him tight, her arms making it only halfway around his body.
He returned the hug. “My Miss Caitlin,” he said softly.
And when she let him go, they all stood there, frozen like a still image for several seconds, and then—
And then her father—
Caitlin’s heart jumped, and she saw her mother’s eyebrows go way up.
Her father, Malcolm Decter, reached his hand out toward Dr. Kuroda, and Caitlin could see he was doing so with great effort. And then he looked directly for three full seconds at Kuroda — the man who had given his daughter the gift of vision — and he firmly shook Kuroda’s hand.
Kuroda smiled at her father and he smiled even more broadly at Caitlin, and then he turned, and he and Caitlin’s mother headed out the door.
Caitlin’s dad drove her to school that day. She was absolutely amazed by all the sights along the way, seeing it all for the first time since she’d gotten glasses. The snow was melting in the morning sun, and that made everything glisten. The car came to a rest at a stop sign by what she realized must be the spot where she’d seen the lightning. It was, she guessed, like a million other street corners in North America: a sidewalk, curbs, lawns (partially covered with snow now), houses, something she belatedly recognized was a fire hydrant.
She looked at where she’d slipped off the sidewalk onto the road, and remembered a joke from Saturday Night Live a few years ago. During “Weekend Update,” Seth Meyers had reported that “blind people are saying that gas-electric hybrid cars pose a serious threat to them because they are hard to hear, making it dangerous for them to cross the street.” Meyers then added,
“Also making it dangerous for blind people to cross the street: everything else.”
She had laughed at the time, and the joke made her smile again. She’d done just fine when she’d been blind, but she knew her life was going to be so much easier and safer now.
Caitlin was wearing her iPod’s white headphones, and although she was enjoying the random selection of music, she suddenly realized that she should have asked for a newer iPod for her birthday, one with an LCD so that she could pick songs directly. Ah, well, it wouldn’t be that long until Christmas!
Howard Miller Secondary School turned out to have a very impressive white portico in front of its main entrance. She was both nervous and excited as she got out of the car and walked toward the glass doors: nervous because she knew the whole school must now be aware that she could see, and excited because she was suddenly going to find out what all her friends and teachers looked like, and—
“There she is!” exclaimed a voice Caitlin knew well.
Caitlin ran forward and hugged Bashira; she was beautiful.
“My whole family watched the story on the news,” Bashira said. “You were terrific! And so that’s what your Dr. Kuroda looks like! He’s—”
Caitlin cut her off before she could say anything mean: “He’s on his way home to Japan. I’m going to miss him.”
“Come on, we don’t want to be late,” Bashira said, and she stuck out her elbow as she always did, for Caitlin to hold on to. But Caitlin squeezed her upper arm and said, “I’m okay.”
Bashira shook her head, but her tone was light. “I guess I can kiss the hundred bucks a week good- bye.”
But Caitlin found herself moving slowly. She’d gone down this hallway dozens of times, but had never seen it clearly. There were notices on the walls, and … photos of old graduating classes, and maybe fire-alarm stations? And countless lockers, and … and hundreds of students and teachers milling about and so much more; it was all still
