She whisked the boy onto her arms and hastened inside. After telling the orderlies what had happened, they propped him on a wheelchair and rushed him to the Ophthalmology department in the East wing.
Though it was an ultra emergency for her, they put her in a queue of around twenty people, all with little kids in their hands.
And every child had swollen eyes, except Ryatt’s were the worst of them all.
Iris craned her neck and found Loraine waiting at the front of the line. She almost peeled away from the queue, wishing to join Loraine, cutting everyone in front of her off. But her heart didn’t consent. After all, these were all mothers and fathers feeling desperate for their children, even for a longer time than Iris. So she unwillingly decided to wait.
Loraine went in and came out. And a nurse led them towards a room in the far end of the corridor.
It was almost one hundred years before the line became the shortest and Iris was let into the office.
The doctor, a black senior with an air of authority, smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry for the hold-up. As you could see, the contamination has affected so many children.”
“C-contamination?” Iris gave Ryatt’s hand a gentle squeeze. “What contamination?”
“The children’s swimming pool you took him to yesterday is contaminated with Acanthamoeba. And the long queue outside? They all took their boys or girls to the same pool.”
“But the water was chlorinated. I smelled it myself.”
“Doesn’t matter. There are a few pathogens that can survive the chlorine. But no worries,” the doctor said with a cheerful smile. “A few eye drops and proper rest, he will recover in no time.”
“Thanks a lot, doctor.” Iris placed a hand on her chest and chuckled. “I almost gave myself a heart attack when he said he couldn’t see.”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed and his smile shrank. “What do you mean he can’t see?”
He took a pen torch and skirted the table in one quick motion. He examined Ryatt’s eyes, his expression turning grave with each passing second. “When did you take him to the pool?”
“Noon, yesterday.” Iris scratched the nervous tick at the back of her neck.
“Yesterday?” the doctor asked in vehemence. “And you thought it wise to wait until his eyesight was completely gone to bring him to the hospital?”
No, she screamed inside.
If only the kind doctor knew what had happened; that Bugsy had kidnapped her, and the unspeakable things he and his goons had done all night. The relief she felt a minute ago turned into a dark hole that drained every bit of hope.
Ryatt gripped her hand tighter. “Mommy. It’s starting to hurt.”
The doctor switched off the light, the expression in his face still that of a very disappointed father.
“Acanthamoeba keratitis,” the doctor said as he went to his table and picked up a pen and a pad. “It is a fairly curable condition if treated promptly, usually when the first symptoms appear. But delaying the treatment this long, you practically made your son blind.”
A thousand knives pierced Iris’s heart. Her voice was barely a whisper when she heard herself say, “H-he is going to be alright?”
The doctor gave Iris a resigned look. “Unfortunately, his vision is gone forever.”
Iris clasped her hands together, praying. “There is no cure?”
The doctor shook his head. “The only way he will regain sight is by transplant. But the wait is long. It could be years before we get a pair.”
As Iris’s world stunned, the doctor filled a prescription and rang a bell on his table. A nurse came into the office. Casting one last disgusted look at Iris, he turned to the nurse. “Give this boy the same medication you gave to the other boy, Nick.”
As Iris followed the nurse and Ryatt to a room at the end of the corridor, she spotted Loraine in the doorway. She was with a man in a tank top who had his head shaved and his body covered in tattoos. The drug-dealing soulmate.
Inside, she found Nick, Loraine’s boy, almost done with the bandages. Something about it just didn’t feel right. Such a small head didn’t really belong in all that white wrapping.
Loraine shooed her husband away before waddling to Iris and hugging her.
When she let go, Iris asked, “How did Nick get… so sick? Weren’t you with him last night?”
“I was working, and my asshole husband was drunk out of his mind. Doesn’t even remember Nick trying to wake him up when his eyes hurt. So I returned home and found the boy sitting beside the couch, sobbing.”
Iris emitted a guttural sigh and teared up again as if Nick were her own child.
“Oh dear.” Loraine gripped Iris by the shoulders. “We’re gonna sue the owner of that pool.”
Iris couldn’t speak. She didn’t want to sue anyone or get a billion dollars. All she needed was to reverse the damage done to her baby.
“I just want him to be okay again. To be able to see.”
Loraine grabbed Iris’s arm and pulled her to the side. “There’s a way.”
“What do you mean?” Iris asked, her voice a decibel louder as a sliver of hope lightened her being.
A nurse, who was wiping Ryatt’s eyes with a cotton ball, looked up at them but resumed her work.
In a low voice, Loraine said, “My asshole husband has connections, you know?”
Iris did. He was a jailbird. But what did that have to do with anything? “I don’t understand,” she said.
“He just told me about an Oriental who can, for a price, fly in ‘organ donors’ from the East. They sell whatever body parts us lucky and relatively rich Americans need.” Loraine
