Diamond Eyes (31 page)

Mira pouted but slowly and cautiously uncurled her hands to let Ben lay the items into her open palms.

‘Watch the buckles,’ Neville warned. ‘I ain’t had time to buff off all the sharp edges yet.’

Mira turned them over a few times in her hands, exploring the soft leather, laces and heels. ‘They’re shoes,’ she said flatly.

Her fingers explored the intricate leather pattern of ivy and roses on the side and the raised Braille letters for
left
and
right
on the toe of each shoe, just like the Braille-embossed shoes that Neville often wore himself. Then she found a row of metal studs arranged as the Braille letters of her name.

‘For me?’ she asked, astounded. ‘You made these for me?’

‘Yeah, and these sandals for the festival. You’ll be in the audience, so I figured sandals and a bed sheet for a toga would make you feel like one of the crowd. Those leather straps that go up your legs come off easy, see? So you can use ‘em through the day as normal sandals too.’

‘Every day?’ Mira asked. ‘You’ll let me wear shoes or sandals every day now?’

‘Now that you’ve got your privileges back,’ Matron Sanchez agreed.

Neville grunted. ‘You gotta promise not to whack me in the head with ‘em, though, when I turn me back. Nor hit me anywhere else, especially me sausage and two veg. Is that a deal?’

‘Well, I don’t know …’ Mira sniffled and wiped her nose, her frown still set like stone. ‘Is this what you’ve been doing with my feet at night? Just fitting me for shoes?’

Neville laughed as if relieved. ‘What else would I be doin’ at my age?’

‘You had me worried there for a minute,’ Sanchez confessed. ‘In a young woman’s room at night by yourself? You know that’s strictly forbidden.’

‘Weren’t no other time I could get close to her without getting me head kicked! And I only did it twice: once for the measurements and then again to make sure they fit.’

‘You scared me!’

‘We’ll talk later, Neville,’ the matron warned.

‘Mira,’ Ben said gently, ‘do you think it’s fair that you took an instant disliking to Neville just because he smells like leather, which linked him to a buried trauma involving your father?’

‘That’s not the only reason I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.’

‘Even so,’ Ben persisted. ‘Rules have been changing a lot at Serenity. Neville’s been working here longer than any of us, but he’s still making an effort to change and be friends with you. He’s done something wrong and he’ll have to answer for it. But assuming that’s been settled already, what do you think the mature thing would be for you to do? Or at least try to do?’

Mira sulked for a long moment, then raised one of the soft leather sandals up to her face and rubbed it gently across her cheek. A pattern of dots had been stamped along the length of each strap.

‘They’re nice, I guess,’ she conceded.

‘What’s the Braille say?’ asked the matron.

‘It’s a poem,’ Mira muttered. ‘"Taketh this rose, wherever thou goes, and thinketh of me not as the font of your woes".’

‘I wrote another verse to go with it,’ Neville explained, ‘but that’s all I could fit.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Van Danik said. ‘Is it famous?’

‘Not yet, but one day maybe, long after I’m dead.’

‘How soon will that be?’

‘Mira!’ Ben scolded.

‘Well, he should have told me. He’s been creeping into my room and nobody would ever believe me!’

‘Communication is a two-way street,’ Ben reminded her. ‘How many chances did you give him?’

‘None, I guess. But he’s so … he’s so … oooh!’ she fumed. ‘He’s so cranky!’

‘He’s not the only one,’ Sanchez observed. ‘So let’s go back to Ben’s question. What should you say to Neville now, Mira?’

‘I’m not a child! I know I should say thank you. So
thank you!
There! Satisfied?’

Ben massaged her shoulders and Mira’s tone softened. ‘Oh, okay. Sorry. All right, I know,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘The shoes are lovely, Neville. Thank you. I’ll try not to be so scared of you in future.’

‘Well, I’ll be a monkey’s great-uncle,’ Neville chirped. ‘That was worth it.’ He headed back to the hall with the unfinished shoes. ‘I’ll finish these off this evening and drop them into your room tomorrow. You can keep the sandals for now and wear them back to your ward — assuming you don’t need me as backup for escort?’

‘Ben can take her back himself,’ Sanchez said. ‘When I said I’d return full privileges to her, I meant it. Mira can come and go freely from her room after that. We’ll see how she handles it.’

‘That should be interesting,’ Neville muttered as he left.

‘I heard that!’ Mira shouted.

‘He really does need to work on his people skills,’ Ben said.

‘You mean it?’ Mira asked, turning her head towards the matron’s voice. ‘I can come and go from my room whenever I want to?’

‘Through the day, yes. So long as you keep a full schedule of activities, never miss a meal and never wander outside your ward without voice-recording your destination to the whereabouts board. We must always be able to find you in an emergency.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘Ben can show you when you go back.’

‘It’s easy,’ he said. ‘You’ll be surprised at how much mobility you can have around this place now that it’s being upgraded with all the latest whiz-bang technology.’

‘But they’ll only work so long as you keep earning your privileges,’ Sanchez cautioned.

‘We’re running low on time, people,’ Van Danik reminded them. ‘If we’re going to be successful in presenting Mira to our financiers as a viable public test case, we need to identify the true nature of her medical condition so we can demonstrate just how badly she’s been let down so far by current medical practice.’

‘Public?’ Mira echoed.

‘But can we stay focused on her current diagnosis for now?’ Sanchez suggested. ‘Surely you’re already making progress enough for your financiers? I’ve got five hundred clients here who could benefit from this style of psychoanalysis. There’s another ten thousand in other centres across the country and two million around the world, and that’s just the valid mental-health cases. Imagine all the hypochondriacs!’

‘What does he mean, public?’ Mira said.

‘And what about crime victims?’ Sanchez continued. ‘Have you considered how something like this might help people like Ben?’

‘What does he mean public?
^,
Mira repeated.

‘Public,’ Zhou replied, ‘as in telling the world what’s happened to you so we can make sure this kind of misdiagnosis for mental health never happens again.’

‘You’re a gold mine,’ Van Danik added.

‘You’d make money out of me? Is that what you mean? I’ve only just achieved freedom from my jail cell and you want to put me on show in a media circus?’

‘This isn’t a prison,’ Ben reminded her, ‘and it wouldn’t have to be a media circus.’

‘Actually, it would,’ Zhou said, ‘temporarily. It would be for the greater good, though. Also, Mitch wasn’t suggesting you were a gold mine of money, Miss Chambers. That’s only the end result for our financiers. What he meant by calling you a gold mine is that you can help us to showcase so many different problems that other people might be suffering too — problems that our project can help to address, like unlocking memories of seriously traumatic events, including crimes. That’s a very worthy enterprise.’

‘Murder, mystery and misdiagnosis,’ Van Danik added. ‘Mira, you could show so many people that facts and symptoms don’t always point to the truth.’

‘My father didn’t murder anyone but himself,’ she complained. ‘And I don’t want to go public. People already think I’m a freak. I won’t do it!’

‘Then we might as well pack up now,’ Van Danik snapped.

‘No!’ Ben pleaded. ‘We’ve come so far. Can’t you do just one more batch of questions to help her get to the truth behind her ghosts and partial visions?’

‘What’s the point?’ asked Van Danik. ‘If she won’t keep her end of the deal to cooperate?’

‘Wait!’ Mira drew a long breath and sighed heavily. ‘I did make that promise.’

‘In all fairness,’ Zhou said, ‘we omitted to make our purposes clear — what we’re getting out of it, I mean. And how much effort you may still need to put in.’

‘You were clear when you explained it to Ben during his first visit, though, weren’t you? About him being a public test case?’

‘Yes, but it’s not fair to expect you to assume the same arrangement applied to you and this,’ Zhou said. ‘Nobody could have guessed the depths of your trauma. Indeed, we don’t need to go there anymore, since Ben already fills that area of need for a test case, so we can continue to focus only on the misdiagnosis of your medical case, if that’s all you feel comfortable with.’

‘But that’s the worst part. Everyone will be looking at my eyes.’

‘I can acquire cosmetic contact lenses for you,’ Zhou offered. ‘Then your eyes will look normal, even if one of the paparazzi makes a grab to snatch your sunglasses.’

‘Your case
will
need to be properly documented,’ Van Danik explained, ‘but nobody needs to see you except our financiers, a couple of carefully selected photographers and a panel of impartial specialists.’

‘You can handle that,’ Ben reassured her. ‘Then you’ll be free to get on with your life. Free to do whatever you want, wherever you choose, and you’ll have done something really meaningful with your life by helping others.’

‘I can’t bear to hope that far ahead,’ Mira confessed. ‘But I did promise to cooperate, and they have helped me to understand some of my problems already … I just … I’m scared, Ben. I’m really scared of all the terrible things I might remember — and what if I learn something about myself that I can’t forgive?’

‘I’ll be with you all the way,’ he promised.

‘As shall we,’ Zhou agreed. ‘First, though, I think we could all do with a little break.’

‘I thought you said you were in a hurry?’ asked Ben.

‘We are,’ Van Danik said. ‘He meant have a break for a week or two.’

‘Why can’t we finish today?’ Mira asked.

‘I think you deserve a break most of all,’ Zhou said. ‘Even if you feel up to more now, I have to admit that I’m stumped. I’ve never seen anything like your eyes before, and if we’ll only be focusing on them and the string of misdiagnoses of your mental health for a public test case, then I’ll need time to figure out how to look inside those biological wonders of yours without damaging them. We’ll also have to go back through all the data we’ve recorded so far to come up with a new set of questions to test a few scenarios.’

‘How long will that take?’ Ben asked.

‘A day or two,’ Zhou replied. ‘If we don’t get it done before Monday, though, it could be a fortnight or more before we get back this way again, which brings me back to my suggestion for a break of a week or two.’

‘Then there’s something else you need to know,’ Matron Sanchez said. ‘Mira’s booked in for surgery on Monday.’

‘She’s
what?’
Ben blurted. ‘When did this happen?’

‘And why?’ Mira cried. ‘Ben’s already taken out my stitches.’

‘I’m your legal guardian, Mira, and your rights as an adult —’

‘I’m twenty-two!’

‘You’ve been declared a ward of the state for life and your rights as an adult are —’

‘Now void. I know, I know. But surgery? Why?’

‘You’ve been on the waiting list for ten months; that’s seven months before you came here.’

‘Waiting list for what?’ Mira demanded. ‘What are they going to do to me?’

‘It was meant to be a surprise,’ Sanchez replied. ‘A good surprise.’

‘Just tell her,’ Ben pleaded. ‘She hates secrets.’

‘Well, the technical term for it is a lensectomy by phacoemulsification — basically, it’s just day surgery to extract your faulty lenses and replace them with artificial ones. You may be able to see normally afterwards, Mira. If not, you won’t be any worse off, and you won’t even need to stay in hospital overnight.’

Mira’s mouth fell open in surprise. ‘I’ll be able to … to see normally? Are you kidding me?’

‘I’m told the procedure has a reasonably high success rate.’

‘You have to cancel it!’ Zhou protested. ‘Her eyes are unique! Who knows what else we could learn from them?’

‘Do lenses still work after they’ve been taken out?’ Mira asked.

‘Normally,’ Zhou replied, ‘but —’

‘You can have them,’ she said excitedly. ‘I won’t need them.’

‘He can buy them,’ Sanchez argued. ‘He can afford them.’

‘I can’t do either after that surgery,’ Zhou snapped. ‘Phacoemulsification uses ultrasonic vibrations to shatter each lens so the small fragments can be sucked out to make way for the new lenses. Once they’re shattered, they’re useless to us. But I can remove your lenses without damaging them anymore than they already are — later, that is, after they’ve been fully tested and documented.’

‘Can you replace them with artificial ones that work too?’ Ben asked.

‘With funding, yes,’ Zhou said. ‘I’ll make sure it’s part of the deal with our financiers.’

‘Provided,’ Van Danik warned, ‘that we get the nod from them to proceed with Mira’s case publicly in the first place.’

‘There is that possible snag,’ Zhou conceded. ‘So don’t get your hopes up just yet, Miss Chambers.’

‘Too late,’ Sanchez replied on her behalf. ‘Her hopes are already high, and I’m not about to cancel her surgery based on promises or possibilities from financiers who may never get back to you. If you want to defer her surgery, I’ll need to see your offer in writing before Monday morning.’

‘I need time to choose, though,’ Mira declared. ‘I want a say in this too.’

A
lone in her room much later that afternoon, Mira danced around her table wearing her sunglasses, jumped and bounded on her bunk and skipped in and out of her ensuite, but nothing expended her excitement. Her heart pounded, like time ticking, as her independence, and Monday’s surgery, drew ever nearer.

With hot eyes and a sudden ache in her stomach, she noticed the Braille anthology on the table. Usually, it helped her to pass the empty eternities until her meals arrived. She raised her glasses and the book disappeared, replaced in the same instant by piles of shabby crates of potatoes, all blue, ghostly and weightless but packed so tightly and ceiling high that she choked at the illusion of being smothered by them.