Noble Vision (32 page)

For one cloudless moment, the joy she exuded from the stage returned to Nicole’s face. “Oh, Doctor! Could you possibly have them brought to me?”

“It’s done, Nicole. I’ll get them right now.”

Another staccato squeeze of the hand, and David left to make a beeline for the nearest florist, brushing past Nicole’s next visitor, her agent, Howard Morton.

“Hi, Nickie. How are you doing?” Morton kissed her cheek.

Nicole hated the funereal tone she had heard in her agent’s voice since her accident.

“When the movers took your personal things from your dressing room, they forgot to take these. I figured you’d want them.”

He placed in her hands her first ballet slippers. She recognized their touch.

“I
do
want them! Thank you.” She hugged the shoes like an old friend.

There was an awkward pause. Morton seemed to have nothing more to say. He poured himself a cup of water and walked around the room.

“So is Darlene going to play Pandora, Howie?”

“Yes.”

“But only until I have the second surgery and get my job back, right?”

Morton said nothing. He knew something Nicole did not. He knew that her doctor was suspended and that there was not going to be a second surgery.

“Howie, my injury is grossly exaggerated. I can actually see you pretty well.” She looked to her right.

“Nickie, I’m on your left,” he said sadly.

Without vision Nicole was discovering that sounds were more difficult to locate than she would have imagined. “Anyway, if I had to, I’m sure I could dance
Triumph
with my
eyes closed
.” She emphasized the last two words, as if testing the waters.

“With twenty other dancers out there? Nickie, they’re not going to put a guardrail on Mount Olymp—” He stopped abruptly, as if regretting his words.

“It’s really a moot point, because after the second surgery I’ll pass the eye test for a bomber pilot.”

She sensed a forced cheerfulness in his laugh.

“How about my interview with Gloria Candrell? Have we gotten offers from that? Any movie roles or TV specials? I hope you’re telling everyone that in three short months I’ll be back.”

“We’ll see, Nickie.” He did not want to mention that the calls about her had stopped. “Say, have you thought of writing a book about your accident? I could sell that.”

“I want to dance, not write books!”

Another awkward pause. Then she heard a little thump that sounded like Morton’s cup tossed into the wastebasket.

“Nickie, I really need to get to the office.”

She fought the burning sensation in her eyes; she would not cry in front of Morton.

“I know you’re discouraged, Howie, but you’d best be ready for my comeback.”
You or another lucky agent
, she added to herself.

“Sure, honey,” he said halfheartedly. “You take care. I’ll call you, okay?” He hugged her.

As he left, she had the sinking feeling that she was not going to hear from Howard Morton again. Another person abandoning her! But there was someone she
could
count on, she thought, resting her head on the pillow and waiting for her flowers.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*
  
*

Soon the stale air of her hospital room was replaced with a luscious fragrance.

“I smell roses! They’re roses, aren’t they?” she cried, as David set a basket of blooms on her sliding table and wheeled it close to her.

“They
are
roses. Does that please you, Nicole?”

“Yes! Thank you for bringing them!”

She folded her long, limber legs tight against her torso, propped herself up in bed, and ran her cheek along cool, velvety petals. She caressed the blossoms, inhaled their perfume, listened to David’s description of the ensemble, and sighed with delight.

“So they’re a deep burgundy, like a vintage wine?” she said, echoing his account.

“Indeed.”

“I know there’s a letter somewhere.”

David tucked one in the arrangement and pushed it toward her searching fingers.

“Here it is!” she cried, lovingly pressing the sealed envelope to her breast.

“Shall I read it to you?” His voice defied his will by uttering a question that he had resolved not to ask.

“Oh, no! Thank you for offering, Doctor, but I couldn’t let you.”

“Why not?” The rebel voice continued.

“Because this is personal, and, well, you’re a man.”

“I plead guilty to that.”

“And because you’re amused. I hear it in your voice,” she admonished him. “I won’t allow anyone to make light of this matter.”

“I’ll try to show the proper respect.”

She rubbed the envelope between her long, graceful hands, then ran it against her cheek. “Actually, it would be nice hearing this letter read by a man’s voice. Maybe I
could
let you. After all, even though you’re a man, you’re also my doctor.”

“I’m sure that would make it okay.”

“But I can tell you’re still amused!” She frowned. “Maybe if I told you something about the sender . . .”

“It might put me in the proper frame of mind.”

“Do you have time? I don’t want to impose.”

“I do, and you’re not.” The place where he spent his life was locked to him, so he indeed had time. “Go ahead, Nicole. I’m listening.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

She leaned back against her pillow dreamily. “His name is the Flower Phantom.”

“The what?” He suppressed a laugh, lest he be reprimanded again.

“That’s what I call him. ‘The Phantom’ for short. Actually, I don’t know his name. He sends me beautiful flowers and letters, but always anonymously.”

“I see.” The note of understanding in his two simple words encouraged her to continue.

“The Phantom seems intensely troubled by something. I don’t know what it is, only that he came to my show many times to escape from it, and I somehow gave him hope.” With the supreme grace that becomes instinct through a life of ballet, she brushed a weightless hand gently along the roses as she spoke, caressing them. “I think he has a great passion in his life, something he loves in the same way that I love dancing. But there are obstacles. I don’t know what they are, only that they frustrate him to the brink of giving up this great force in his life. I worry about him, because if he gives it up and if it’s like dancing is for me”—her face tightened in pain—“then there’d be nothing left of him.”

He grabbed her hand. “Maybe he
won’t
give up. And maybe he won’t let
you
give up dancing, not ever, no matter what happens!”

“Maybe.” He detected a lingering sadness beneath the hopeful smile that she managed. “You know, I once saw the Phantom.”

“Did you?” The amusement in David’s voice had vanished, replaced by a solemnity that beckoned her to continue.

“I bribed a florist’s employee to call if someone bought me flowers. That’s how I tracked him down. I wanted to tell him something and to ask him a question. But he ran away before I got the chance. I wonder if he’ll ever reappear.”

She plucked a rose from the collection and brought it to her face. She twirled it, inhaled it, pressed her lips against it.

“If I could have chosen a man among thousands to have written me those letters, I would have selected him. He was handsome. Oh, yes! But he was much more. There was an intensity about him that seemed to penetrate through me . . . to frighten me. I felt certain that the passion I sensed in him was real, and that he felt it not only for his dream but also . . . for me.”

She hesitated, as if she had gone too far. She did not know that at that moment two penetrating eyes were dancing over her with the same ardor.

“I see, Nicole.”

“Every day, I draw his likeness in my mind. I’m afraid that with my blindness, I’ll lose the memory of his face.”

“You won’t lose his face, Nicole. It might be closer to you than you think.” He took the envelope from her. She heard the crisp sound of paper tearing. “Let’s see what this guy has to say for himself.”

“Wait!” A sudden panic pushed her hand out to stop him.

“What is it?”

“I’m afraid that after my injury, he’ll feel differently about me. My agent and the theater people now talk to me with a sickening tone of pity! I don’t want that from the Phantom.”

“Why would he feel any differently?”

“Because he’s
normal
. He deserves a woman who matches him.”

“Why do you think you wouldn’t match him?”

“I thought I
could
match him before. Then, I could have offered him so much! But now, look at me,” she said, shrugging. “Of course,” she added, her voice brightening, “if the second surgery works . . .”

He squeezed her hand with the clasp that meant
Listen, this is important
. “Nicole, I want the second surgery to work more than I ever wanted anything. But it’s
experimental
, and you mustn’t count on it. I can’t raise false hopes.”

“But it does give me a chance—my
only
chance—doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s the thing I live for. I know you don’t like that, Doctor, but it’s true.”

He had no reply; it was the thing he lived for, too.

“If the Phantom ever came for me as I am now, he’d have to play nursemaid to me in my blindness, helping me with this and that and getting me sweatshirts when I dirty myself.”

“Do you know that blind people get quite adept at taking care of themselves? And that the people who care about them don’t mind helping?”

“I would never want to depend on the Phantom that way, to cling to him like a barnacle. I’d pretend I hated him first, so he’d find someone else—”

“Nicole, Nicole,” he gently admonished, “it sounds as if this poor guy would be so thrilled to be around you that he might not even notice your blindness.”

“But how could he not be repelled by a . . . major . . . handicap?”

“Maybe other things are more important. If your dancing gives him the hope to fight for his dream, then it seems there’s something about you that’s more significant to him. After all, everybody has eyes, but how much do they see? Maybe you have a vision that nobody else around him has, a vision that’s
still
within you, even though you don’t know it.”

Her eyes retained an eerie alertness as she considered his words. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Then think about it, you hear?”

She nodded.

“Now let’s see what this friend of the floral industry has to say for himself.”

He unfolded the letter and read:

Dear Nicole,

When you fell, the light you hung in the room of my soul came crashing down. The joy that had so comfortably taken residence there was crushed. Your laughter, the bright décor that gave warmth to that stark place, suddenly vanished. I wanted to wring the neck of circumstance and storm the unjust court of chance, demanding they give you back to me.

If only I could find the key that locks you from your joy, Nicole, how fast I would reunite you two! I know you’ll find that lost key. You used it to unlock the heavy door of my despair and flood my house with your sunlight. I want to hold a mirror to the radiance you poured into my world, so you can see your own sublime reflection.

I sent roses to honor the endless summer that once made its home on your sweet face and that yearns to return to its rightful place. The dainty rose comes from hearty stock. Its roots run deep to brave the harshest winter. You, too, will blossom again in a new spring.

He handed her the letter. She pressed it to her lips, then placed it under her pillow. She lay back, closing her eyes, savoring the words. He knew whom she was envisioning. Beyond his wildest imagining, the blind presence before him had the capacity to see the beauty in his words and the truth in his soul. This revelation was a new torture for him. He could not risk complications with this case, above all others, and that included emotional ones. He warned himself: The Phantom must remain just that.

She opened her eyes and glanced in the direction of the man she had come to like and trust. “Doctor, thank you for reading the letter—and for listening.”

“But you haven’t finished your story. You said that you tracked the Phantom down because you wanted to tell him something and to ask him a question. What did you want to tell him?”

“That we can’t confine our dreams to the world we see on the stage.”

“Is that what you think he’s doing?”

“He writes with such yearning for the joy he finds in me and my show, as if that kind of happiness isn’t possible in his actual life.”

David’s mind burned over visions of his thwarted research, his quarrels with his wife, his disappointment in his father, his unspeakable exile from the OR, and the wrenching prohibition against performing Nicole’s next surgery. “Maybe happiness isn’t possible to him, Nicole.”