The Look of Love: A Novel (13 page)

March

D
r. Heller shines a light into my eyes. “And how has your vision been lately?”

I shrug. “Just a few flare-ups; nothing major after that incident with my friend Katie at the market.” I remind her of the intensity of the feeling and how I struggled for balance.

“You know,” I continue, “it’s all starting to make so much sense. I was a shy kid. I hated making eye contact with people. I kind of went through life with tunnel vision. I kept my head down. I didn’t know it then, but when I became curious about people, it activated my gift. It caused me to see things I didn’t want to see.”

Dr. Heller nods, but she doesn’t look entirely convinced, and I know she’s still jarred by what I told her about her and Dr. Wyatt.

I pause to remember my first episode, on the morning my father left our family. I was too young to understand it then, of course, but I saw love, real love, though the lens of heartbreak. I recount it to Dr. Heller.

“It’s an interesting coincidence,” she says, reaching for my chart. “But I believe there is a medical, scientific explanation here that we haven’t explored before, especially in light of your most recent brain scans. You see, the tumor on your optic nerve seems to be growing. I don’t want to alarm you, but I’ve recently consulted with the physician at Johns Hopkins who’s finishing up the clinical trial I mentioned at your last visit. He and I have looked at your scans together, and we believe you may be suffering from a very rare and serious condition called Crane’s syndrome, which eats away at the temporal lobe slowly at first, but then, like a cancer, increases in speed.” She lets out a sigh that tells me she’s concerned, perhaps very. “Jane, our biggest worry for you at this juncture is that, not unlike seizure activity, these episodes may be damaging your brain function. My hope is that with intervention, we can stop them from happening, stop the progressive damage to your brain.”

I clasp my hands tightly in my lap. “And if we don’t . . . intervene?”

“I believe it’s our only hope,” Dr. Heller says honestly.

There’s a knock at the door. “Come in,” Dr. Heller says. A moment later Dr. Wyatt and the nurse, Kelly, walk in.

“Kelly, take her vitals, please,” Dr. Heller says before turning to Dr. Wyatt. He’s jarringly handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and the type of sculpted face and brown eyes that would make him a good candidate to play a handsome doctor on TV. “Did you hear from your colleague?”

Dr. Wyatt nods, then turns to me. “Jane, we’ve consulted with a top neurologist at Hopkins, an old mentor of mine. He thinks you’re in true danger of cognitive decline if we don’t”—he pauses to look at Dr. Heller—“if we don’t operate.”

I shake my head. “Operate?”

Kelly straps the blood pressure cuff to my arm as Dr. Heller exchanges a knowing look with Dr. Wyatt. “Jane,” she says. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. But there is a procedure that we believe will stop these episodes from continuing. It involves cutting off blood flow to the tumor residing on your optic nerve. We think you’re a great candidate for it.”

My heart beats faster as Kelly takes my blood pressure. I look at her, then at the two doctors beside me. My vision begins to cloud. I rub my eyes.

“Jane, are you all right?” Dr. Heller says, her face awash with concern.

“It’s happening again,” I say. “I told you that I saw—”

“Lie down,” she says quickly. “Kelly, get her some water.”

Kelly nods and runs out the door. Dr. Wyatt takes a step back. “I’ll leave you two now,” he says. “Let me know if you need me. I’ll be down the hall.”

Dr. Heller gives him a grateful smile, then turns back to me. “I’m worried, Jane, that if we don’t put this operation on a fast track, your health is only going to decline.”

“How much time do I have to decide?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “But the longer you wait, the greater the risk.”

My mind is swirling with the consequences of the medical ultimatum I’ve been given, and there is only one person who can help me make the decision. According to the
Seattle Times
, Colette must be here in the hospital, working wonders with flowers.

“I’m looking for a staff member,” I say at the reception desk to a dark-haired woman with a prominent nose and gold hoop earrings. “Her name is Colette. She runs the flower program for the hospital, I think.”

“Oh, yes, Colette,” the receptionist says warmly, looking up from her computer and pointing. “Her office is just down the hall, across from the gift shop.”

“Thank you,” I say, walking ahead to a single open door. I peer in without knocking. Inside, there are plentiful flower arrangements and some balloons. I notice one that reads, “You Are a Champion.”

Colette stands in the corner. She’s wrangling an unfortunate arrangement of carnations onto a cart. I grimace at the overuse of baby’s breath. “Oh, hello, Jane,” she says, smiling, when she looks up and sees me.

“Hi,” I say, taking a step forward. I feel timid in her presence. “I didn’t know that you worked here until I saw the article in the
Times
. I . . . there’s something about flowers, isn’t there? And green eyes. We’re a certain type of woman, aren’t we?”

Colette tucks a strand of her gray hair behind her ear and walks to the door. Once it’s closed, she indicates a chair beside her desk, brightened with a potted gloxinia in bloom. “Sit for a moment, won’t you?”

I collapse into the chair, and my eyes well up with tears. “They want me to have brain surgery.”

She nods and takes a step toward me.

“Is it true what my doctor said?” I ask. “That these episodes, this temporary vision loss, are wrecking my brain?”

“The truth is hard to come by,” she says. “No one will understand our gift the way we do.” Her eyes narrow. “But let me ask you this: Do
you
feel that your brain is being . . . what did you say,
wrecked
?”

I shake my head. “No, I wouldn’t say that. At least I don’t think so. But Dr. Heller has so much urgency about the idea of surgery. And I’ve trusted her my whole life.”

Colette clasps her hands together. “As much as people may try to draw conclusions, there is no scientific explanation for what we experience. There was a woman in the late nineteen fifties who faced a similar medical dilemma. Her name was Felicia Harcourt. It’s not clear whether she possessed insufficient strength to handle her gift, or if there was some other factor at play. But she ultimately consented to a lobotomy. She spent the rest of her life in an institution. Look in the book. Her pages are blank. She didn’t complete her journey.”

“What should I do?” I ask in a trembling voice.

“There is only one thing you must do: Identify the six types of love,” Colette says. “And, Jane, you must succeed. You must. Promise me you will.”

I wipe away a tear. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” she says.

I reach out and touch one of the gloxinia’s purple rosettes. “Why do you devote your life to flowers?”

She’s quiet for a long moment, then takes a deep breath. “Because it’s my way to experience love.”

I think about her words as I walk out of the hospital and drive back to the parking garage at Pike Place, as I take Sam on a walk, and as the March sunshine warms my face.

“You look hot,” Lo says to me later. It’s a little after five, and at five thirty I’m supposed to meet Cam for drinks at Lowell’s.

I tug at my skirt. “Do you think I overdid it a bit? I’m thinking about going home and changing into jeans.”

“No way,” she says. “You look great. And I know you’re not really accustomed to dating, but this, my friend, is what people wear on dates. They step it up a notch, and you have done that beautifully.”

I sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if I really even like this guy. He’s kind of . . .”

“Kind of what?”

“Outspoken, for one. Overconfident. Cocky.”

“Cocky is a good trait in a man,” Lo says with a laugh. “Well, confidence. It’s a turn-on. You’ll see.”

“I’m not so sure,” I say. “And also I’m a little worried, because I told him about my . . . thing.”

“The love thing, yes,” she replies, pulling the cash out of the till.

“I wish I hadn’t told him.”

“Well, you did,” she says matter-of-factly. “And you probably did because you felt, at a gut level, that you could trust him.”

“Well, I’m still nervous.”

“Dating is brutal,” Lo says as she bundles the cash and checks into a stack and tucks them into an envelope that she’ll deposit at the bank later. “You know what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately?”

“What?”

“Something my mom used to say,” she continues. “She said twenty-nine is the most dangerous year of a woman’s life.”

I crack a smile. “We’re both twenty-nine. What do you think she meant by that?”

Lo looks thoughtful for a moment, then nods. “She said that at this age, we’re on the verge of our futures in a way we never have been and never will be again.” She pauses for a moment as if trying to extract the memory of her mother’s voice from the depths of her mind. Like me, Lo lost her mother as a teenager. It’s one of the many reasons we bonded in college. “It’s a pivotal time. And she warned me that some women get lost in it, this big year. They get lost in the fog or end up in a place they didn’t ever want to be. Others make poor choices, terrible ones. And then there are those who live boldly and loudly and take life on. I think my mom said, ‘Take life by the balls.’ I like that.” She sighs. “Anyway, it’s a dangerous year. So we have to be wise.”

I think about Lo’s words as I walk to the market. Lowell’s is just a few steps ahead, and somewhere inside, Cam will be waiting at a table. I think about Colette, too, and how she insisted that I complete my journey before my thirtieth birthday—well, before sunset on my thirtieth birthday. Twenty-nine. I wonder if she also believes it’s a dangerous year.

My phone rings a block away from the restaurant. I see Flynn’s name on the screen and answer.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey yourself,” he replies. “Doing anything for dinner?”

“Yeah, I’m meeting that writer, Cam.”

“A date!”

“Yes,” I say. “I guess you could call it that.”

“So you like him, I take it?”

“I think so.”

“Well, he’s a good guy, Jane,” Flynn continues. “A really good guy. Did he tell you about Joanna?”

“Who?”

“His girlfriend who died.”

“Died?”

“Yeah, it was horrible, and I don’t know the whole story, just bits and pieces from his friend Adam who lived with him after all of that in New York, but anyway, it was awful. They were engaged, I think, at the time. He was driving the car, up to someone’s weekend house upstate, and I’m not really sure what happened, but there was an accident, a bad one. Cam came out unscathed, but Joanna wasn’t so lucky. She was in a coma for a long time, and never recovered. Amnesia, a traumatic brain injury, stuff like that. Cam actually took a leave of absence from his job for a year and cared for her. Adam went to visit him in the thick of it, and he said it was the most amazing thing he’s ever seen a man do for a woman. He bathed her, he spoon-fed her. He taught her to walk again. Talk about love.”

“That’s so sad, and inspiring,” I say. “What ended up happening?