“Good. Now I’ll hold up fingers in the four corners of your vision. Don’t follow my hand, just look at me.”
“Got it,” he says,“just look at you.”I swallow hard.
Suddenly, I understand why patients fall for their doctors, why they bring Dr. Conrad fruit baskets and chocolates. It’s never felt this…intenseuntil right now. I push everything down again and force myself to finish the test with perfect precision. Nothing missing from his periphery. All intact, even if my breath is not.
“Good news,” I say, scribbling.
Then comes the pupils. I dim the lights, lean close, flashlight in hand, watching the delicate contraction, the bloom of his irises in the beam. Up close his eyes are a thousand colors, glassy and alive. His skin is impossibly smooth, close enough I can feel the heat rising off him. His breath catches once, brushing against my cheek, and he swallows, his Adam’s apple leaping like he’s nervous too.
“I have to say…” His voice dips low, almost a whisper in the charged air. “You’re not exactly what I pictured when they said the on-call doctor would see me.”
“Hmm?” I lean back just enough to record the millimeters, reaction times, though my pulse is racing.
He tips his chin toward me, traces his own face in an echo of their placement. “The eyeliner. The glitter.” His mouth curves, knowing. He knows. Heabsolutely knowsI was there and he’splayingwith me.
As much as I feel the draw, this is my domain. I’m the doctor, and Iwon’tlet him shake my confidence. I force Conrad’s clinical phrasinginto my delivery. “Patients often assume youth meansinexperience. Social conditioning, but I assure you, your retina is incapable hands.”
His gaze lingers on me, heavy and intentional. “I have no doubt in yourcapable hands. You seemthorough.” He nods, an acknowledgment and a dare wrapped in one. I explain the numbing drops, dilation, the sting, the blur it’ll cause. He nods, easy, no hesitation, and for a second I have to remind myself: I’m treating a patient, notObelus.Not the man whose voice has soothed me for years. Which is not an easy thing to remember when those eyes are fixed on me through every word, every movement.
I snap on gloves, brace myself, routine. I’ve done this a thousand times,no big deal.
“Look up for me,” I say softly.
He does, lashes dark against his skin, eyes vulnerable and waiting. I steady his face with my gloved fingers, thumb pulling gently at his lower lid, and tilt the drop into place. It feels like I’m all over him, invading personal space in a way I never noticed before, but with him, I can’t ignore it.
The drop lands. He flinches, blinking rapidly as his eyes water. His mouth quirks sideways. “You must like making people cry as much as me, doctor.”
It’s the same tired joke about making patients cry I’ve heard since residency but reinvented, through the lens of Obelus, and on his lips it does somethinglethal.Makes him real. Just a man, blinking against stinging drops, letting me dab the tears from his face. He looks… touchable. Every drag of tissue across his cheek feels like proof that the distance I built was always an illusion. Some false pretense, some demi-god I conjured.
“Just means the drops are working,” I mutter, voice steadier than I feel, tossing the tissue and scribbling the onset time.
But my mind is spinning. I was never supposed to touch him in reality. Not supposed to notice the warmth of his skin even through gloves, the way his lashes flutter against my fingertips, how close I am to the perfect slope of his cheek.
I move briskly, back to the chart. “It’ll take a few minutes for the pupils to fully dilate. We’ll check again at the slit lamp.”
“Whatever you say.” He leans back, arms loose, head tilted toward me like he’s already settled into my orbit. “It all sounds good.”
The words land heavier than they should, curling under my skin. I make my excuses to give his eyes time, pop out of the room, and breathe.
At the desk, the tech mouthsoh my god, is it really him?I nod. She squeals silently. I motion to the bathroom and duck inside. The mirror doesn’t lie, there’s still glitter clinging to my cheekbones, eyeliner smudged from sweat and sleep. A typical patient might not have noticed. But him? He’s looked out on faces like mine for years.Of course he noticed.I sigh, splash water on my cheeks, and steel myself.
By the time his pupils bloom wide and glassy, my pulse still hasn’t found normal. Arrhythmia isn’t out of the question, what do I diagnose myself with? A case ofmomentary cardiac disorder due to Obelus?
“Chin in the rest. Forehead forward. Right there,” I say, tapping the bar. My voice sounds calm. My palms sweat inside the gloves.
He leans in obediently, face framed by the support. Mechanical, typical. Except it’shim, the face I’ve memorized in shadows and smoke, fan cams and stage lights. Now tethered in my machine, under my hands.
“Look straight ahead,” I murmur.
He does. Eyes fixed on me through the beam, dilated wide, almost alien. Every fleck of amber and green glowing, his eye a galaxy I can map. I angle the beam, watching the cut of light across him.
“Pain?” I ask, clipped, professional.
“No.” His voice is low, raspy. Then softer: “None I notice right now.”
I ignore the edge in it, the implication, or maybe I'm just imagining it. Our faces are inches apart, my gloved fingers brushing his temple, his cheek as I steady his lids. He’s perfectly still, but tension vibrates between us. He watches me more than the light, so much so I have to remind him where to keep his focus. My tone is a bit harsh, half-Mama scolding, half-Conrad on a bad day.
“Retina looks good so far. No hemorrhages.” I keep my voice iron-flat, the way I was drilled.
