Iris pulled to a stop in front of the optometrists and stared up at the cheerful sign – Mor-Vision, with the slogan, Wouldn’t you want to see mor…? emblazoned below it. 

She didn’t want to be there. She rather figured she would choose to be anywhere but there if she could get away with it.

It wasn’t that she minded Dr. Mor. He was fine and all. He gave her her first eye exam when she was ten; helped fit her for her first pair of glasses when she was fifteen. She’d long ago started wearing contacts, and he’d fitted her for those, too.

No, it wasn’t Dr. Mor, or even the idea of spending money on glasses, although God knows she didn’t have much room left in the budget for them. Spending significant amounts of time in the ICU at the hospital with a brain injury did tend to put a damper on checkbook balances.

No, it was the idea that she was about to admit defeat. And she really, really hated to admit defeat.

She was pretty sure she was going to break out into hives simply by walking through the front door of the Mor-Vision. 

She made herself climb out of her car and slowly make her way up to the front door of the business. 

I can do this. I can do this.

What if he says you can’t be a medical coder anymore?

Too damn bad. I’m going to be one anyway.

Nothing like getting into a knockdown, drag-out fight with yourself…and losing.

She pushed the glass door open and the doorbell tinkled, alerting Mrs. Mor to her presence. As Dr. Mor’s wife and receptionist, the pair had worked together in the same office for coming up on fifty years. Iris figured that meant that someone somewhere deserved a medal, if only because they’d managed not to kill each other in all that time.

“Hi, Iris!” Mrs. Mor said with a warm smile. “Nice to see you back at home, dear.” Her eyes skittered to Iris’ cane and back up to her face, but she thoughtfully kept mum on that topic. “I’ll tell Dr. Mor you’re here.” She stood up with a sweet smile to Iris, turned toward the examination room, and bellowed, “Iris is here! Where are you?!” She turned back around and gave another sweet smile towards Iris.

“He’ll be right along,” she said pleasantly, as if Iris couldn’t hear everything that had just happened.

Iris did her best to hold in her giggles and just forced a pleasant smile instead. Inside, she was dying with laughter. She figured that if a couple worked together for 50 years, maybe they deserved an eccentric habit…or seven.

She relaxed a little bit, the panic she’d been feeling out in the car de-escalating from nuclear meltdown to low-pitched pulsing. Being back in here was a bit like coming home. Some things really didn’t change.

“Iris,” Dr. Mor said, coming out of the exam room with a warm smile on his face. “So good to see you, dear.” She noticed that they’d both called her “dear.” She wondered if that also came with the territory of working together for years on end – the same nickname for everyone. “Come on back.”

He held the door open for her as she maneuvered into the room, past him and into a waiting chair. She sank down into it with a happy sigh. It never failed to surprise her how exhausting it was to move. She remembered working twelve-hour shifts in the ICU, hardly sitting down for a break, and thriving on it.

That Iris was long gone.

He sat across from her, his long tufts of white hair sticking out every which direction from his head. She wondered why Mrs. Mor wasn’t in there, combing his hair down. She was always fussing over him but today…he looked a little more frazzled than normal.

“I heard that you got in a car wreck,” he said, with a nod towards her cane. “Is that where that came from?”

She nodded. “I’ve been out of the hospital for about six weeks. Mom and Dad moved me into that little apartment behind their house.”

“That’s a good call. Good to have someone who can watch over you in case something happens. Now, is it damage to your leg or spine that is causing you to need a cane, or something else?”

“Something else. I have a traumatic brain injury that affects the nerves in my head,” she swirled a hand around her head, as if Dr. Mor couldn’t locate it on his own, “and keeps the messages from my feet from reaching my brain, basically. The technical term is sensory impairment, but the long and short of it is, I have to retrain my brain to rely on my eyesight and my inner ear for balance, rather than on being able to tell what’s going on because my feet are telling me what I’m doing.” She shrugged. “The doctors think that I’ll get better over time, but…it’s been a slow slog.”

“Are you doing physical therapy?” he asked.

“Yes. Thankfully, they’re able to send a nurse down here to the Long Valley Clinic twice a week so I don’t have to drive to Boise for it.”

She wasn’t sure what she would’ve done if she’d had to make the 90-minute drive to Boise twice a week. She only just barely trusted herself to drive across town to the optometrist and to the grocery store. The long, windy road to Boise?

No way.

“Good, good. So, tell me why you’re in here today. Are you wanting a full eye exam? Are you thinking your prescription may have changed because of the accident?”

She shifted in her chair uncomfortably. Despite his kindly voice and his oversized ears that had caused her to nickname him Dr. Dumbo until her mom heard her and washed her mouth out with soap, she wanted nothing more than to make a run for the door.

Or at least a really fast waddle.

“My eyes have been hurting a lot,” she said carefully. “I wasn’t sure if the prescription had changed, or something else.”

“Are you squinting in order to read books close up, or at signs far away?”

She shook her head.

“Are your eyes just aching, like you’ve been working them pretty hard?”

She slowly nodded her head. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

It was like he’d been an eye doctor for fifty years or something.

Just like that.

“I see,” he said noncommittally. “You’re wearing glasses today, but you usually wear contacts. Are you wearing the glasses because of your eyes hurting?”

“No, I just thought they’d be easier to remove for an eye exam.” She pushed the bulky glasses up her nose. Other people could make coke-bottle glasses adorable, she was sure.

She just wasn’t one of those people.

“Let’s go ahead and do that exam now and see where we’re at. Take off your glasses and put them on the counter.”

He quickly and efficiently ran her through the exam, asking her endless rounds of “Which one looks better – this one or this one?”

Finally, he sat back and looked at her straight on.

“Iris, I think you’re pushing yourself too hard after your accident.” She opened up her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand to stop her excuses and explanations trembling on the tip of her tongue. “Are you going to school? Working? What are you doing to keep yourself busy every day?”

Drooling over Declan Miller.

The thought popped into her head and she bit back a groan at herself. Now was not the time to go off into la-la land.

“I am almost done with my classes through Hermingston Medical College. I’m becoming a medical coder through their online program.”

“Weren’t you an RN before the accident?” he asked, his brow wrinkling as he tried to remember back.

“Yeah, so I figured being a medical coder would at least use my medical knowledge, plus I can do it from home.”

“A smart choice. Except, Iris, I’m afraid the computer screen is hard on your eyes. Have you been staring at a screen a lot lately?”

She nodded so slowly, someone might be forgiven for thinking that she was simply moving her head around casually.

He was even better than she’d feared he’d be.

“How long have you been enrolled in this course?”

“About four weeks.”

He settled back in his overstuffed antique office chair with a sigh. “Iris, the problem is that if you continue to strain your eyes like this, you could cause permanent damage to them. With a brain injury, you aren’t capable of working an 8-hour day like other people can. At least, not right now, and certainly not if that 8-hour day includes a lot of screen time.”

And then, it happened. What she’d feared. What she hadn’t wanted anyone to say to her, ever.

“Have you thought about going on to disability? At least for the short term? Then your body could recuperate. I would be happy to write–”

“No, thank you, Dr. Mor,” she broke in. She normally would never interrupt someone like that, at least not an elder, but she didn’t want him to say it.

She didn’t want to hear it.

“I just came today because I need to know if there’s a trick I can use.”

“A trick?” He stared at her as if she’d sprouted a limerick in ancient Greek.

“Yes. You know, some way for me to not get eye strain from staring at a computer.” She’d googled that question but none of the suggestions had worked. She figured if anyone knew a special trick, it’d be Dr. Mor.

“Don’t stare at a computer so much,” he said bluntly. “Iris, your eye strain isn’t a case of ordinary eye strain. It’s stemming from your brain injury. The harder you push your body, the worse it’ll get. The trick is to not push your body.”

She nodded stupidly and then grabbed her cane to push herself to her feet. She had to go. She had to go right then. She couldn’t quite breathe right and there was definitely dust in the air, because somehow both of her eyes were irritated and filling with tears.

Damn dust.

“Thanks, Dr. Mor,” she said around the lump in her throat. She cleared it impatiently. The dust level was getting out of control, truly. Now it was causing large lumps in her throat. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

And then she turned and limped towards the door, moving as fast as her off-kilter mind and off-kilter body would allow her to.

Which wasn’t nearly as fast as she wanted to move.