Nigel never treated my wish to see again as something foolish.
That was one of the reasons I loved him.
He understood that learning to live with blindness hadn't erased my desire to regain my sight. I could be grateful for my life and still wish it were different.
Those feelings could exist together.
He never asked me to choose between them.
In the early years of our marriage, he continued to work at the hospital and study new developments in eye surgery.
Sometimes he came home late, smelling faintly of coffee and the soap he used at work.
I would hear him place his keys in the bowl near the door.
Then he would stand quietly in the kitchen, turning pages or reviewing something he had brought home.
I knew the sound of his concentration.
It was a particular kind of silence.
If I asked what he was reading, he usually explained it in ordinary language. Sometimes I understood the details. Sometimes I only understood that he was trying to solve a problem that had resisted him for years.
I respected his dedication.
I also worried about him.
There were evenings when he forgot about dinner until I reminded him. There were mornings when he seemed to have slept only a few hours.
I told him he couldn't fix every problem in the world.
He would give a tired laugh.
"I'm not trying to fix every problem."
"Just mine?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Then he would say something gentle enough to end the conversation without really answering it.
I didn't push.
Looking back, I wish I had paid more attention to those pauses.
At the time, I thought they came from the weight of his work.
I knew my case was difficult. I had spent enough years in hospitals to understand that doctors sometimes had to accept limits they didn't like.
Nigel hated those limits.
He never said so directly, but I heard it in the way he described a failed treatment or an unanswered question. He spoke about possibilities long after other people had stopped discussing them.
He continued to believe there might be a way to help me.
For a long time, his hope gave me hope.
Our children grew older while he worked.
They began asking questions about my blindness that were more complicated than the ones they had asked as toddlers.
They wanted to know how I had learned to read, how I knew where things were, and whether I remembered what colors looked like.
I answered as best I could.
Some questions were easy.
Others were not.
One evening, my oldest child sat beside me while I folded laundry. I had separated the clothes into neat piles, using the texture of each fabric to tell them apart.
My child rested a hand on my arm.
"Do you think you'll ever see us?"
I stopped folding.
I could have given the safe answer. I could have said that nobody knew what might happen in the future.
Instead, I told the truth.
"I hope I will."
There was a small silence.
"Would you know which one of us was which?"
I smiled and touched my child's cheek.
"I know you already."
"I mean by looking."
That was the part I couldn't answer.
I pulled my child closer and held them for a while.
Later, when Nigel came home, I told him about the conversation.
He listened without interrupting.
Then he sat beside me.
"I've been thinking about that, too," he said.
I asked what he meant.
He told me that he had been studying a possible approach to my condition. He wasn't ready to promise anything, but he believed there might be a path worth investigating.
I felt my heart begin to race.
"Do you really think it could work?"
"I think we need to be careful."
I understood what he meant.
There had been too many disappointments for me to trust a possibility simply because I wanted it badly.
So I asked him to explain what he knew.
He did.
He spoke about the difficulties, the uncertainties, and the need for more work. He didn't give me a date or tell me to prepare for a miracle.
He simply said he wasn't ready to give up.
Neither was I.
After that, I became more attentive to his work.
I didn't demand updates, but I asked questions when he seemed willing to talk. He told me about long hours in the hospital and the training he believed he still needed.
I knew he was trying to help me.
I also knew he was carrying something he didn't want to discuss.
At first, I thought it was professional frustration.
When I asked whether something had gone wrong, he said he was tired.
When I asked whether the research had reached a dead end, he said he needed more time.
Sometimes he would begin telling me something and then stop halfway through the sentence.
I learned not to force him to continue.
That was a mistake, though I didn't recognize it then.
Our family life continued around those conversations.
There were school mornings, meals, laundry, and the usual arguments about who had left a door open or forgotten to put something away.
I loved those ordinary days.
I didn't want anyone to think I was waiting for surgery before I could begin living.
I wasn't.
I had a husband. I had children. I had a home where I knew every corner and could move through the rooms without assistance.
But the possibility of sight had become something more than a private dream.
It was a question hanging over our family.
Would I ever see my children?
Would I recognize their faces?
Would I look at Nigel and finally understand the expressions I had spent years interpreting through his voice?
I sometimes wondered whether seeing him would make our relationship feel different.
I knew his face through touch, but touch couldn't tell me everything.
I could feel the shape of his cheek and the bridge of his nose. I knew where his eyebrows sat and how his smile changed the muscles around his mouth.
But I had never seen him smile.
That thought made me both excited and nervous.
I didn't tell him how often I imagined it.
He was already working so hard.
Then, one day, he came home with a different kind of energy.
I heard him put his keys down.
He didn't go straight to the kitchen or sit at the table to work. Instead, he came to find me.
He took both my hands.
"I think I've found a way."
For a moment, I didn't understand him.
I asked him to repeat what he had said.
He told me again.
He believed he had worked out a surgical approach that might restore my sight.
I couldn't speak.
I had imagined that moment so many times that I thought I would know exactly what to do if it ever arrived.
I didn't.
I held his hands and tried to make sense of the words.
"You're sure?"
"I'm confident enough to discuss it seriously."
I started to cry.
Not loudly.
The tears came before I could stop them, and I turned my face away because I didn't want him to feel responsible for them.
He pulled me close.
I held him tightly.
For the first time in years, the thing I wanted most seemed close enough to touch.
Then I noticed something.
Nigel wasn't celebrating.
His arms were around me, but his body felt tense. He held me as if he were trying to comfort me and keep me from moving forward at the same time.
I pulled back slightly.
"What's wrong?"
He said nothing.
I waited.
Finally, he told me that he wasn't certain I should have the operation.
I thought I had misunderstood.
He had spent years searching for an answer. He had just told me he believed he had found one.
Now he was asking me to hesitate.
I asked him why.
He spoke about the risks.
I reminded him that I understood there were risks.
He mentioned the children.
I told him that our children were one of the reasons I wanted to see.
He said I already had a life I knew how to live.
I asked whether he was saying that I should stop hoping.
He answered too quickly.
"No."
But he didn't explain what he meant.
I had never heard him speak about my sight this way before. He had always been careful, but his caution had once sounded like honesty.
Now it sounded like fear.
I tried to understand.
Was the operation more dangerous than he had told me? Had he discovered something that made success less likely? Was he afraid that I would blame him if it failed?
I asked each question.
He answered some of them.
None of his answers made me feel better.
That night, I lay awake beside him.
He was quiet.
I could tell from his breathing that he wasn't asleep, but neither of us spoke.
I kept thinking about the moment when he had told me he might be able to restore my sight.
I remembered the way he had held my hands.
I remembered the silence that followed.
I wanted to believe his hesitation came from love.
It was the simplest explanation.
It was also the one I would cling to for a long time, because the alternative was too difficult to imagine.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The More Carefully Nigel Explained the Risks, the More I Wondered What He Was Leaving Out of Every Answer
The Day I Realized My Husband Was More Afraid of My Eyes Opening Than I Was of Keeping Them Closed
Part 2 of 8
