By Touch

0 || Gabriel's Gone

0 || Gabriel's Gone

The last day I'd watched had been a cold one. A late evening in autumn. It was very rainy, and I remember that distinctly because the wipers in my mother's Dacia Sandero - which had soon to be my Dacia Sandero - were crap. They moved with about as much speed and effectiveness as my futile escape did when my drunken grandmother insisted on dragging my protesting form onto the dance floor at every cringe-inducing family gathering. Not that she did it anymore - which was one of my few disability perks, by the way.

You'd have called the car's window more of a puddle than anything else on rainy days. A murky one at that. That was how I saw the world today, both literally and metaphorically; as if through the window of the car that would now always be my mother's. Colour was gone, and shape may as well have been for all I was given were undistinguishable blobs of shadow. Still, as the hospital's optometrist and Eye Clinic Liaison Officer had so wisely deduced when informing me I was to be partially blind for my remaining days on Earth: blobs are better than no blobs at all. It wasn't that he'd been wrong exactly, but when you're crying and in pain and only sixteen years of age you want someone to phrase the terrible news a little better than that. Soften the blow. Sugarcoat it a tad.

Andrew Phillips didn't know the meaning.

He'd since left his job as ECLO, a role of which I'd later found out had been to provide my lack of visioned self with support and comforting words as opposed to stating the painfully obvious, and was of recent days my newly appointed therapist. With about as much sympathy as my parents showed when I vehemently voiced my opposition toward attending therapy, accompanied with a complete and utter lack of care for the problems of the person paying for his company, it was a wonder how Andrew had actually landed his job. God save those who were expecting decent help from him. If anything, when speaking to the man I was the one dishing out sound advice.

He'd insisted I call him Drew, because apparently a mere half hour into our first session we were on a nickname basis. Our second and we were onto the topic of his difficult marriage. Third and we were discussing how he, his wife and his son's relationship was a shambles. How could you break something that was already broken? He'd ask. How was it possible? Because his bitch of a wife was damn well shattering his very existence!

It was following yet another painstaking afternoon spent talking at great length, and much to my dismay, in exquisite detail, about his deteriorating family life and lack of sex drive - so vividly descriptive I could quite literally see it in my mind's eye, and yes, the eye pun was intended - when disaster struck. Nothing had seemed amiss at the time, which was of course the beauty of life. You never knew what was around the corner, and those of us without sight? We never truly would.

Upon his insistence, Drew had ended up accompanying me by elevator to the ground floor before proceeding to walk me to the building's exit. Having diagnosed me himself he knew better than anybody when his help was unnecessary and what it was I could see. Rough outlines of things, blurred incredibly as if I was at the deepest depths of the dirtiest seabed, but the faintest of outlines nevertheless. I could independently get from A to B well enough. I had the gist of what places looked like and that was all I needed. Take the waiting room on the ground floor for example: spacious, low furnishings, high ceiling. It was enough information to see me through.

Despite the confidence I was slowly building to independently explore my murky world, I did allow myself to rely on one thing without shame, and that was my cane. It particularly helped in terms of finding my bearings with the layout of places when the lighting wasn't quite right or I felt overwhelmed, and so I scarcely left without it. When it was with me I rarely needed help, so of course I always ensured I came equipped to every appointment with my long, inherently-difficult-to-make-low-key, wooden staff as an extra precaution. Primarily, however, I brought it to shake off unwarranted help from Drew - not that it had worked yet. Drew wouldn't take no for an answer, using the time to blabber on by my side and say the whole I'll help you to the door statement to mask what he was really saying, which was, I'll continue to use you as an outlet until you're far enough away so as not to hear me anymore and only then will I leave you be.