It’s fair to say that got my full attention.
Up until that point, all the other people who had moved through my room had been background noise. I’d taken them all for granted as I focused on postsurgical adventures like taking my meds, healing my incision, and shuffling back and forth to the bathroom.
I guess everything at the hospital had been just … as expected.
But then in came this person talking like Sue. And forced me to notice that she didn’t look like Sue. Which forced me to try to figure out what she did look like.
And that’s when I realized that I had no idea.
I mean, this lady in front of me had facial features. I could see them if I tried—one at a time. Eyes. A nose. Eyebrows. A mouth. They were all there.
I just couldn’t snap them together into a face. Any face at all. Least of all Sue’s.
“Sue?” I asked.
“What?”
“Is it you?”
“It’s me,” she said, like it might be a trick question.
“What did you do to your face?”
I saw her lift her hand to it. After a second, she said, “New moisturizer?”
“No. I mean—”
“Do I look weird? I switched multivitamins.”
Did she look weird? I mean, the components of her face were like puzzle pieces spread out on a table. So yeah.
But I didn’t exactly know how to say that.
I was just staring at her pieces, trying to Jedi-mind-trick them into clicking into their proper spots, when one of those nurses in the pink scrubs walked in.
And I realized that I couldn’t see her face, either.
I mean, “couldn’t see her face” is not exactly right. I could tell there was a face there. In theory. It wasn’t just a blank slate. I could zoom in on eyebrows and laugh lines and lips.
It was just that the pieces didn’t fit together right. They didn’t make a face. It was a bit like looking at a Picasso painting.
I could see it, I guess. I just couldn’t understand it.
It reminded me of that game you play as kids where you lie upside down and watch someone talking where their lips are flipped, top to bottom. Everything suddenly looked so funny. And disjointed. And cartoonish.
I felt a rising comprehension. Had I been like this all week?
As crazy as this sounds, it’s true: It was only once I really started trying to look that I realized I couldn’t see.
“Sue?” I said again, blinking, like maybe I could clear things up that way.
“You look fantastic,” she said, leaning forward and clasping my hands in hers. “You’d never know they just popped a section of your skull out like the top of a jack-o’-lantern.”
Yep. That was Sue, all right.
“I expected you to be bald, to be honest,” she went on. “I was prepared to walk in here and say you looked better bald. I had a whole Sinéad O’Connor–themed speech prepared.”
I rubbed my eyes and tried to look at her again.
But no change.
“How did they manage to keep your hair?” Sue asked.
I knew the answer to this question. Dr. Estrera had shown me in detail. But it didn’t seem that important right now.
“I think I have a problem,” I said then. “I can’t see you.”
Sue waved her hand in front of my face, like, Hello? “You can’t see me?”
“I can see your hand,” I said. “I just can’t see your face.”
Sue leaned forward, like that might help, just as the nurse leaned in and said, “Are you having trouble with your eyes, sweetheart?”
“I don’t think it’s my eyes,” I said. “I think it’s my brain.”
* * *
WITHIN TWO HOURS, I’d done another MRI, and the entire faceless team of Estrera, Thomas-Ramparsad, Montgomery himself, and a whole posse of residents and onlookers had gathered in my room.
“The imaging shows some edema around the surgical site,” Dr. Estrera said, talking more to my dad than to me.
“What’s edema?” I asked.
“Swelling,” Dr. Nicole explained. “Very normal. Nothing to worry about.”
“It’s common to have some swelling after a procedure like this,” Dr. Estrera confirmed.
Then he turned to me, and as he did, I looked down at the blanket on my bed.
Looking at faces—or the modern art pieces where faces used to be—was hard. It made my brain hurt a little. Fortunately, Dr. Estrera wasn’t offended. He went on. “As an artist, you know that the human face has a lot of variability.”