Free Now I See You by Nicole C. Kear Page B

making my vision worse. Well, she explained impatiently when I asked, they weren’t exactly edemas but edema-like formations. In fact, it was entirely possible the medication wouldn’t be effective. And, she added, I might experience side effects such as tingling in my extremities, nausea, mild tremors, ringing in my ears and the frequent need to urinate.
    “Anything else?” I joked. “Any risk of bleeding out my ears or growing a tail?”
    She didn’t laugh.
    I didn’t take the medication.
    At least, not right away. A few months after she prescribed it to me, I came around and started thinking that it was worth a shot, even if it was a long one and I’d maybe piss my pants in the process. So I called her and explained that I needed a new script, because the one she’d written at my last visit had expired.
    “You never took the medication I prescribed?” she asked.
    “No,” I confessed. “But I’m ready to now.”
    “I don’t understand,” she went on. “Why didn’t you take it in the first place?”
    “You know, I’m not really sure,” I told her, surprised. I hadn’t expected to have to defend my decision. “I think I just figured it was a long shot and then all the side effects—”
    “Those are all common side effects of any medication,” she shot back. “That shouldn’t have been a consideration.”
    “Maybe—” I replied, “maybe I just didn’t want the daily reminder. It’s easier, you know, to just forget about my disease, for as long as I can.”
    She was quiet for a second. I figured she was thinking of something uplifting to say.
    “Listen, I’m not a mental health provider so I’m not equipped to deal with issues like that, ” she replied. “For that, you’ll need to talk to a psychiatrist. All I’m equipped to do is assess what medications may improve your vision and prescribe them to you.”
    “I understand,” I said, though I didn’t. She was the one who’d asked me to explain myself and once I did, she made me feel like a head case.
    “I guess I’m just a little frustrated,” she continued. “If I were you and someone told me there was a pill that could help me see better, I’d take it.”
    And if I were you, I thought, I wouldn’t be such a callous bitch .
    “I will take it,” I reminded her. “That’s why I called. For the prescription.”
    She sent the script, and I returned to her office in three months to determine if there was any change in my vision. There was not.
    “Well, at least we tried,” she concluded.
    You call that trying? I thought. And promptly switched doctors.
    So the fact that Dr. Turner had issued me a stern warning about cigarettes was not only not a deterrent to smoking; it was almost incentive. It wasn’t that I set out specifically to spite my mean ex-doctor or anything, but when I did light up—and it wasn’t often, just once or twice a week—I would feel a certain satisfaction picturing how pissed she’d be if she could see me totally disregarding her medical decrees.
    At the cast party, still irate from my backstage fall, I took two or three long drags on the Marlboro Light that the bartender had lit for me and when I exhaled, I imagined blowing the smoke directly in Dr. Turner’s smug face. Then I stubbed the damn thing out, only half-smoked. I had the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old but I did retain a bit of sense, after all.
    The champagne was flowing freely at the cast party and I was in no position to resist, so I partook, and partook, and partook, until it was hard to keep my eyelids open. That’s when I should have gone home. Instead I called Gabriel.
    Gabriel was a good-looking Colombian-American actor I’d met at an Equity open call near Times Square a few weeks before. He’d insisted I get a drink with him after the audition, and I’d consented, mainly because of his gorgeous eyes, which were the color of melted chocolate. Over drinks, he told me a sad, lovely story about how his soulmate, a cousin