Free Colorado Dawn by Erica Vetsch Page A

limitations ever dull? His heart rate picked up when they entered the parlor. Hard enough to greet friends and family. Strangers were another ordeal altogether.
    “David, this is Rex Collison. Rex, I’m sorry we kept you waiting. I hope Mrs. Webber made you comfortable.”
    She led David across the room in the area of the fireplace. He could detect the smell of the fire and, when he moved his face to the left, the smell of coffee. “Pleased to meet you.”
    Something bumped his arm, and he instinctively grasped Collison’s hand and shook it.
    “I’ll leave you to your discussion.” Karen squeezed his elbow. “If you’ll take a seat, I’ll pour some coffee for you and go consult Mrs. Webber about dinner. I hope you’ll stay, Rex.”
    “Thank you. I’d like that.”
    Her footsteps retreated, leaving them alone.
    “Your wife tells me your blindness is recent.”
    David lifted his cup to his lips and breathed in the warm aroma. “That’s right. About five weeks now.”
    “I hope you took the news better than I did when it happened to me.” Rueful amusement tinged Collison’s voice. “I was a trial to my family for half a year or more.”
    David said nothing. Trial he might’ve been the last month or so, but he wouldn’t discuss it with a stranger.
    Rex tried again. “I understand you’re an engineer.”
    “Was. I
was
. I’m nothing now.”
    “On the contrary. You’re still an engineer with several years of experience to call upon. There is no reason, with some adaptation to your routine and with a little help from an assistant, why you should cease your work. Your wife told me you have a very capable assistant to call upon.”
    David set his cup down with more force than he intended, splashing hot liquid onto his hand. “Excuse me, Mr. Collison, but do you have any experience working in a mine? An engineer has to be able to read, to write, to calculate loads, design square sets, gauge the quality of the stope. I cannot work without my eyes.”
    “In time, you will be able to read Braille and to write in Braille and in script. Your brain wasn’t affected by the explosion, only your eyesight. With a competent assistant, your career need not be halted.”
    For one moment he allowed himself to hope, to believe things might return to the way they had been, but the foolishness of those thoughts crashed down on him. Reality was darkness. Reality was the need to rely on others to help him because he couldn’t help himself. Reality was that even before the accident he’d been a bad engineer. Otherwise, the mine never would’ve caved in. Shame licked through him like greedy tongues of fire, incinerating hope and devouring possibilities.
    “My career is dead, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” He rested against the antimacassar, wishing he could stop the jangling in his head. Everything he had once identified himself as had been stripped from him, leaving him nothing to hold on to. Had he somehow angered God and earned this judgment? Did God even know or care?
    “You won’t know what you can do until you try. Think of how the children at the school will admire you and seek to be like you when you prove that even without your sight you are a successful engineer. This will show them there is nothing they might not accomplish if they just try.” Collison’s chair creaked, as if leaning forward in his zeal to convince David. “You have advantages that many sightless persons do not have. You have the love and support of your family, especially your wife, and you have ample resources at your command. You have a career waiting for you if you have the courage to pick it up again.”
    David gripped the arms of his chair so hard his hands shook. “I never asked to be a role model.”
    “You may think I don’t understand what you’re going through, but I do. Before I became a teacher for the blind, I had just graduated from college. The ink wasn’t even dry on my diploma when I fell ill. When the