Eden's Eyes Read Free

"What—did—you—do?"
    "They said there were people who needed his organs."
    Bert stammered, fear spilling over him like slag. "So I—"
    In a lightningquick thrust Eve's hands curled into Bert's hair, grabbing thick handfuls and pulling fiercely.
    "You did what?" she shrieked like something avian.
    And with strength Bert had never imagined her possessing, Eve wrenched his head back until their eyes met. He tried to pull free but couldn't, his balance in that moment pitched precariously forward. His eyes watered as he looked up in fear and awe at his raving wife.
    "You did what?" she screeched again, her blue-ice eyes screwed down to baleful slits. "You did WHAT?"
    "Eve—"
    With lethal speed Eve brought a claw down wickedly across Bert's face, opening furrows that reddened and wept. Bert half rose, stumbled, then toppled back heavily against the doorjamb, giving his skull a dizzying crack. In the swimming extremity of his gaze, the big mantelpiece portrait of Jesus eyed him with quiet benevolence—allseeing eyes of celestial blue, heart naked and aflame in a bracelet of thorns.
    "Murderer!" she raged, her voice a bellowing roar.
    "Satanspawn!" She jerked her wheelchair forward, digging a footplate into Bert's ribs, and lashed out again. This time Bert deflected the blow with an upraised arm.
    "You've got to stop them! Stop them now!"
    Bert shook his head, tears still blearing his eyes. "It's too late—"
    "It is not too late!"
    Forsaking him, Eve wheeled sharply away, down the hall to the small back kitchen. Uttering prayers mixed with bitter condemnation, she reached down the phone and dialed in the flickering light of the range lamp.
    "Oh please God I beg You damn this killing heathen and hasten him on his hellbound path, wield your Holy armor and deflect the fiery darts of the fallen angel save my boy Your servant blessed issue—"
    And then her whole demeanor changed. In a cadenced, controlled voice she said into the phone: "Give me the ICU please."
    Bert rose to his feet, his face a stinging agony where Eve had gouged him. He moved to stop her, meaning to grab the receiver away. . . then thought better of it. Let them tell her, he decided. Perhaps the shock would settle her once and for all. He didn't regret what he had done. The boy had been his, too. It was a good thing. Good from bad. Couldn't she see that?
    He started into the stairwell, shutting out Eve's voice as she made her demands into the phone. At the top landing he paused and glanced into his son's bedroom, lit eerily now by the grinning Mickey Mouse night light Bert had bought for him some twentyfive years ago.
    It was a child's room still—stuffed toys with blackbutton eyes, stacks of dogeared comic books, water-marked rockinghorse wallpaper, a football dimpled from lack of air. . .
    Bert pulled the door shut, suddenly nauseated by the room's musty breath. He slouched down the hall to its far end, to his own room—Eve had shut him out of the master bedroom years ago—and lay down in the dark. Far away, Eve's voice railed on.
    After a while, he got up and locked the door from the inside. For the first time in their long lives together, Bert Crowell was afraid of his wife.

    Once the guy was on the ventilator again, and receiving enough anesthetic to relax his muscles and dampen any reflexes that might otherwise occur, there was precious little for Ed Skead to do. Ed had been in practice for nine years now; during that time, he'd been involved in procedures like this on perhaps a dozen occasions. But as he stood and watched Dr. Hanussen preparing to remove the donor's eyes, he decided that even a hundred such cases would fail in making the process any more pleasant to witness.
    In the fashion of all accomplished surgeons, Hanussen had arrived with an entourage, each member of which would later assist him in the laborious process of grafting in the eyes. Terse without being impolite, he had swept quietly into the room, nodded his greetings without