I'm Keeping My Eyes

One hand on the taupe clock is a used cigarette butt printed with “Ask Your Doctor.” Underneath, three receptionists chat, corralled within a glass partition. The sole window in the doctor’s waiting room is them. To tell them apart each woman is branded with a genuine plastic wood-grained name tag. Every other surface is printed with names of pharmaceutical drugs in Pig Latin. A patient stands outside the glass fence. He waits patiently, hence his title.

From her enclosure Lexis says, “Let them take everything, I mean, Who cares? But leave me my skin. And my eyes.” Her own are transfixed by a flickering computer screen. It has been minutes since Lexis last blinked.

“They can make artificial skin now. It can be grown from your own,” Sharnay offers, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“I want to be waked at my funeral. I want to look like myself in the casket,” replies Lexis. “Take everything else but leave my skin and eyes.”

“Me too! Leave both eyes,” bellows Cathi.

“Isn’t it funny that everyone wants eyes for when they’re dead?” says Sharnay. “What do people think, they’re gonna need them?”

“Aren’t the eyes the soul? Aren’t they the... the window to the soul?” asks Lexis.

“Yah, that’s what they say,” says Cathi. “Window.”

With one eye locked on her computer, Lexis looks up at the patient. She slides back the glass to ask what he wants, saying, “I’m keeping my eyes.”