"Yoko Meshi" - a reading (on YouTube)
Yoko glanced at the magazine
lying on the table. Though she couldn’t make out the title, the woman was
pretty. She was tempted to pick it up and breeze through it with her legs
crossed one over the other at the knee, her hair cascading over one shoulder as
she flipped it casually, disinterestedly, past stories on how to attract and
keep a boyfriend with better sex. Instead, she straightened in the chair, eyes
forward, knees together, hands resting on the bag on her legs, her hair firmly
pulled into the ponytail her mother told her all respectable women wore.
“The doctor can see you now,
Ms. Meshi,” the assistant said from the open doorway. “Right this way.” Yoko
smoothed her beige skirt as she stood. She followed the perky young woman in
the short, black skirt and pink top that reminded her more of a bright,
extended version of the lycra bras she found so comfortable and plentiful here
than anything she would wear out in public.
“Right in here,” the woman
gestured to the exam room. “The doctor will be with you in a moment.”
Yoko sat in the chair in the
corner by the modular desk, tugging her skirt over her knees then straightening
her blouse to make sure all the buttons were fastened and nothing provocative
was peaking through her blouse, camisole or bra. Once she was certain she was
arranged, she sat with her eyes down, waiting for the door to open, attempting
to ignore the reclining examination chair she knew she would be expected to
climb into, having no idea how she could without revealing more than was proper.
In her mother’s voice, she chastised herself for not choosing a woman doctor. She
had hoped this act of rebelliousness would help her fit in, would make this
alien world more understandable. Why had she left Honshu ?
But he was supposed to be the best. All the women at the office said so, some
who had come over just months before Yoko had. None had her trouble reading the
language now, though they all admitted they had started worse than she had.
After a moment, the door
opened and the doctor strode in, chart in his left hand, his right extended. “Good
morning, Ms. Meshi. I’m Dr. Rose.” He reached his hand toward her. She not so
much shook it as touched it briefly. “What seems to be the problem today?” he
asked as he sat at the desk.
“I am having a problem with
my vision,” she said shyly. “I can see everything clearly, but when I try to
read, the words do not want to come into focus.”
“Hmm.” He scribbled a note
in her file, then gestured toward the chair, “Why don’t you sit up here and
we’ll see if we can find out what’s going on.”
Careful to keep her legs
together, she wriggled into the examination chair, smoothing her skirt after
she was positioned properly. The doctor dimmed the lights. Reclining in the
chair in the dim light, she felt vulnerable. The air felt warm. The doctor
handed her an instrument to cover one eye and asked her to read a set of Roman
letters reflected in a mirror in front of her. Instinctively, her brain
scrambled to make sense of the decreasing size of the letters non-existent
columns. Finally, she settled on trying
to read the rightmost letter of each row, top to bottom though they didn’t
align. “E, S, U, V, F, I think,” she said uncertainly.
“Ok, can you try that again,
but instead of reading down, try reading across from left to right. Start on
the last row.”
Now her mind fought hard to
align the chart in a way that made sense. Letters seemed to slide out of her
field of view. “N, uh, F, maybe.” As she continued to struggle, she began to
feel dizzy. Finally, she closed her eyes. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Ok, let’s try something
different,” the doctor said in a reassuring tone. He turned out the light
creating the letters. “I know I have it here somewhere,” he murmured, “Ah, here
it is.”
He clanked around the
machinery a moment then turned on the light again. This time when the letters
appeared, they were arranged differently, a single, large “E” on the right with
each column to its left shrinking in size while adding letters. “Try the
leftmost column.”
“S, V, N, F, E,” she said
without hesitation.
“Mm-hmm.” The doctor
scribbled something in her file. “Ok, let’s try the other one again, only this
time I’m going to have you look through these lenses.” He maneuvered a set of
adjustable arms supporting thick, black goggles with small lenses until they
rested on her nose. He made an adjustment to center the lenses on her eyes,
then flipped some switches on either side. As he flipped a final switch, the
lenses over her left eye went dark. “Try and read that.”
Something about the lenses
changed the way she saw the lettering. With the help of whatever he had done,
the odd arrangement made sense to her. She read off the bottom row quickly.
“Now the other eye.” He flipped
a switch that covered her right eye and uncovered her left. She read the
letters as easily with that eye as the first.
“What is wrong with my
eyes?” Yoko asked, as he rolled his chair back and jotted more notes in her
file.
Dr. Rose smiled at her. “You’re eyes are
perfect, 20/20. What you have is something called a ‘Cultural Astigmatism.’”
Yoko frowned.
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing
serious. In most people, it’s something that fades on its own, usually after a
couple months. In some cases, it can be stubborn and last a few years.”
Yoko frowned more deeply.
“Fortunately, there is
something we can do to speed the process along.” He handed her a set of dark
pink tinted glasses. As she put them on, he slid his chair around in front of
her and gently adjusted the way they sat across her nose and ears. His touch
was light, nearly a caress. It made her shiver against her will. As he pulled
his hands back, she no longer felt uncomfortable.
“Can you read the bottom
line?”
After an instant of her eyes
adjusting, Yoko found she could.
“What we can do is have you
wear these. The lenses are plain glass, so they won’t hurt your eyes or alter
your vision. I’ve found the tinting
helps in cases like yours. The tinting is temporary; it will fade completely
after about six weeks. By the time it disappears, you should have no trouble
reading at all.”
Yoko looked at the doctor to
see whether he was trying to play a joke on her. What she found was that with
the new glasses, he reminded her of her father in a completely alien, yet
recognizable way. She felt much more comfortable with him now.
As he brought up the lights
in the office, she slid from the chair and offered her hand. “Thank you,
doctor.”
He took her hand and smiled.
“That’s why I’m here. I’ll want to see you again in six weeks. You can make an
appointment with my assistant on your way out.” He released her hand from his. Her
hand felt warm from his touch.
As she left, she reached
back and released her hair from the confines of its ponytail. As it started to
fall, she shook it free until it cascaded down her back. Perhaps she could
learn to view this foreign place as her own after all.
