detail from: KRK Art dizajn

Heavenly Meadows

 

                The nurse in the ophthalmological department emerges from the file room walking with a determined out-toed stride. She is wearing white nursing clogs and leans back on her heels giving the impression that at any moment she could break into a pirouette, or leap like a deer, or twirl on the heel of one foot. Her face and nose are covered with freckles, and a momentary thought flashes through my mind: how long had it been since I had seen a freckle-faced woman and how freckles give a special charm to a woman’s beauty. Her frizzy, curly, reddish hair bounces with every deliberate step. Holding a file called “Ophthalmological department: Laser operations”, she stands in the middle of the waiting room and announces:

                “Patients who had their laser surgery and have an appointment at one o’clock please take your seats in front of examination rooms number three and four. The doctor will call you two at a time. The first patient should take a seat at room three and the second at room four.”

                The patients were arriving from a separate waiting area which I had not previously noticed. Each was wearing a special bandage over one eye - a clear, plastic, perforated, cone-shaped eye shield attached snugly to the eye area with tape stretching from the cheek, across the eye and up to the forehead….

They line up in single formation like soldiers and move in uniform step to their seats. At the head of this newly formed group of “one-eyed patients” is a woman who resembles June Squibb, the actress who played Jack Nicholson’s wife, Helen Schmidt, in the movie “About Schmidt”. Trying to keep her balance, with each step she motions with her right hand and then gently folds her arm at the elbow. Behind her is an old, dark-skinned couple - the wife’s right eye and the husband’s left eye are covered. They linked arms to support each other, a loving gesture of their closeness. The gift of years had united them as one and they do not seek anyone else’s help except each other’s. Behind them is a man of medium build wearing jeans and walking with his head held high. His wife is supporting him under one arm and incessantly explaining something to him in a subdued voice while holding a book in her other hand and marking its pages with her finger. Three more unaccompanied “one-eyed patients” - a total of eight patients and their awaiting the doctor’s arrival.

                Finally, a female doctor arrives. She’s as thin as a rake. Her uniform is clean, but too large for her. I recalled the pejorative word used in our regions for this type of woman: “tomboyish”, and I felt ashamed by our unpleasant tendencies to judge a person by their appearance or by utilizing derogatory epithets for disabilities such as deafness, blindness, mobility disorders, speech impediments - and I crossed myself. (O Lord, forgive me my transgressions!) The doctor takes the file from the freckle-faced nurse and points to the woman who, as I said, bears a strong resemblance to Helen Schmidt to come with her to room number three. She directs the man who walked holding his head high to go to room number four.

Voices can be heard from inside the first examination room, one gruff and one shrill, and then the door opens:

“May I give you a quick hug? Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can see everything! It’s all so clear and sharp! It’s as though daylight has broken before my eyes after a dark night. O Lord, how beautiful it is!” That was “Helen Schmidt” saying good-bye to the doctor as she headed out of the examination room without her eye shield. I watched as she walked down the hall. With every step she continued to motion with her right hand and I wondered if she would break that habit once she left the hospital building. I observed how peculiar it was that she had a gruff voice while the doctor with the masculine features had a shrill, high-pitched voice.

In the meantime, the door of room number four opened and out came the man who held his head high. No eye shield over his eye and only a wide smile on his face. With the book still in her hand, his wife rests her head on his shoulder. And so they disappear down the hallway and out of the hospital building.

And this well-rehearsed scenario keeps repeating. The doctor in the clean uniform directs a seated patient wearing a clear, plastic eye shield over one eye to enter an examination room. Once inside, voices of different pitches can be heard. The door opens and one of the patients emerges, now without the eye shield. He steps into the waiting room smiling and, one can say, with a glow on his face. Eight of them. And it didn’t take longer than a half hour. Finally, the doctor exits the office; her face is expressionless. She hands the white file to the freckle-faced nurse who is waiting at the door of the file room.

I’m still sitting in my seat thinking that this is how it will likely be at the Last Judgement which, according to belief, will be meted out to all humanity separating the righteous from the sinners after which the righteous will be rewarded with eternal life and the sinners will be sentenced to eternal agony. The righteous, with glowing expressions on their faces, similar to these “one-eyed patients”, will enter into the heavenly meadows where angels and saints reside. And they will be embraced by a shining light which warms and revives and under whose rays plants and magnificent flowers blossom, beautiful and colourful butterflies fly overhead, and the buzzing of bees and the chirping of heavenly birds can be heard.

When I looked up at the freckle-faced nurse who was holding a document and calling out my name, I probably still had a radiant expression on my face because she gave me a gracious, almost angelic smile, as she accompanied me to the room and said:

“The doctor will examine you in five minutes. Take a seat here.”

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