A Blue Eye - Wan-Ting Tsai

A Blue Eye

He sits on my shelf and watches. My every move. My every word. My every breath.

The brown synthetic fur that hugs him is fraying; the unraveling threads cling, like an aging mind to a fading memory. His eyes—oval polyester buttons—lurked at the center of his head. The left was a murky black bead, encircled by cream white; the right was a glossy ivory resin that gleamed under the fluorescent lights.  I sewed a button from the 5-dollar 10-pack from Etsy, a shiny white imposter, in mourning for his right eye.

Two years ago, only when I extracted his body from the Ziploc labeled Toys—lying as his body bag—did I realize his right eye had been lost in the battle of moving into my Mom’s new apartment. Disappointed, I heard my dad’s voice ring in my ear, comforting me: 

"Nothing is broken, sometimes things just need a little fixing”.

Running my eyes back down, on his abdomen was an ovoid pale-yellow cloth, once a citrine orange, stitched loosely with white wool yarn. Cradled in the center, it wove the outline of a stomach— or a swollen, sutured wound. The bottom of this hemp cloth was tattered and threadbare against the body.

He’s a mere ghost of what he once was. 

On my eighth birthday, my heart hammered at the sight of the teddy bear, at its rich, buttery brown fur. I ran laps around my father until his figure had become a mere silhouette. The colors of my surroundings were reduced to crystallized light. Stopping at once, I flung my head back. My pigtails, following the command, hurled behind my face like windmill blades. I met the eyes of my father. “I'll call him Robbie.” Celebrating in the pathway of my own tornado, I threw my arms up as I was swept into the warm embrace of my father.  His smile hung from ear to ear; wrinkles decorated the crevices of his mouth. His eyes dusked to mini crescent moons, sparing only his piercing blue iris to illuminate my world. His beer belly, protruding and round, danced up and down with each heave of a chuckle. My father’s coarse hands dropped the faded red polka dot packaging that, moments ago, enveloped Robbie.

That night, he tripped over the mountains of boxes stowing away the horizons of his ‘passion projects’—a graveyard of half-built model planes and blank canvases. My father hiked wearily up the wooden ladder to my top bunk; the ladder protested, crying and whimpering under each step.  “I've got to get that fixed," he muttered, panting with his heavy breaths. Holding my Frozen Elsa Cartoon Anime comforter from Walmart, my father nestled me, and Robbie, to hibernation. Robbie lay under my arms; his black lacquered eyes fixed on the face looming over him, as if he was studying each wrinkle as a thread to be traced. My father’s eyes, however, were locked with mine. 

“You happy?” He asked.

Every syllable choreographed the movement of his beard. Up. Right. Down. Up again. A giggle escaped my mouth. 

I nodded. 

“Here it is.”

The nurse’s hollow voice echoed through the labyrinth of rooms marked with simple oak doors. EKG machines beeped at every turn, and the exhalation of ventilators scoffed.

 She was dressed in a set of pale-yellow scrubs, spotless and neurotically ironed, over a pair of black Hoka sneakers. On her chest hung a lanyard— “Evie Rhynes, RN.” My feet stopped at the door adorned with cheerful Santa faces; a clip-art Santa held a comically large bag of presents. Above was the caption “Tis the season to be jolly! (Visiting hours end at 8PM)” plastered in a thin adhesive film. The plastic cardholder, lying right under the 2 x 4 glass cutout designed specifically for prying eyes, featured the most unassuming type, “Room 204.” I shepherded my arm forward—fingers trembling—and reached for the handle.

The metal was cold to the touch. 

Cautiously, I turned to look behind me, my eyes meeting Nurse Evie’s. Her dark brown eyes softened, 

“Go on, honey.”

Slowly, driving my weight down on the handle, I pushed the door forward. Robbie, clinging to my left hand, swung as I moved; his stomach lining had peeled down from the top seam; the muddied white yarn now sparse and split. His new eye fogged under the blur of the scotch tape, mended with uncertainty— the thread that held it before unraveled. 

Bright lights pierced my eyes.

I winced, flinging my hand to my brow, like a makeshift visor. My efforts proved in vain, though, as the perfectly polished laminate floor ricocheted the fluorescence from above directly into my line of sight. Nurse Evie’s shoes squeaked as she traversed the laminate, stopping right in front of me, her hands coming to rest gently on my shoulders. A sigh escaped her mouth, and her glance presided over the body on the bed—limp. 

Everything is broken, I thought; the old comfort curdling into a bitter lie. The ventilator hissed its rhythmic, mechanical sigh. 

One faded blue eye—creeping with jaundice—glandered, scanning and darting across the room. His erratic eye came to a halt.

“Someone’s here to see you, Robert.”

He sits on my bed and watches. My every move. My every word. My every breath.

 I walked forward, 

“Hi, Dad.”

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Renee Tsai, legally, Wan-Ting Tsai, is a Taiwanese High school student based in Shanghai, China. When not taking a —well deprived—nap, she is nuzzled in a corner with a good book. She is the Co-Founder of The Vocal Press and Co-Founder of Nonprofit Clothed in Kindness.