Chapter 5
Strangely, when I was actually surrounded by that dead, suffocating darkness, I suddenly felt no fear at all.
I realized that it was never the darkness I was afraid of. What truly terrified me was the person who kept giving me fake light, only to snatch it away whenever he wanted.
I always thought that if I could hold onto Lucas, I'd remain in the light. But I never realized it was his presence that kept dragging me deeper into the abyss.
I had worshiped Lucas in my heart, but now I ended up killing him in my mind myself.
I reached into my bag and pulled out my collapsible cane. With a flick of my wrist, it snapped open with a sharp click.
I slipped the diamond ring off my finger carelessly and tossed it into the darkness.
Using my cane to feel my way, I navigated around the crowd, keeping close to the wall as I made my way out of the theater, step by step, steady and sure.
Outside the theater, the night breeze was a little chilly.
A black SUV with a military plate was parked quietly by the curb, waiting to take me to the war zone airport.
"Ms. White, your UN papers are ready," the officer who came to pick me up said as he stepped forward and opened the car door for me. "Let's go."
I slid into the back seat and closed my eyes completely.
*****
After making sure Eva was okay, Lucas watched the ambulance drive away before heading back into the Grand Theater.
The smoke from the electrical problem had cleared, but the power was still out. Only the emergency lights cast a faint glow.
He searched the family section, but Charlotte was nowhere to be found.
As he swept the flashlight beam across the floor, something in the dusty cracks between the steps barely caught his eye. It was a diamond ring, glinting faintly.
He picked it up and looked closer. It was the very ring he'd slipped onto Charlotte's finger when he proposed.
Lucas clenched the ring in his fist, his brow furrowing tight. He thought Charlotte was throwing a fit.
She was half-blind, and he believed that she couldn't get far.
He was sure that once she suffered a little hardship out there, or after he secured approval for a new cornea, she would come home.
He hadn't bothered to call, thinking she needed some time to calm down.
*****
Three days later, Lucas pushed open Michael's office door, clutching a special approval slip from the deputy chief physician, ready to push through an urgent cornea transplant for Charlotte.
Michael looked up. As soon as he saw Lucas, his gaze went cold.
He grabbed a thick medical file from the table and hurled it hard at Lucas's chest. "You want a cornea? Dr. Grant, take a look at Charlotte's medical record yourself."
Michael pointed at the file that had bounced off Lucas's chest and fallen to the floor, his voice trembling with fury. "Late-stage sympathetic ophthalmia.
"Charlotte's left eye went permanently blind three days ago, all because you handed the cornea she needed badly to some drama queen who barely had a scratch."
Lucas froze, rooted to the spot.
The medical file on the ground fluttered open in the wind. The stark black-and-white diagnosis seared his eyes.
It read: [Permanent blindness.]
Lucas's mind spun in disbelief. 'How is this possible? Charlotte's vision was only a bit blurry. How did she end up completely blind all of a sudden?'
The international channel on the office TV suddenly cut to breaking news.
It was a live broadcast of a high-level UN Peacekeepers press conference, and the camera swept past the lead interpreter's seat.
Lucas's breath caught in his throat at once.
Charlotte sat in the interpreter's booth, decked out in a heavy bulletproof vest and oversized black shades.
There wasn't a single sheet of paper in front of her. Blind as she was, she relied only on the voices in her headphones, switching between six languages flawlessly at lightning speed, her reactions sharp as a blade.
At the bottom of the screen, a bold official subtitle scrolled: [This interpretation is being carried out by Ms. Charlotte White, a specially appointed expert who chose to give up her sight and signed a waiver accepting all risks.]
Lucas stared at the screen, his eyes fixed on Charlotte's face. Her eyes could no longer see, yet her whole presence was shining with a brilliance that seemed to light up the entire room.
His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the cold floor.
The triage principles he'd always been so proud of were the very thing that snuffed out the last light in the woman he loved.
And she didn't make a scene. She simply severed every need she had for him with ruthless finality.
She was blind now, and she wanted nothing to do with him anymore.