Page 179 of Wrong Marriage. Right Groom
Complete stillness.
Then Rafael spoke as though we were discussing something ordinary.
“Not yet,” he said evenly.
My breath caught violently.
It wasn’t the words themselves that shook me. It was the absence of emotion behind them.
“He’s only still alive because he claimed the procedure is reversible. He claimed the eyes can be replaced.”
The words landed like a stone dropped into still water.
For a second, the world narrowed to the echo of that single sentence, rippling outward through my skull.
My eyes can be replaced?
My heart lurched, a violent, painful thud against my ribs, then raced ahead in a frantic, stumbling rhythm.
Heat flooded my face.
Sight. Real sight. Not the hazy memory of it I clung to in dreams, but actual vision—colors, shapes, faces.
The possibility unfolded in my mind like a door I had nailed shut months ago.
I had accepted the darkness. I had grieved it.
The surgery was supposed to be final, a one-way crossing. That was the only way I could survive what had been done to me.
And yet here I was, discovering it wasn’t permanent after all.
Something deep in my chest cracked open—sharp, brittle, almost audible.
For one treacherous moment I waited for the rush of hope, the bright, desperate joy that should have flooded in.
It never came.
Instead, a vast, hollow silence bloomed inside me.
Not relief. Not gratitude. Just... emptiness.
I pressed my lips together, breathing through my nose in shallow, controlled pulls.
Rafael shifted slightly beside me and wrapped his right hand around mine. I tried to pull away, but his grip held steady, keeping me exactly where I was.
“Tomorrow,” he said, calm and certain, “we’re going back to the hospital. He’ll set a date for the operation.”.
My chest tightened.
“I told you,” I said, my voice trembling despite my effort to steady it, “I removed my eyes because everything I see reminds me of that dark cellar. Every shadow. Every light. And yet you speak about fixing them like it’s something I’ve been desperate to do.”
I swallowed hard, forcing the rest out.
“At least in the dark,” I added quietly, “I can pretend the memories don’t reach me so easily. What if I never want to see again?”
The words hung between us, heavy and absolute.
Rafael’s voice was low—controlled, certain.
