We Regret to Inform You

“Under an Emily Sky” by Ann-Marie Brown

The letter arrives in May, in a crisp white DMV envelope with your name and address neatly typed into the appropriate field. It reminds you your next vision report is due in no less than 90 days. Failure to provide it will result in suspension of your driving privileges. Again.

***

Only one ophthalmologist at one hospital in one city in this entire country is capable of handling your case. It takes hours on hold to reach his receptionist. He is booked solid the next three months, as well as the three after that. Does December work for you?

Isn’t there someone, you plead, who can just confirm my vision is stable? Even a medical student—

No, she says firmly.

You make the appointment for December and ask to be added to his cancellation list. There’s typing on her end of the line, then it clicks dead.

***

If you can’t drive, how will you get to work? There’s the bus, the long, complicated routes you don’t understand. They don’t run early enough, there’s nothing that runs at 3:30 in the morning to get you to work by 4:30. You imagine swimmers huddled by the doors, waiting for you to unlock them, their breath fogging in the glow of the parking lot floodlights. The way your boss will roll his eyes, again, as you explain the issues with your license, the way he did when you told him you couldn’t drive 45 minutes down the highway to that swim meet last month, because the high rate of speed, the increased chance to make one catastrophic mistake, terrifies you.

What about your appointments? Two you can reach by train, the massive network of the DC Metro system. Someone, usually your mom, always drives you to the others.

You call your parents, who say you better figure it out. You moved in with that boy. He can help you.

They’ve been like this for months now, since you moved out. Bitter, your partner says when you mention it, to see their youngest grown and gone. Trying to teach you one final lesson, how to manage without them. It’s okay, he adds. My parents are the same.

You thought he would understand, that you would try to work out a solution that would allow you to keep your job, until your partner tells you flatly, no, he will not drive you. He’s not getting up that early, not when he works noon to midnight at the 911 call center and his sleep schedule is critical to his performance. Can’t you find another job?

But you don’t want another job. This one, four hours of coaching in the morning, another four hours at night, meets two weekends a month, provides a steady income, health insurance, retirement matching, precious time to write and run errands in the middle of the day.

What if your retina detaches, you want to ask each of them. The fear that colors every decision you make, the reason behind these appointments. Your retina clings to the back of your eye by a tenuous thread. What if it finally tears away? Would they help you when, if you’re lucky, reconstructive surgery reduces your vision to shadows, and you have to relearn the world around you, relying on touch and sound and the help of others more than you already do?

***

In June, you apply for a guide dog, consumed by the encroaching DMV deadline, by the fear of navigating public transportation alone, of weaving through densely crowded areas with less than 70% of the vision everyone else has. Of your vision deteriorating so suddenly, you are unable to adjust to finding your way around alone.

You fill out all the forms, explaining why you think you should have one, your condition—total blindness in your right eye, the deformed shape of your left eye, how the retina is only partially attached, how you have some sight, the only person with your condition who does—and the issues with your license.

When the form asks why you think a guide dog would increase your mobility, you write how you avoid public areas and crowds because, among other reasons, once at a museum in DC you stumbled into a woman in a packed exhibit. You were busy reading the blocks of text on the walls, eyes scrunched to bring the blurry words into better focus—you never could’ve seen her. Her phone fell from her grasp, the screen shattering on impact with the floor. She berated you for twenty minutes, screeching over your feeble I can’t see I’m so sorry, until your afternoon was swallowed by a security office in the bowels of the building, where you eventually agreed to cover the cost of her new phone if it meant you could flee to the Metro.

You haven’t gone back to the museum—to any of them—since. Not even when your partner asked—you used to love your museum dates, the hours spent dragging him from one exhibit to another, talking his ear off about different rock formations and tectonic plates, a bemused smile playing at his lips. You thought moving in together would yield more of the same—fun excursions, drunken laughter late at night playing Mario Kart, the way things were before—not the tension that permeates the space between you now, the insurmountable what ifs of vision loss, the untouchable what does this mean for us that shares a seat at dinner, that hoards the space between you in bed.

The application includes a form your doctor has to fill out, with your visual field and what your vision can be corrected to. You hold your breath, pray the email he was sent by the automated system doesn’t get lost in his spam. It doesn’t. He uploads the required files quickly. The service’s response is almost as fast.

We’re sorry, the email reads, with a tone that clearly connotes they’re not, that you have wasted their time. We regret to inform you that, as of now, your vision exceeds our requirements.

The Virginia Department of the Blind said the same thing, when your mom requested services, aid, any possible help when you were young. She didn’t know what to do with a child who read books all day but couldn’t clearly see a sign three feet away. Clearly, neither did they.

Nor did the American Federation of the Blind. Or your county’s disability services in the public school system, when your mom asked you be taught Braille, how to use a cane. We regret to inform you your child has too much vision for our services.

***

You look for new jobs, things besides coaching, combing listings between practices. July passes this way, then August. You apply locally, remotely, anything you can find that won’t require moving. You can’t move, can’t risk what would happen if your only working retina detached and you were too far from the one person who could potentially fix it, but only if you get to him fast.

Each listing claims they’re equal opportunity employers, they want diversity in the workplace, highly encourage those of marginalized identities to apply.

You get no responses, no interview requests. Nothing.

When you vent to your partner over dinner, one of your rare shared Saturdays off, he shrugs. I’m sure it’s not because you disclosed your disability. You just need keep trying.

His words settle, a weight around your neck, drawing your shoulders close to the table. He kisses you on top of your head on his way to the kitchen to wash his plate. Do you want to watch a movie tonight? He doesn’t wait for your answer—he’s already pulling out bowls for ice cream.

It’s not his fault, you reason during the movie. He’s never had to consider something like this before.

***

August passes. Your license is suspended. No one jumps to help. Not your partner, when you show him the change on the DMV website. He sighs, wraps you in a hug, says we’ll make it through this. He sends you job listings you haven’t applied to yet. Some days you fill them out. Some days you turn your phone off.

Your parents aren’t much help either. They both have their own jobs. They don’t have time to shuttle you around the way they used to. Your mom, to her credit, sends you job listings too.

Your boss doesn’t know what to tell you. If you can’t get to the pool, he says, I guess you’re not coaching.

A shame, he adds. It will be hard to find someone to replace you.

There is one thing you’re thankful for: your health insurance is good through the end of the year, even if you’re not putting in hours. You sell your car back to the dealer. You can’t afford it without your income. The payout is barely enough to cover the loan and your health insurance payments for the rest of the year.

***

Late one night, you look up other states, their driving laws, in a fit of anxiety-fueled curiosity. Maybe it would be worth moving, you reason, if there was a local state that didn’t require annual vision reports. At least, finding work would be easier if you could count on reliable transportation.

But no, DC and Maryland have stricter vision laws than Virginia. You couldn’t get a license in either. North Carolina, like Virginia, allows drivers with narrower visual fields to drive with less restrictions. But for how much longer? If you uproot your life just to move there, what will happen? A year from now, or maybe five, will you be ineligible to drive in every state?

Will you even have vision in five years?

***

In December, at the appointment you take four trains to get to, your doctor checks your visual field, your prescription. He shines a light in your pupil and uses a lens to see through to the optic nerve on the other side. Your fear returns—the one that keeps you up at night, that locks your muscles in a panic attack if you focus on it too long—will this be the visit where he tells you your retina is beginning to separate, you’re going blind?

Not this time. He proclaims your vision is unchanged. He offers you a kind smile, pleased that your retinal anomaly, one of only three cases like it in the world, is proving to be, relatively, easy to manage. He means relative to the others, who are completely blind. You know this though you have never met them. He fills out your DMV form. Promises to see you in a year. His receptionist faxes it for you.

***

The letter takes a month. Your status on the DMV website updates faster, only taking two weeks, declaring your driving privileges restored. The letter reminds you the enclosed form will need to be filled out again, no later than December, 365 days to when your form was faxed to them. Not to the day they made a decision.

Using a magnet, you stick the letter to the fridge, so you won’t forget. Your shoulders slump against the wall behind you. You can’t afford a new car, don’t even know if you’d want one, just to go through all this again in eleven months. The next time it could be for real, the words that spin through your mind not only imagined, but alive, tangible.

At what point does this get easier, you wonder, sliding to the floor. Your partner will be home in an hour. He’ll find you, crumpled. Maybe he’ll sink beside you, wrap his arm around you. Maybe this time, he’ll understand. Or maybe he won’t.

From here, the sterile black type is an indecipherable blur.

about the author

Rebecca Burke is an MFA candidate in fiction at George Mason University. She is the managing editor of a forthcoming anthology featuring the work of writers with disabilities. Her work has appeared in Breakwater Review and Homology Lit, among other places. You can find her on twitter @beccaburke95, where she tweets about navigating the MFA with a visual impairment, writing, swimming, and all things feminism.

about the artist

Ann-Marie Brown is a Canadian artist currently working out of a studio on the west coast of British Columbia.  Her oil and encaustic paintings have been exhibited across Canada & the United States, and have found their way into collections around the world.  To see more of her artwork, go to www.annmariebrownpaintings.com