Chapter One

      I pushed the needle into the woman’s eye. She squirmed.

      ‘It’s okay,’ I told her. ‘It’s okay.’ I brought my voice down a little, trying to calm her. ‘Just relax.’

      She clenched the side of her chair, her knuckles turning white. ‘I’m trying.’

      ‘You’re doing fine, Sarah,’ I said. ‘Honestly. Just try and fight the urge to blink for another couple of minutes. It won’t take long.’

      ‘It feels strange. Is it okay?’ she asked.

      ‘It’s going exactly as it should go,’ I said, slowly pressing down on the syringe’s plunger. ‘This is normal.’

      ‘My eye feels heavy.’

      ‘Your eyes are going to feel a little heavier than normal from now on, but that’s something you’ll get used to in no time.’

      She let go of the side of the chair and dug the nails of her right hand into her thigh. Even through the jeans she was wearing, I could see that she was doing it hard enough to hurt. Those sharp, thick, red nails looked lethal.

      ‘I’m freaking out a little bit here,’ she said. ‘I’m trying not to, but I am. Are you sure this is going right?’

      ‘It’s going fine.’ I said. The plunger was about halfway into the syringe now, and I could see the thick liquid swirling around underneath it. It was grey-white and metallic, and moved around of its own accord. ‘This isn’t taking any longer than it should. It’s just a strange sensation, that’s all.’

      ‘You’re sure?’

      ‘Look, while I’m talking, I want you to take your hands and put one on top of the other, okay?’ I said to her. This was a technique I’d used before to try and calm people down. It sometimes worked. The problem with this procedure was that it wasn’t something you could stop halfway through. If I stopped now, the connections wouldn’t be made, and the liquid would just settle at the bottom of the vitreous humour, rather than filling it. It would push against the retina instead of surrounding it comfortably like packaging, and would damage her vision irreparably – possibly blinding her completely. And if she pushed her head against the restraints too far, she would break them and I’d have no option but to pull the needle out.

      ‘Okay,’ she said.

      ‘Right. What I want you to do now’ – The plunger was about three-quarters of the way down. ‘– is to gently scratch the back of your hand with one of your fingernails. Can you do that for me? Do it very slowly.’

      ‘O … okay,’ she said, as she began to do so.

      I glanced down and saw the light, white trail left by the point of her nail against her skin.

      ‘Okay, so while you’re doing that, imagine you’d never felt any sensation against that part of your body before. Like it’s the first time you’ve ever been touched.’

      ‘Okay,’ she said. I had almost finished the first eye now.

      ‘Now, can you imagine how uncomfortable that scratch would be, if you’d never felt anything there before?’

      ‘… yes,’ she replied.

      ‘Right,’ I said, extracting the needle and dabbing a small cloth covered with clear gel over thehole in her cornea. ‘That’s why this is uncomfortable. You’re not used to any physical sensations inside your eye, so the first time it happens, it’s a shock – and look, there’s the first one done.’

      ‘I … I can’t see out of my left eye.’

      ‘It’ll clear in about six or seven minutes,’ I said. ‘Then you’ll be able to see in an entirely different way. Do you see what I mean about the sensation?’

      She tried to nod, but the restraints against her head prevented her. ‘I can feel it moving in my eye.’

      ‘It’ll settle, trust me.’

      ‘Right, so it’s … this is what normally happens.’