Into the Blind Spot: Learning to Trust What You Can Barely See

Illustration by CARLO GIAMBARRESI

My right eye had already swollen shut, and, to my left eye, the world outside the gym appeared a provisional version of itself—the brick sidewalk, Lowell House across the street—none of it firmly in place, the sunlight filtering through the trees as though from no one source, everything overly bright. The wide stone steps of the gym shimmered like water, each solid only as it formed under my foot—one step, then the next. Space in general felt wider, less confined, but the space around me felt tighter, as though I were on a lower frequency than everyone else, existing in some range that human ears couldn’t hear.

Peter walked beside me toward Harvard University Health Services, but I avoided looking at him. It had been his finger that had hooked into my eye. We didn’t know each other well; we’d just paired up for a pickup game. It was two weeks before final exams. A flush flashed through me as I thought that I never should have been in the gym in the first place, that I should have been studying. But I’d spent so many hours playing basketball in high school, and devoted so many hours to watching the Celtics with my brother, Matt, at home on the couch, that playing pickup games was more than just a way of relaxing from the career track I hadn’t found. To rise into a baseline jumper, to slash through the lane, was to flip through a scrapbook of my past—my muscles still carrying those late afternoons in the high-school gym and the snowstorms Matt and I had played through in the backyard, fingers going numb. The way holidays carry vestiges of holidays past—that’s what basketball was for me. Every time I picked up a ball, the leather reintroduced my fingertips to all those hours with other basketballs, on other courts, with other people, which was always a quiet reminder of who I was.

My hand trailed instinctively now along the brick wall that lined the narrow sidewalk. The day was too bright. There was nowhere to look. A constant bee sting burned at the back of my right eyeball, surrounded by a tight-fisted throbbing. My T-shirt was stained with streaks of blood, and everything under my skin felt like it was moving faster than it ever had, propelled by a feeling of wanting to strike back, to throw parked cars out of my way. Why had this happened? Why had this happened to me? I told myself the questions were just music playing in a neighboring room, just something to ignore. I needed to get to a doctor. That’s what I needed to do. Then the questions would go away. Vaguely, I admitted to myself that time might be a factor, but for what, I didn’t admit. Peter and I crossed Mount Auburn Street, its two lanes suddenly horrible and dazzling.

At University Health Services, a doctor swabbed some of the blood away from my eye and pressed with his thumb around the lid. He was probably in his sixties. He introduced himself as Dr. Hardenbergh. He’d seen all this before, it seemed. Maybe my senses were heightened, but his white coat smelled like mothballs. His office was straight out of a Norman Rockwell. He said he was going to snip something—it wouldn’t hurt—and just over the bridge of my nose, with my left eye, I saw him cut something white, like a bit of boiled egg. It didn’t hurt—he was right. Maybe it was just the eye’s version of dead skin. But that something could be cut from my eye, and with so little explanation, was not reassuring.

After a quick examination of each eye with his penlight, Dr. Hardenbergh switched the overhead light back on. “Very good,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“You can go back to your dorm room. You’ll...