From the Corner of His Eye

for half birthdays."
        "You think I'm
        "Nope. But you're a real good mom."
        As if he sensed her reluctance to return to Dr. Chan, Barty had kept her occupied with talk of the red planet as they approached the office building, had talked her off the street, along the driveway, and into a parking space, where finally she relinquished the fantasy of an endless road trip. At 5:45, long past the end of office hours, Dr. Chan's suite was quiet.
        The receptionist, Rebecca, had stayed late, just to keep company with Barty in the waiting room. As she settled into a chair beside the boy, he asked her if she knew what gravity was on Mars, and when she confessed ignorance, he said, "Only thirty-seven percent what it is here. You can really jump on Mars."
        Dr. Chan led Agnes to his private office, where he discreetly closed the door.
        Her hands shook, her entire body shook, and in her mind was a hard clatter of fear like the wheels of a roller coaster rattling over poorly seamed tracks.
        When the ophthalmologist saw her misery, his kind face softened further, and his pity became palpable.
        In that instant, she knew the dreadful shape of the future, if not its fine details.
        Instead of sitting behind his desk, he settled into the second of two patient chairs, beside her. This, too, indicated bad news.
        "Mrs. Lampion, in a case like this, I've found that the greatest mercy is directness. Your son has retinoblastoma. A malignancy of the retina."
        Although she had acutely felt the loss of Joey during the past three years, she had never missed him as much as she missed him now. Marriage is an expression of love and respect and trust and faith in the future, but the union of husband and wife is also an alliance against the challenges and tragedies of life, a promise that with me in your corner, you will never stand alone.
        "The danger, Dr. Chan explained, "is that the cancer can spread from the eye to the orbit, then along the optic nerve to the brain."
        Against the sight of Franklin Chan's pity, which implied the hopelessness of Barty's condition, Agnes closed her eyes. But she opened them at once, because this chosen darkness reminded her that unwanted darkness might be Barty's fate.
        Her shaking threatened her composure. She was Barty's mother and father, his only rock, and she must always be strong for him. She clenched her teeth and tensed her body and gradually quieted the tremors by an act of will.
        "Retinoblastoma is usually unilateral," Dr. Chan continued, "occurring in one eye. Bartholomew has tumors in both."
        The fact that Barty saw twisty spots with either eye closed had prepared Agnes for this bleak news. Yet in spite of the defense that foreknowledge provided her, the teeth of sorrow bit deep.
        "In cases like this, the malignancy is often more advanced in one eye than the other. If the size of the tumor requires it, we remove the eye containing the greatest malignancy, and we treat the remaining eye with radiation."
        I have trusted in thy mercy, she thought desperately, reaching for comfort to Psalms 13:5.
        "Frequently, symptoms appear early enough that radiation therapy in one or both eyes has a chance to succeed. Sometimes strabismus-in which one eye diverges from the other, either inward toward the nose or outward toward the temple-can be an early sign, though more often we're alerted when the patient reports problems with vision."
        "Twisty spots."
        Chan nodded. "Considering the advanced stage of Bartholomew's malignancies, he should have complained earlier than he did."
        "The symptoms come and go. Today, he can read."
        "That's unusual, too, and 1 wish the etiology of this disease, which is exceedingly well understood, gave us reason to hope based on the transience of the symptoms… but it doesn't."
        Be merciful unto me according to thy word.
        Few people will spend the greater part of their youth in school, struggling to obtain the education required for a medical specialty, unless they have a passion to heal. Franklin Chan was a healer, whose passion was the preservation of vision, and Agnes could see that his anguish, while a pale reflection of hers, was real and deeply felt.
        "The mass of these malignancies suggest they will soon spread-or have already spread-out of the eye to the orbit. There is no hope that