Sisters

Chapter 12

The psychiatrist saw Annie at the hospital as promised on Wednesday afternoon, and she called Sabrina after she'd seen her. She couldn't disclose any of what Annie had said to her, due to the confidentiality laws, but she told Sabrina that she was satisfied with their meeting, and was planning to see her again, once more in the hospital before her discharge, and hopefully on a regular basis once she moved to New York. Annie still hadn't told Sabrina that she was moving into the house, but it sounded as though she would. And Sabrina had signed the lease the night before.

The psychiatrist reassured Sabrina that her sister was not suicidal, or even unusually depressed. She was going through all the emotions that were to be expected after that kind of trauma, and losing both her mother and her sight as a result. It was a major double blow. She suggested, as the surgeon had, that Annie needed to join a rehab program that worked with people who had lost their sight, but she said the doctor would make those referrals before Annie came home. In the meantime, she was satisfied with what she saw. For Sabrina, that was good enough.

The meeting had been particularly interesting for Annie, who had been furious when the psychiatrist walked into the room and told her who she was. She told her that Sabrina had called her, and at first Annie had refused to talk. She said she didn't want any help, and she was doing fine on her own.

“I'm sure you are,” the psychiatrist, Ellen Steinberg, assured her. “But it never hurts to talk.” Annie eventually exploded and said that the doctor had no idea what she was going through, and she didn't know what it was like to be blind. “Actually, I do,” Dr. Steinberg said calmly. “I happen to be blind myself. I have been since I was in a car accident much like yours, right after I finished medical school. That was twenty-four years ago. I had some very tough years afterward. I decided to give up medicine. I had trained as a surgeon, and so as far as I was concerned, my career was pretty well shot. There aren't a lot of calls for blind surgeons.” Annie was fascinated as she listened. “And I was absolutely sure that there was no other specialty I was interested in. I thought psychiatry was for the birds. What did I want to do with a bunch of lunatics and neurotics? I wanted to be a heart surgeon, which was pretty prestigious stuff. So, I sat home and pouted for a couple of years, and drove my family insane. I started to drink a lot, which complicated everything. My brother finally told me what a horse's ass I was, how everyone was sick of my feeling sorry for myself, and why didn't I get a job and stop punishing everyone for how miserable I was.

“I couldn't do anything. I had no training for any job except medicine. I got a job in an ambulance company, answering the phones. And as some kind of crazy fluke, I got another job on a suicide hotline, and I actually liked it, which led me to psychiatry. I went back to school, and studied psychiatry. And the rest is history, as they say. I met my husband when I went back to school, he was a young professor at the medical school. We got married and have four kids. I don't usually talk about myself this way. I'm here to talk about you, Annie, not about myself. But I thought it might help you to hear about what happened to me. I was hit by a drunk driver in the accident. He went to jail for two years. And I was blind for the rest of my life. But actually, if you want to look at it that way, maybe it was a blessing. I wound up in a specialty I love, married to a wonderful man, and have four pretty terrific kids.”

“How can you do all that, being blind?” Annie was fascinated by her. But she couldn't imagine any of that happening to her. Not the good stuff anyway. She felt cursed.

“You learn. You develop other skills. You fall on your face just like everyone else does, blind or not. You make mistakes. You try harder than everyone else at times. You have disappointments and heartbreaks just like people who have their sight. It's not so different in the end. You do what you have to do. Why don't we talk about you for a while? How are you feeling right now?”

“Scared,” Annie said in a little girl's voice, as tears started to flow. “I miss my mom. I keep thinking I should have tried to save her. It's my fault that she died. I couldn't grab the steering wheel. I didn't have time.” She looked anguished as she spoke.

“It doesn't sound like you could have. I read the accident report before I came here.”

“How did you read it?” Annie asked her.

“I had it translated into braille. That's pretty easy to do. I type all my reports in braille, and my secretary retypes them for sighted people.”

They talked for over an hour, and then Dr. Steinberg left her. She said that if Annie wanted her to, she would come back again.

“I'd like that,” Annie said softly. She felt like a child again, at everyone's mercy. She had told her too about Sabrina and Candy wanting her to move into a house with them.

“What do you want to do?” Dr. Steinberg had asked her, and Annie had said she didn't want to be a burden to them.

“Then don't be. Go to school. Learn what you need to know so that you can be independent.”

“I guess that's what you did.”

“Yes, but I wasted a lot of time feeling sorry for myself before that. You don't need to do that, Annie. It sounds like you have a good family. I did too. But I punished everyone for a long time. I hope you don't do that. It's a waste of time. You'll enjoy your life again, if you do what you need to. You can do almost everything that sighted people can do, except maybe watch movies. But there are so many things you can do.”

“I can't paint anymore,” Annie said sadly. “That's all I ever wanted to do.”

“I couldn't be a surgeon either. But I like psychiatry a lot better. There are probably a lot of artistic things you can do. Talents you don't even know you have. The secret is to find them. To accept the challenge. You've been given a chance here, to be more than you were before. And something tells me that you're going to do it. You have a whole life ahead of you, and new doors to open, if you're willing to try.” Annie didn't answer for a long time, as she thought about it. And a few minutes later Dr. Steinberg got up to leave. Annie could hear her cane sweeping the floor.

“You don't have a dog?”

“I'm allergic to them.”

“I hate dogs.”

“Then don't have one. Annie, you've got most of the choices you had before, and more. See you next week.” Annie nodded, and heard the door close. She lay back in her bed, thinking of everything Dr. Steinberg had said.