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It’s not the first scream she’s ever heard from her boys in the yard, but it’s certainly the most real. Unlike the playful screeches of her sons playing in the bushes and making mud pies out of what comes of the melted snow, this sounds urgent. Panicked.
Zianna drops her mug in her haste to get outside. She can always pick up the ceramic but her husband will surely make a fuss over the coffee stain. No matter, he’ll make a fuss regardless. The door she left wide open, slamming against the entryway as the wind picks up filling the house with a frigid draft, is another thing to add to the pile.
Her second son, her heart and soul in more ways than she’d like to confront, lay curled in on himself in the snow like some sort of wailing hedgehog. Her oldest stood over him, hands hovering as though he’d just been swatted away. He’s sobbing, fat, pouring tears, hardly believing they won’t freeze before they roll off his face. He cries for her when he sees her and tries to run, to drag her over faster, but his clunky snowboots deter him, making him trip and fall next to his brother.
“What happened?” she asks, frantic as she puts her hands to her curled son’s shoulders.
“I didn’t know,” Garroth chokes out, the sobs wracking his body made his voice clatter against itself. Young, he sounds younger, less like the responsible kid she’s raised under her husband’s demands and more like a genuine child. “I didn’t-” his thought, no doubt a repeat, devolves into a coughing fit.
Zianna leans forward into the other one’s space and in turn he sidles closer to hers. “Zuzu? Zuzu what happened?”
“He threw a rock at me! In the snow!”
“I didn’t know!” Garroth hiccups and wails.
Zianna gathers her son in her arms, ignoring the red splotches beneath where his face had been, bemoaning how little he felt. She instructs Garroth to get her keys and without being told, he shuts the door on his way back. However, the damage to their foyer is surely already done. She corrals both of them into the car and somewhere between now and the three stop lights she’d run, she gets the story out of them.
It had been a snowball fight and Garroth, having his snow fort set closest to the house, had ended up accidentally making snowballs from around the base of the house. The spots she lines with flowers and uses decorative rocks to cover the dirt. His little mittens had been far too thick for him to feel the small stones through, all of which her youngest could have vouched for from where he’d witnessed it all from the window of his bedroom.
She made it to the emergency room in record time, both for herself and she’s sure some traffic laws. As she’s handing Zane off to the nurses she panics, realizing his glasses had been left in the snow. Surely, she thinks after a moment of shocking clarity, he must be in enough distress to not inflict anyone with their curse. And in that same moment of clarity, directs herself and Garroth to take a seat in the lobby.
She takes the spare moments to send an email to her husband. Garte had always preferred it to a phone call, citing how he shouldn’t be interrupted at his ever so important workplace. A text wouldn’t do either, much too unrefined. Her email finishes itself with her automated signature of “Best regards, Zianna Ro’Meave” and she pockets her phone to focus on comforting her still trembling son.
Garte shows up later than he should have, but she’s surprised he showed up at all. He seems a little irked about it but when isn’t he? Garroth knows better than to run up and hug his father, the man as affectionate as the stone pillars that frame their estate’s front, but Garroth isn’t rather thinking at the moment. Still, Garte places a stiff hand to Garroth’s head and pats.
“Anything?”
“No, not yet.”
“Actually,” a nurse they had yet to notice pipes up aside. “There is something. However, you two should come back with me.” Garroth sniffles and the nurse’s brow furrows. “We have a children’s area for him.”
He leads Garroth to a door off to their left, one Zianna should have noticed sooner. The glimpse she catches of the inside paints the room in a warm, comforting hue. There’s puzzle toys strewn about, far too childish for Garroth, but he won’t complain.
Then they’re led back to what looks like a normal room one would go to for a check-up, paper already on the bench and all. Neither of them sit. The nurse leaves, telling them the doctor will be there in a moment. He was right, of course. Less than thirty seconds go by until the door reopens for that doctor.
Unlike the couple, the doctor takes a seat in the old rolling chair oft found at the desks of these types of rooms. “You have two options,” she heaves. “We can save his eye, but it’s going to take a hell of a recovery. Or we can just take it out entirely. The easier route, but the one that most people don’t like to hear.”
Remove it?
Her first feeling is a wash of glee. Her son could be free of this curse that they share. The second feeling is inadequacy. It’s only the one eye, he’d still be afflicted. The third feeling is guilt. How could she possibly want this mutilation?
She steals a glance to her husband. He is steely as ever. She can’t make out what he could possibly be thinking. For despite being the one who wears the cover, she often feels Garte wears one too. She almost misses when he turns to meet her shielded stare.
He turns back to the nurse. “If it’s easier.”
Zianna agrees, regretting how she didn’t even bite her tongue.
Garroth doesn’t stay in that play room. Instead, as they wheel Zane to surgery, they get taken to a different lobby. This one is set up for a longer stay with comfier chairs, another playroom, and fully stocked vending machines. Zianna crouches down to his level to point at all the snacks with him, helping him to decide on a pack of ultra processed cookies. From there, he sits beside her, munching away.
Garte had, of course, brought his work laptop with him. He sits opposite to them, tapping away on his important little keys. If she listened close enough she could pretend like it was the typewriter in her father’s study as they wrote poems together for her mother. If she listened closer, she could hear the clinking sound their wedding rings made when they clasped hand over hand and spun each other around dancing in the kitchen of her childhood home. She sometimes wonders what her sons hear when that laptop comes around.
The first hour she spends staring down into that tiled floor. It had been freshly waxed, no doubt white and pristine. Her glasses tinted it a brown sludge-like color instead. She could remove them now, look at everything as they should be without that tint, but she won’t. She can’t, really. Irene knows she’s distressed enough to nullify the curse but somewhere in the closest corners of her mind, she fears she isn’t distressed at all.
Garroth is antsy beside her, of course he is. Garte deems him a distraction and sends him to the playroom. He doesn’t argue.
The second hour is marked by a sigh, a slamming of the laptop lid, and a gruff, “I have to make a phone call,” making Garroth’s banishment to the playroom seem so unnecessary. She hums an affirmative anyway, watching her husband’s reflection on the tile as he sees himself out. Soon after the door to the playroom creaks open. Zianna looks up to catch Garroth’s eyes, afflicted but not in the way she is. Not in the way Zane is. Vylad, she now realizes had been left at home in her haste, is free as well.
She shakes her head, gently, and Garroth retreats, shutting the door equally so.