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Nick Wilde had heard all the poetic claims that the eyes were the windows to the soul. He’d even used some as pick-up lines in years gone by.
Right now, he felt his own eyes could be likened to the kind of draughty single panes that rattled on a storm ravaged hut, whilst someone, lost in the wilderness, sat huddled inside desperately trying to make fire to keep warm.
He tried to scan through the on-screen report again, but gave up after the first few lines.
It was another delegated report he needed to process, a simple stop and search that had ended in an intent to supply. Short and concise, but he couldn’t even look at it now without feeling queasy.
His head was buzzing numbly. He’d cut down on coffee on Judy’s advice, and it had helped a little, but the headache was still there, like a splinter he couldn’t work free, developing a keening sharpness in his temple that threatened to cleave him in two.
He rolled the card he’d picked up at the Mammal Resources desk in his paw, over and over.
Closing his red-rimmed eyes for a moment, he relished the cooling, tumbling darkness, hoping the report would complete itself somehow, to save him from having to look at that screen any longer.
He opened them again with pained sigh to find the cursor still there, still blinking.
Running a pad gently over the laminated surface, he turned the card on its edge and tapped it on the desk surface.
He reached for his phone and dialled the number on the card.
* * *
Dr. Laurel Glazier, read the nameplate on the consultation room.
Nick couldn’t quite make out the many lettered qualifications that ran below, almost the full length of the name itself.
Glazier, an otter, pulled a cord that slid the busy plate across. She leant and pushed the door closed behind her. Padding over, she glanced down Nick’s medical file.
“So, can you tell me how long have you been having these headaches?” Glazier asked.
“Daily, I would say.”
“Okay,” noted the otter with a hint of concern, whiskers twitching.
“Oh, wait. Does that include the ones caused by the mammals I work with, or just the ones caused by work?” Nick’s response caused her to flick her eyes up disapprovingly. “I jest, of course,” he added, quickly.
“Mr Wilde. This isn’t a laughing matter.” Glazier gave Nick a withering look. Scolded, he rubbed a paw up over the back of his head, his lazy grin closing down to a concerned pinch.
“No. Sure. The headaches, well, it’s just when I have to do any close work for long periods. Desk work, computers, that kind of thing.”
“Any common triggers? Food, or drink?”
“No, nothing unusual there.”
“Any lights or flashes?”
“No.”
“I’m fine otherwise,” he added, with a sigh.
“Okay. It sounds like it might be eye strain, but I’ll take a look to rule anything else out.”
Nick sat back on the creaking padded seat while the optometrist worked around him. She slid her step-stool closer and, climbing up, moved to cover Nick’s left eye with a small paddle.
“What’s the last line you can read, please?”
Nick gazed at the letter panel in the mirror ahead of him and read the third to last line back for her.
Not great, but at least it was still below the thick red demarcation line that was the ZPD sight requirement across all mammals.
“Excellent. And again?”
His right eye covered this time, he read the same line back.
“Good,” she smiled, jotting down an observation in the little pad in her paw. Nick couldn’t help but try and glance at what she’d written but the numbers and shorthand meant nothing to him.
“Okay, this next part we have to do in the dark.”
Glazier pressed a paw pad to the little controller that was held at her waist. The lights quickly dimmed to a twilight.
It didn’t look much different to Nick. His pupils had flared open instinctively in time with the dropping light levels to scoop up what little there was remaining in the room. All the colour had bled away now to shades of grey, but he could make out the contents of the room in perfect clarity.
Glazier took out a device about the size of a small pen, a point of light dimly glowing at the end.
“Now, if you could look over my shoulder.”
“Let me know if it’s too bright,” she added sympathetically.
Glazier leant in close, close enough for Nick to pick up her scent. It was oddly sweet, not the musty dampness he’d expected. A practiced part of her bedside manner, no doubt.
The dim little light felt far too close and he fought the urge to blink it away, each movement bringing into sharp relief a haphazard spider-web of shadows across his vision. He gripped at the paw-rests.
Usually Nick would find it difficult to bear having someone that close to him, that intense.
But, during the induction medical he went through at the Academy, the duty optometrist — a somewhat twitchy squirrel — had craned and swung around and pressed right in close to his face to get a good view of his eyes. Nick had no idea why, but he had found the whole thing hilarious and burst out laughing.
Even now he had twist and turn his muzzle as a faint smile began to spread, cracking across his lips.
“Okay. Lets try something,”
Oh, blessed relief. Glazier stepped back down to the floor. The lights began to brighten back up and as he blinked to acclimatise, she swung a large apparatus across to him, and prompted him to lean forward and look through the two dark eyeholes she had swung in to suit his features.
The letter chart swam into focus.
Something went click-click.
“How about that? What’s the last line you can read now?”
Nick blinked again. There was something different, for sure. There was a strange greying tint, barely perceptible, that drew out the contrast between the blacks and whites of the chart. The letters were more defined now. He could make out the last line of letters now in relative clarity, and read them out.
“Good, Mr Wilde. Well, you don’t actually need corrective lenses, per-se, your eyesight itself is perfectly fine, about average for nocturnal predators your age.”
“But, predators do tend to naturally have trouble with detail and contrast in the daylight. Have you done much close work in the past?”
“No, I mostly worked outdoors,” he admitted with a cough and a raised eyebrow.
“Hm. Well, if you’re not used to close work, or extended screen use, that’s most likely what’s causing the eye strain and therefore the headaches.” Glazier began typing something on a small laptop to she kept to one side of her examination equipment.
“What you need to do is…” she began, her claws making little muffled clicks on the rubberised keys.
“…Go get a box of over-the-counter painkillers…”
Beneath her desk, a quiet printer whispered into life. She plucked the slip up and signed it, her pen making a flowing, cursive sound across the paper.
“And a pair. Of. These.” She punctuated the words with a flourish of her pen and handed the completed slip across to Nick.
* * *
“Nice, Slick,” Judy said, brightly. Nick peered at the rabbit leaning her head on one paw next to him.
She’d been stuck filing statistical reports all morning. Narcotics were looking at arrests made over the last quarter amid concerns that Night Howler was beginning to make it out onto the streets in increasing quantities.
It made for worrying, terse analysis, not least given her connection to the original Night Howler case, and she’d been glad Nick had turned up to distract her from it.
“The colour suits you,” she observed. “Brings out the green. How’s your head now?”
“I’ve still got a bit of a rhino behind the eyes, but the optometrist said these should help.” He tapped a claw on the bridge of the spectacles resting across his snout, pupils bright behind the smoky yellow lenses. “And of course, I’ve got the big guns, just in case.”
He shook the box of painkillers with a hollow rattle. They’d cost more than he’d have thought, but as long as they blunted the headaches before they became too sharp to bear, Nick didn’t care.
“So, does that mean no more of those old-school mirrored things you always wear?” She began to idly flick through the pages of a magazine someone had left at the post Nick was now about to occupy.
“Ha, as if, Carrots. These,” he tapped one of the arms holding the spectacles to his ears ”Are for the office work. They are for all other times.”
“Well, there’ll be no dozing through meetings in those, at least,” Judy noted with a sly smile, indicating his new spectacles with a tiny claw.
“Oh, I’ll find a way,” he nodded.
Nick drew up a seat and began what was becoming his little ritual to prepare himself for the shift to come. He placed his coffee on the desk, a little cardboard cup he'd picked up as take-out this time, rather than the usual tall mug filled with syrupy office blackness. “Wylde”, someone had written on the side in a fat marker.
Taking a deep breath and tapped the power key on the keyboard in front of him.
Whilst the computer began starting up, he stared at the little progress bar and ZPD logo, now so much clearer than it had ever been.
His ear quivered, and his much sharper eyes darted quickly back to his partner, still leaning on her paw, leafing through the magazine beside him.
“Fluff. What? Haven’t you got some leads to follow up or something? I hear they still haven’t caught the counterfeiter who keeps filling the coffee machine in the break room with a substance that looks like coffee,” he paused to sip from his takeout cup.
“But most definitely doesn’t taste like it.” He smiled, savouring the taste of the better brew.
She hadn’t moved. He tried to shoo her away with a paw. She wrinkled her nose, flinching back in her seat a little.
“Oh.” Judy smiled wistfully. “I was just thinking. Your eyes. It’s just nice to see them, once in a while.”
“Windows to the soul, you know,” she added, closing the magazine and moving it aside.
Nick’s eyes narrowed slightly. She held his gaze for a short, short moment before beginning to hum again, and turn to return to her reports.
With a slightly crooked smile, he turned to his.