Never the Way We Were

The year I lost my sight at five, I found Stellan Hale half-frozen in the snow.

I told my mother I wanted a companion to guide me and begged her to take him in. Then I leaned close to his ear and whispered a promise.

"I don't need you to be my guide dog. Just stay alive. Go wherever you want to go."

Still, Stellan stayed. After Mom remarried, he became the only person I had left. He watched over me as I grew up, serving as my eyes and my cane year after year. He even gave up his extraordinary talent for painting to study medicine, all for the sake of my sight.

Even after he became one of the most brilliant ophthalmologists in the country, I still could not see.

On my 25th birthday, someone he had once been close to won a prestigious art prize. He shut himself inside the study, and I could hear pages rustling behind the door.

He told me, his voice carefully even, that he was writing my birthday wishes.

I smiled and moved toward him, wanting to kiss his cheek, when words suddenly scrolled across the darkness behind my eyes.

"Wake up, you blind little fool. He's tearing every one of his paintings to shreds. On the back of each one, he even wrote 'Go to hell, Elara Langley.'

"Stop walking. There's a wire on the floor ahead of you. One more step and you're dead."

I froze. Then I smiled again and kept walking.

"Stel, Stel, every wish you made for me is going to come true."

I walked carefully, terrified of missing the wire.

Stellan Hale called out suddenly. "Elara!"

His voice cracked, but he stopped himself before he could say anything more.

I pretended I had not noticed, keeping my tone bright. "Is your head hurting again? Come here, let me rub it for you."

Words flashed frantically across my vision. "Stop walking, you blind little fool! The wire is right in front of you!"

That was good. Right in front of me, so I would not miss it.

Yet just as my foot was about to come down, the doorbell rang. A chair scraped violently across the floor behind me.

"Watch out!"

Something slammed into me with full force and knocked me to the ground. My skull buzzed from the impact, and for a long moment the pain overwhelmed everything else.

Stellan's hands were trembling as he pulled me upright. "Elara, I'm sorry... There was a wire."

The words erupted in fury. "You piece of sh*t, Stellan Hale! You're the one trying to kill her, and now you're shaking? Now you feel bad?"

My chest ached. He was such an idiot. Why did he go soft now?

I pushed through the pain and gave him a reassuring smile. "Even if there was a wire, it's my own fault for not seeing it. I'm fine, really. It doesn't hurt at all."

The words went wild again. "She cracked her