payment page
“Your face is dark. I can’t see what you’re saying.”
“Georgie,” I said.
“What are you saying, man? I can’t see.”
Nurse came over, and Georgie said to her, “His face is dark.”
She leaned over the patient. “How long ago did this happen, Terry?” she shouted down into his face.
Mr. Weber has entered the emergency room with a hunting knife in his eye. Ironically, he can still see, yet Georgie cannot. Georgie seems to suffer some sort of sensory processing difficulty, unable to distinguish between sight and sound. Yet, the author may be using another meaning of the word see: to understand.
Georgie's perception, both visually and mentally, is clouded by his drug use, making it difficult for him to comprehend the situation. Johnson uses Nurse’s reaction, raising her voice, as a method by which to comfort Georgie or as a way to create comic effect. When Georgie expresses his inability to “see” what Mr. Weber is saying, Nurse responds by shouting at the patient instead of adopting a more soothing tone, which would be more suitable for the circumstances.
“It’s just a miracle you didn’t end up sightless or at least dead,” she reminded him.
When the hospital discharges Mr. Weber, he is remarkably fine. Nurse calls his recovery “a miracle,” although her use of the word is ironic. In Matthew 18:9, Jesus says: “And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.” Mrs. Weber had stabbed her husband in the eye because he had been ogling their sunbathing neighbor, committing the sin of lust. Instead of losing his eye, Mr. Weber miraculously keeps it, opening the possibility that he can sin again in the future. Nurse suggests that death may be preferred to blindness when she says, “or at least dead” (emphasis added).
