A sad man walks past my house. His hat covers his ears and his scarf covers his mouth, but I can see something of his eyes and I recognize the curve of his spine. I don’t need to see the tears to know that he’s crying.

“Get your shoes on,” Marnie says to me. “You’re going to be late to your appointment.”

In this car, the radio doesn’t work right. Set the stations if you like, but they’ll drift the next day. When I listened to the radio on Sunday, they were playing “The Magnificent Seven” by the Clash. Today, I swear it’s Richard Marx. Richard Marx or Rick Astley. This can’t be the same station.

“When you’re done, wait,” Marnie says to me. “I’m going to be at the store, but I won’t be long.”

I nod and I shut the door and I watch her drive away.

All the people at the eye doctor’s are kind, except for the people that aren’t the eye doctor. She lets me wear my own glasses when I read the charts and she lets me cover my right eye with my right hand and my left eye with my right hand. She puts orange drops in my eyes and she shows me blue light. She shows me pictures of my eyes that look like spiders. She tells me that my eyes are no worse than they were the last time, but I don’t remember if they were good or bad before.

After I make my appointments for my next visit and the tests that the doctor would like me to take, I return to the waiting room. There are no magazines so I content myself with an empty chair. The music that they’re playing is Rick Astley. Rick Astley or Richard Marx.

“Hey,” the receptionist says. “You can’t wait here.”

“This is the waiting room,” I say.

“The waiting room is for people waiting to have their appointment. Your appointment is over.”

“I’m waiting to get picked up,” I say.

“Wait somewhere else,” she says.

Outside, it is cold. Colder than I remember. But I do have my cell phone and Marnie is quick to pick up.

“I’m in breakfast cereal,” she says.

“I’m all done,” I say.

“Read a magazine,” she says. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. But it won’t be soon.”

She hangs up. It’s cold outside. Colder than I remember.

From here to home is three miles. Maybe less. Walking is less than waiting. My pupils are dilated from the check-up, but I can’t find any cheap sunglasses in my coat pocket. It doesn’t matter. I start walking home.

Walking a slow twenty-minute mile, and I can be home in an hour. If I’m home, I can make myself a hot chocolate. If I’m home, I can put some smoked salmon on a salad. If I’m home, I can wash the clinic from my body in the hottest shower that my skin will tolerate.

Behind me, in the waiting room, an old woman coughs. They have taken away all the magazines and half the chairs, but there is a seat next to the old woman and in this chair sits an old man who tries not to weep, but fails in his efforts not to weep.

Outside, a light snow starts to fall. Wet flakes that melt hastily upon contact with my cheek, or my hands, which are bare. Despite the snow, the overcast sky, enough sunlight struggles through the clouds, like a fowl at birth. Enough sun to assail my dilated eyes. Enough sun to squint. But being in the chair, that was hard. That taxed me. All my muscles clenched in the chair. If I sat down to wait for Marnie, I know that I would fall asleep in the waiting room. I know that I would dream, and I would think about our aunt Norah. In the dream, I would cast about for words of apology, the words that I would want her to submit to me, and to my sister Marnie. I’m sure I would talk in my sleep, sitting there in the waiting room, just as Manrie tells me that I often snooze at home, sitting in the chair that used to belong to my mother. I might, in the waiting room, snore with anguished chokes.

I don’t think they want this, the people who work in the clinic. I don’t think they want this, the old coughing woman with the old man who pretends not to cry. And I don’t think I wish to dream in front of them, so instead, I start walking home.

This road, ordinarily so busy, is quiet today. Most everyone is where they belong or are where they are going. I am one of those exceptions, and so are the few drivers who skirt close to my path when I forge one of the rotaries. They honk, which alarms me. At least once, the horn from one car nearly compels me to leap into the arc of another. If anything, all the adrenaline causes my eyes to dilate further, deepening my blindness.

Next to this road is a nature preserve, thick with trees and veined with trails. I would abandon the sidewalk for the relative safety of the woods, but I worry that I might stumble over a root and that the more rambling way will just delay my return to home.

This is what I’m thinking of, about a mile from the clinic, when I come across a tree stump, with probably a foot and a half radius, smooth to the touch and freshly cut so that no rot has invaded. Upon this stump sits a pair of sunglasses with cardboard frames, like the 3D glasses you might discover at the bottom of a cereal box, but the lenses aren’t the same cheap cellophane. They aren’t plastic either, and they are not glass. They have been carefully prepared it seems, despite their flimsy housing.

For a moment, I sit. I think about Marnie, who cares for me. I wish I could do more to take care of her. When I rest my eyes, I see her smile. Even with my eyes closed, I can feel the cold of the afternoon. With my eyes closed, I can’t hear the sound of her laugh. Nobody, it seems, laughs that much anymore.

When I open my eyes, I am wearing the glasses, even though I don’t remember putting them on. But I do feel better. Right away, I feel better. There’s a blue tint that has settled over the world and the light from the sun, obscured as it is by the clouds and the snowfall, that light doesn’t have the same capacity to cause me hurt.

I turn my head to the woods, wondering if the canopy of trees that have not yet surrendered their leaves would darken the preserve, making it harder for me to piece my way home. But it isn’t at all this way. All the branches and all the stones, because of these glasses, they seem lit from within. The hazards on the trail, the fallen limbs or the holes concealed with twigs have gathered flecks of orange, warnings to my nervous system. There’s not a shred of additional caution that I think I need to bring with me into the woods. Only, I think, that I should first send a text message to Marnie, letting her know of my change of plans. This I do, carefully selecting my words.

Two miles, and probably farther now that I’ve opted for this detour. To pass the time, I sing songs, in a low muted voice so as to not compete with the birds. Marnie frequently makes fun of me because of all the songs I do not know, and it’s true. Maybe as kids, I just never listened to the radio as much as she did. Not that it matters much to me right now. Not that it matters to the trees that sway to my tempos or the birds, that halt their melodies for mine. The ice crunches beneath my feet. Someone walked along here after the last soaking rain. Their footprints have been frozen in place, but I keep going.

When I look at the trees in this glade, when I look through my 3D shades, the trees look like antique jukeboxes, full of light and eager to surrender their songs.

The trail turns right, and then left, and then right once again. As I follow its twists, the sounds of the highway fade. There’s a hawk watching over me. In one of its talons, it holds a mouse, still twitching, refusing to admit to its mortality.

Through the 3D glasses, I can see past the feathers of the hawk. I can see deeply into its skull. I can hear the internal congress of its brain.

“That mouse,” I say. “You don’t think you want to leave it alone?”

The hawk’s eyes turn to meet mine. Its beak is marble and black. It clicks like a camera, its aperture opening and closing, just as the hawk’s beak closes and opens. “I can’t,” the hawk tells me. “This little guy is my dinner.”

“Don’t listen to him,” gulps the mouse. His gray fur soaks from the blood escaping from a wound opened above his right eye by the hawk’s talon.

“Hush,” the hawk says. “You don’t know what’s best for you.”

“You’re going to eat him,” I say.

“Yes,” says the hawk.

“That doesn’t sound too good for him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the hawk says. “I’m hungry.”

“I had so much to live for,” the mouse appeals.

“I doubt it,” the hawk says, disdainfully.

“I was going to paint. I was going to be a great artist.” As he says this, his tiny fingers wriggle, as if in search of a brush.

“I’ve never heard of such nonsense.” The hawk rolls its eyes. The feathers closest to its mouth are yellow. The slick feathers that crown his head are red. “You’re going to be delicious. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“It wouldn’t be enough for me,” I say. “Look at this scared little mouse. I’d love to see one of his pictures.”

“Her pictures,” the hawk says, smiling. “This here is a titmouse.”

“I mostly do landscapes,” says the mouse. “Being cooped up in a stuffy studio? Not for me.” She wriggles her whiskers. “Even worse, portraits. Can you imagine? Can you imagine having to beautify some brooding child holding a split pear only because you depend upon the child’s father for money? For survival?”

“Sounds terrible,” I say.

“Sounds like fo-tee-bo, you ask me,” the hawk says. “Look at the two of you. She’s dying to waste your day with her petty complaints, and you’re dying to listen.”

“I’m not dying,” the mouse says.

“Yes,” says the hawk, “you are.” He flaps his wings for an impressive expanse and lifts up to a higher branch, one I couldn’t reach even if I stretched my arms and stood up on my toes.

“You might as well keep going,” the hawk says. “I won’t bother you. If anything, I’ve got my eye on you. If anything, you’re a lot like me.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not.”

“Yes,” says the mouse. “You are.”

The hawk closes its talon that much more tightly, but not so constricting that the mouse can’t breathe. Not so smothering that she can’t scream.

“Please let me go,” she pleads with the hawk. “Please help me,” she pleads with me. Until the hawk’s grip becomes such that nothing escapes but inchoate yelps and screeches.

There is a stone on the ground. Through my 3D glasses, it looks blue and wet, even though to my touch, it feels dry. The hawk is so much above me, but with these glasses, I feel that I can aim for its head. I hold the stone while I watch the mouse struggle. The hawk looks at me and it narrows its eyes. It shakes his head no. I let the stone drop into the snow, which hisses with its arrival. A trace of steam emits from the stone. I keep walking, pretending that I never spoke to this hawk to begin with, pretending that I don’t hear the last spasms of the mouse, even though they follow me through the woods.

When I emerge, the skies are even brighter than before. The lenses in my glasses might as well be clear. I stumble my way forehead, not even understanding how I found the crosswalk in the rotary, or how the crosswalk found me.

A yellow car, not a taxi, burns to a stop rather than cut through me. The driver honks and discontent with honking alone, she rolls down her window. “You fool idiot fool,” she hollers at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Walking home,” I say, but I don’t think she’s listening to me.

“Get your idiot fool ass out of the road before someone hits you for real.” I don’t quite believe that nobody has even caused someone to stop their car so suddenly but clearly, she believes this to be the case.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

“I have whole milk in the car,” she yells at me. “Do you hear me? Whole. Milk. I am not about to have it sour on account of your ignorance.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Bad enough, the money, the countries. All the riots. All the hate. And here you are, too blind to avoid the trouble that’s coming in the road.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. And I would say more, but another car, this one smaller and even more yellow, rear-ends the first car, sending it forward into my open palms. If you have ever seen Superman successfully catch a car with his bare hands, this was the opposite of that. The impact pushed me backward, sent me sprawling into the road. My luck was that no other cars took the opportunity to approach.

Looking up at the sky, I could see clouds taking shape. One looked like a whisper. Another looked like a beckoning finger. The sun gave some notice, its little knives carving up the sky. I realized that it wasn’t quite so uncomfortable to see. I turned my head to see my glasses beneath the tire of the first car.

Its driver had stopped her cursing at me. Her airbag hadn’t deployed, but she did manage to drive her nose into the steering column. As she rubbed it, sticky blood coagulated at his base rather than running down to her chin, she muttered to herself, “Not to mention the eggs. They’re all brown to begin with. They best not be bruised on top.”

For a scarce moment, I thought that the driver of the second car was Marnie. She had Marnie’s pencil-thin mouth and even narrower eyes. Like Marnie, she kept her glasses perched atop her head and the collision hadn’t cast them off. But where Marnie’s skin was almost honey, this driver was marshmallow white. Her cell phone was at her ear, I think that’s where it was when she hit us. “I got distracted,” she told me, pleadingly. “I had my phone because I was going to make a call. I got distracted because I needed somebody.”

I took the phone from her. She had her window down to apologize to me and so I reached in and took what I needed.

What I need.

My first call is to the police. Aside from what may be a broken nose, nobody is hurt, I tell them, although there is a fair share of broken glass on the road.

This second driver, her name is Aimee, and she needs me to help her breathe. She needs me to tell her that it’s okay to be calm. The first driver never tells me her name. She gets out of her car and inspects the back bumper, where there is no damage to be seen. “I am not sticking around,” she says. “I have whole milk and not even a scratch. You can talk to the cops. You can pay the insurance but I am going home.”

With Aimee’s phone, I make a second call, to Marnie. To home. She picks up, which is something of a surprise. I would have thought that she would have been looking for me. I would have guessed that she would be nervous. Instead, she shushes me, as you would if you were a bird watcher observing a very rare bird. “There’s this man outside,” she tells me. “He’s very old and he just keeps walking back and forth. I think he’s crying.”

“I know,” I say. “I saw him before.”

“Anyway, why are you calling? Are you ready for me to come get you?”

“No,” I say. “It’s a nice day. I think that I’ll just walk home.”

– Matthew Chapuran

Author’s Note: Try as I might, I struggle outlining stories. I find the most enjoyment working with a pen that any ink other than black and white pages to fill. This story did start with an eye exam and the removal of excess chairs from waiting rooms (and just about everywhere else). My walk home was only half as long as the unnamed narrator. I happily accepted a ride from my wife.