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MASON OPTOMETRY
Date: 12/12/04
Patient Record: #14844
Visit Type: Remote Screening
Session ID: TV-19UB15
Intake Status: In Progress
Test 4 of 5
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2.0 M
In all my years working for Dr. Ronny Mason (fifteen and counting), I had yet to see anyone like Peter Clark.
For starters, Peter was short. Five foot three at best and could certainly be shorter than that. Poor guy had to weigh less than my sweet little granddaughter Trinity, which would peg him under eighty-five pounds. But it was his eyes that disturbed me the most. They were glassy. Fake. Barely there. Eyes that looked disengaged the second he started a conversation.
Fortunately for Peter, eyes were our specialty.
I’ll never forget the first time he came in. I saw him through the glass of the door before he even stepped foot inside. His lips had been moving fast, but as soon as he saw me he stopped talking, and those vacant eyes darted far away from me. That was the first odd part of my experience with him—had he been talking to himself?
1.5 M
“Hi! Welcome to Dr. Mason’s.” I beamed up at him from behind the desk.
Peter looked down at me and cocked his head slightly, as if he were one of those tiny dogs my sister Annie and her grandkids had.
“Hi,” he said, hesitant and lifeless.
“Do you have an appointment?” I asked.
“Yes. It is for three.”
“Good. What is your name and email?”
“Peter Clark. pclark2016@gmail.com.”
“Thank you Peter. Please take a seat in the reception area, and I will let you know when we can get you all situated.” After about a fifteen-minute or so wait, I called his name. Peter stood up and dazedly walked over to me.
“Okay, Peter…I am going to run a little test ahead of your appointment with Dr. Mason with our autorefractor. The autorefractor is used to measure the refractive error of your eyes. That’s just a fancy way of saying how light is reflected through your eyes. I’m going to put an image up in the autorefractor and have you look at it with each eye. All you need to do is focus on the image, and the machine will move the picture in and out of focus in order to get a proper reading. Sound good?”
“Yes.”
1.25 M
Peter lowered his chin onto the rest and looked into autorefractor.
“Wow!”
I jumped. This was the first moment since I’d met him that his voice had any inflection whatsoever.
“Wow!” he repeated, pressing his eye deeper into the viewer. “What picture is that?”
“What picture? Umm…it’s a farm.”
“I know it’s a farm!” he scoffed, not looking up from the machine. “What picture exactly though? It’s a beautiful picture…I want the name.”
“Um…”
That struck me as very strange. No patient in all my years with Dr. Mason had ever requested the name of the silly farm picture inside the autorefractor. It was just a farm.
“I don’t think it has a name. There are these pictures everywhere. Some are hot air balloons, some are pinwheels, and some places have this farm picture. Do you live on a farm, Peter?”
He ignored me, switching to his left eye now to look at the farm.
“Wow. I…I really like this picture, miss.”
“It’s—it’s a good picture.” I smiled. “But you got to focus on the middle, right on the barn, so I can get a good reading real quick.”
“But…but there is so much to look at. Look at all that green.”
He was pressing his face so hard into the lens I felt an immediate urge to grab his shoulders and pull him back. It looked like it had to hurt. For a second I even reached out to tap him on the shoulder, but I hesitated.
“Peter…um…hah…can you focus on the middle part for just a second?”
“I think I see someone!”
Disclaimer: This online experience is a work of fiction and is not a medical device, diagnostic tool, or source of medical advice.