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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 6 of 8
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2.0 M
The moments at my job aren’t as flashy as the moments on the Internet because some people only have minor vision problems. But even then, seeing someone right in front of me put on those glasses for the very first time and gasp in amazement at the miracle of Dr. Ronny Mason’s work is breathtaking. It recharges me. It gives me the will to continue the work. My goal every day is to work as hard as possible so that everyone who comes through those doors will have the eyesight they have always dreamed of. Everyone deserves that moment. And until my dying day, I’d work to give them that moment.
And I felt this for Peter, just like everyone.
But Peter wasn’t like everyone.
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.”
He gave me a faint nod in response and cowered over to the waiting area. This day was a Friday—I remember that detail because Fridays were usually the slowest day of the week, and Peter was pretty much alone in the waiting room besides our tech Miranda and patient Amy Kerns (such a sweet lady) and her infant son Patrick.
1.25 M
The waiting room was essentially five or six old wooden chairs side by side on a single long mat of carpet extending across the wood floor. The carpet stopped right in the center of the room, and it was surrounded on all sides by three walls, each decorated with rows and rows of glasses frames. Canvas prints of attractive white men and women hung on each wall, each model staring off into space, trying to appear intellectual, with cutesy optometry text underneath like “Eye see you need a new pair” or “You’re all eye need.” There was a door in the middle wall, ten feet from the carpet, which led to the three offices we techs and Dr. Mason alternated using. If you turned around from those offices and made your way back through the empty middle of the waiting area, passed the glasses shelves on the right and left, and passed the wooden chairs and three-month-old TIME and Traditional Home magazines that adorned the room, you’d find my desk.
It was at this desk I realized something was off about Peter.
Disclaimer: This online experience is a work of fiction and is not a medical device, diagnostic tool, or source of medical advice.