I will forever marvel at the thought that all this life around us began as nothing more than an amoeba on a rock – from the iridescence of birds or the perfect tiny hands of a baby to the anatomical closeup of the human eye as I sit waiting in a clinic to learn if my sight is in peril.
My adventure began just before last Christmas. Down to the GP first thing in the morning to get him to look at an eye that had been so painful I couldn't sleep, then on to the Acute Eye Service (AES) at Greenlane Clinical Centre. You need to go right now, he said. "A problem like this can be sight-threatening." Sight is a miracle that gives you the world – a gift you can take utterly for granted. But such words will wholly get your attention. Over I went to the emergency clinic, a place I had been once before when a vine whacked me in the eye, so I had an idea what was in store.
I do wonder if a lot of what besets the world might be resolved by sitting groups of us together in a hospital waiting room for a day. The waiting areas at the AES are small and intimate enough that you find yourself starting to chat – a couple of dozen of you, all so different from one another, all showing small kindnesses and accommodation. People who suffer together have closer connections than people who are most content, Bob Dylan wrote (and Bob Dylan is always right).
