“Blepharoplasty, my ass. Blasphemy, I call it,” Charlie Bunge snorted at Wilma, who carefully walked him up to Suburban Surgery Center’s gleaming glass entrance, then paused to put away her car keys. She pressed the automatic door opener, so Charlie could stride up to Central Reception. Obstructed vision or not, he was ticked off and in no mood for any eyelid lift.   

“Been battling traffic and slippery ice all my born days. You got no idea, young fellow,” Charlie announced to a mustachioed receptionist, ensconced behind a Sign In placard. He wore a name tag, Call me Ricardo. “Hardest part’a this place is gettin’ here, I tell ya true,” Charlie continued. “I been in lotsa storms, but nothin’ like outside last night. Drivin’ 70 miles to get here.”

Ricardo looked up from Evening Examiner’ssports page and smiled.   

“Scalpels ain’t anything. Like I say, a real struggle getting here. My motto’s arrive alive.  Shoulda seen me in my salad days. I’s drivin’ a semi in the great blizzard of 19…well… hey, honey, what year was that anyhow?”

Wilma didn’t respond, so Charlie shrugged. “What year don’t matter. In them days I plowed through the worst. A man of my own strength.”

Ricardo remained divided between the newspaper and his PC. Charlie looked from him to Wilma and searched for more words. “Too bad Wilma can’t drive better in this piddly weather,” he concluded.

Ricardo glanced out at the glittering rays melting last night’s sleet and ice. Ignoring Charlie, he turned back to the Examiner while sorting patients’ names on his PC screen. Charlie plopped down in a soft leather couch opposite Wilma. All three stayed silent until Charlie winced at flashing lights and the siren from a clinic ambulance rushing out. 

“…all my born days,” he muttered. 

“But, dear, you remember Dr. Crooner,” Wilma interrupted.  “He has a plan, he wants you …”

“Name and date of birth?” Ricardo interrupted suddenly. He pushed the newspaper aside to reach his keyboard easier. 

“…to follow it,” Wilma concluded.

“Sixty! I’m sixty!” Charlie roared.

“But the young man asked for your name and date…,” Wilma cajoled him as her patience grew thin. 

“It’s ok, you’re good to go” Ricardo stopped her. “Got what I need. Take a seat.” He intended his words for Charlie, but didn’t look his way. He nodded sympathetically at Wilma. 

Charlie sat up straight. Appalled the younger man didn’t see he was seated or act impressed by his story, he tightened his grip on the leather arm rest. 

“The other room,” Ricardo explained nodding toward a different sign with an arrow. It pointed to Pre-Op Holding Area, a long L-shaped room. Charlie got up and wandered in. The room was free of decorations but had loads of narrow metal chairs. He gazed around and gestured to Wilma. “Stay put, where you are.” She did so and chose an easy chair in the Friends & Family reception space with a view out over the grounds. She took out a darning needle and yarn. 

Charlie heaved a mighty sigh when he spotted the holding room’s widest metal seat, which only begrudgingly allowed space for his girth. All of a sudden he looked up and realized he wasn’t alone. At the far end sat a pallid middle-aged gentleman in a sport coat and tie. Holding himself rigid, he faced the point where the room formed its L. Over his left eye socket the patient bore a heavy binocular-like shield held in place with a firm strap around the back of his head. The man fluttered his good eyelid obsessively, and Charlie wondered how it was possible to blink with only one eye. The one-eyed man belonged to no particular emergency unit or any doctor in sight. He looked scared to turn his head or had instructions to avoid trying it.

Charlie squirmed in the other guy’s awkward presence and grabbed a copy of Sharpshooter’s Journal from a magazine rack. Grunting at an ad for AK-15s, he slung the mag back on its shelf. Like the one-eyed guy, Charlie stared at the bare wall instead. It featured a single protruding nail, which once must’ve supported a picture frame. Charlie imagined an idyllic view, like a painting of waterfowl taking flight or a doe and her fawn emerging from a stand of stately oaks.

***

“Mr. Bunge?” a happy voice asked.  Before him stood a thin young woman with long blonde eyelashes and a cheerful smile. Her joyous appearance breathed life into the featureless room.

Charlie felt his pulse rate slow. Or speed up. He didn’t know which, but he jerked to attention.

“Scalpel fear?” she said in a tease at his jerkiness. “No worry, I’ve seen it before.”

Her smile showed a row of straight, white teeth, which evoked his secret admiration of fluoride kids who grew up smiling broadly. The er Hernurse wore her garb so comfortably and moved with such ease he imagined her as an athlete. A sprinter for sure.

“In high school?” Charlie asked, revealing a habit of verbalizing his private thoughts.

She blushed but didn’t answer. “I’m Peggy. Your Surgery Prep nurse. Nice to meet you. This way, please.”  

She turned and led him toward another room. Along the corridor, she kept up a line of friendly chatter. How was he this sunny morning, which was soon to be afternoon? Who was his driver today? Would they ever have a real spring this year? Her manner stole away his desire to dominate conversations, but her questions relaxed him. Charlie’s calmness remained even when he saw the Surgery Prep sign and found himself in a cubicle with two chairs and an empty wardrobe. Nurse Peggy sat down before him. They exchanged more pleasantries, so he nearly smiled. That gentle mood continued until Peggy said quickly, “I have to ask, name and date of birth?”

Sounding like half question and half command, her gentle words resounded like a drill sergeant’s orders to him. Charlie hated people telling him what to do, a trait he saw she immediately picked up on. “I know, Mr. Bunge, it’s contrary to your contrariness,” she explained in a gentle voice. A calmer spell followed his flash of pique.

“I’m sixty! Sixty, for the zillionth time,” he lamented.

“Great! A mere youth, like my dad always says.” 

“10/20/60,” Charlie admitted suddenly. 

“Great. Dad’s fifty. Or will be. Someday.”

Having uttered his date of birth, Charlie relaxed again.

“Your profession?” she asked.

“Truck driver, once. Building trades, later.”

“Wonderful! I so admire folks that create.”

“I was doing that, carpentry I mean, till my accident.”

“Pardon me?”

“Fell off of a roof, couldn’t walk.”

“Never again?” she asked looking astounded.

“For a while, no. Now, yes.”

“You learned to walk again?” Peggy exclaimed. “Why you look like you could still be working on site. Building trades. Wow!”

“That’s when Wilma moved us to Barkly.”

“Tell me.”

“Me and my son. We were building a house for him. Like I built ours, Wilma’s and mine.  Me, myself, and I. All alone. A man of my own strength, know what I mean?”

Peggy listened while arranging her medical gear.

“Easy as pie. I tumbled off an 8-foot roof. Never the same again.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Now this. Eye flaps, the doc says. Peripheral vision. I’ve seen with a wide view forever.  No trouble here.”

“But Barkly.  Such a wonderful suburb.  When I get married, that’s where I wanna be.  A ways to drive, but, well, just super nice.”

“Have to tell you, I don’t drive much,” Charlie admitted. “Anymore.”

“Well, you will, I bet.  Again, for sure.”

Or never, he reminded himself.

Peggy went to the cart she’d wheeled in. She handed Charlie a gown plus a pair of blue socks, which was when he realized she knew he’d been a fool, convincing himself an eyelid lift was like a toenail trim, fifteen minutes in and out, a slam dunk. He remembered then and there he’d been warned.  Slip-ups can happen. Now here he was making small talk with a cute nurse half his age or more and holding surgery room underwear on his lap. He kept the gown but scooted the clinic socks under his chair. Better barefoot, he thought.

“You know,” Peggy said at last. “Surgery’s a place of contradictions.”

From her to him flowed a burst of empathy in this house of the sick, where everything could be taken from you in a flash. Either that or you got back what you lost so long ago.

“I have to leave you now,” Peggy explained abruptly. “I want you to remove your clothing plus any and all jewelry. Everything goes that’s not yours, know what I mean?  And put the gown on your front side. Secure it in back. We keep your street clothes. You get them later.”

Charlie stripped down. He donned the gown, but dismissed the socks from his thoughts.  He sat upright and thought about carpentry and how a careless step on a housetop landed him in a pile of soft sand. He beat fate that time, for sure, but his ophthalmologist, Miss Ala, she who must be from Turkey or Iran, she never gave in.

“Either blepharoplasty or I’ll order an X on your driver’s license,” Miss Ala had warned him. “You have ptosis, too.” 

Feeling like an abandoned waif and remembering the lady doc’s concern for him, Charlie waited in Surgery Prep until Peggy knocked, softly. 

“I enjoyed meeting you,” she told Charlie while gathering up his clothing and wrist watch. “One day I’ll make it to Barkly.”

***

Before leaving, Peggy introduced Belle, her follow-up. What Peggy had the new nurse lacked and vice versa. Belle was firm and middle-aged with light brown hair, just turning gray, but protocol-focused. She handed Charlie a printout saying Pre-Op Instructions, but didn’t go through it with him. “Name and date of birth?” she demanded and wrote the info almost as fast as Charlie spat it out, as he felt forced to do. 

“So you’re sixty, Mr. Bunge?”

Charlie grumbled, “Yes.”  Given no encouragement to say any more, he looked at the paraphernalia Belle carried. She looked at him in return. 

“You’ve changed into your operating gown?”

He touched his gown sleeve to show her he was wearing it, as they both plainly saw. She wrote a note in her ledger.

“Last food and drink?”

“Yesterday noon.”

“So long ago?”

“Not hungry,” he said with a contrary nod. 

He showed his wrists so she could fasten a band around one. 

“Your ID bracelet. You hear? Now don’t remove it till after.”

“After what?” he asked.

 “Out of surgery. You’ll know. Or we’ll tell you.”

Thinking her work was done, Charlie relaxed and congratulated himself, but Belle rolled out a stand with tubes running from it. She lifted his left arm. 

“Make a fist.” 

He did it and saw his forearm muscles bulge. 

She tested a vein, then jabbed a needle in it. 

“So there, your IV.” 

He studied his arm and the cords and plastic tubes running to an apparatus.

Belle clipped a plastic device on the index finger of his free hand. Whether to test his pulse or BP he wasn’t sure. It brought a quick response from her. 

“Wow, that’s high!” she exclaimed without explaining what or why.  “Let’s try another finger.” Seeing that result, she calmed down. “Sometimes it depends on the digit I choose to poke.” With that, she left the room.

***

Alone and near-naked, Charlie waited until Belle returned with a wheel chair. Once seated in it, his confinement felt signed, sealed, and delivered. The nurse covered his legs with a blanket.

“Suits you fine,” she assured him. “Next for you comes Dr. Crooner.”

Pre-op emptiness closed in. Footsteps of people passing by in the hall raised Charlie’s expectations, but no action. Soft voices spoke of hurried greetings or brief consultations. He heard the plaintive cry of a child missing his grandmother. The wails faded quickly. Charlie realized he was sitting out lunch break for clinic employees. As a wall clock ticked, he wondered if Wilma was still darning. She could sit in silence for hours.

As the noon hour dragged on, he nodded off, only to wake with a start and try bolting from the wheel chair. He stopped when a different lady looked in. “Nurse Barker here. Only one patient’s ahead of you. Dr. Crooner here soon.”   

Charlie discovered soon could be forever. He filled time remembering his two earlier office visits with young surgeon Crooner. Well, not so young. The doctor was in his thirties, a status conscious, arrogant Hart, Schaffner & Marx man direct of manner and too hurried to meet commoners eye to eye. He read Charlie’s eye exams quickly, did a fast personal assessment, and gave him a score of 35 on a scale of 0 to 100. Insurance companies refused to cover any result below 18.    

Dr. Crooner had written Medically Significant on Charlie’s exam paper and sent it to Surgery Scheduling. Charlie disliked the rudeness, but his no to the knife became yes when doctors Ala and Crooner insisted on it and Wilma agreed. Now Charlie waited in pre-op for a surgeon he didn’t like and worked at convincing himself his drooping eyelids worked perfect, though he admitted to himself they made him look ancient.

 Without knocking, the officious surgeon entered wearing scrubs and flip flops. Charlie noticed in surprise that the garb made Crooner look his true height, about 5’ 9”, and hardly a day over 30. He’d let his thin blond beard grow out or maybe neglected to shave. Charlie winced as the surgeon patted him on the shoulder cheerfully.

“Good morning, Charlie.” 

“It’s pm now.”

“Oh, yes, time slips by,” Crooner agreed as another fellow in scrubs came in and stood behind him. The surgeon introduced the latecomer as intern Anderson. The intern said hello in a high-pitched voice, which sounded like a schoolboy’s. Afterward Crooner and Anderson talked about a rock concert they’d attended the night before. Charlie understood nothing, but listened when the surgeon spoke to him.

“We’ll be wheeling you in soon,” he began. “That is, the operating nurse will come here. I’ll be with you in surgery.”

“How long?” Charlie asked.

“About forty minutes, but recouping comes after. You’ll be out in jig time.”

Dr. Crooner turned to check on something with Anderson. Charlie understood only how they kidded about the concert music, which had been greatly to the audience’s delight. A master at multi-tasking, the surgeon continued addressing Charlie.

“Like I said, we’ll get you out. You’ve got some substantial droop there, pal, and photos show you once had a fractured eye socket.”

At their first consultation Charlie had denied the accuracy of that x-ray, but he eventually recalled an accident. As a six-year-old he’d stumbled and cut his brow on a paint can. Doctors in those days found no broken bone, but later x-rays showed a self-healed break. Dr. Crooner skipped rehashing that story with Charlie by moving on to the sixty-year-old before him. He spoke like addressing someone back from a long trip.

“Charlie, it’s Dr. Crooner. Good to see you again. We’ve got you right on schedule.  Twelve noon.” 

Sure enough, Charlie had drifted off into thoughts of the paint can and his parents’ tender care for him. The boyhood episode felt mellow and comforting. When he finally glanced up at the wall clock, on this present day, the surgeon resumed talking. “Like you know, I’m going to cut into the creases on your eyelids. I’ll trim away sagging skin and muscle. Then I’ll remove all excess fat, you’ve got lots of that.”

Dr. Crooner frowned at his own word fat, so Charlie figured it turned him off big time, maybe in fear he’d someday have it, too.  

“You’ll feel like a million,” the surgeon hastened to add. Anderson nodded in agreement. With that, Crooner resumed his self-important look and strode out of the room. 

“So one more hurdle, then it’s in to surgery?” Charlie asked himself. He stared at the ceiling again. He heard more light chatter through the thin walls indicating the corridors were filling after lunch. The door opened and a tall, heavy nurse entered.

***

“Merry. Merry Berry, that’s me,” she announced business-like. “Operation Room Nurse. Check this.” She handed Charlie a list called Post Op Instructions. He glanced at warnings about possible vomiting and excessive bleeding after surgery. “This paper goes to your wife. Back in a jiff,” she promised.  

Charlie thought about old age and daily living, with its rush and worry. The longer he waited the more sounds drifted in like a soulless mumbling about delayed vacations, in-law visits, and real estate deals gone awry. He wanted to burst free from his wheel chair and IV shackles, but only Anderson’s shrill voice pierced the meaningless whir.

“Dr. Crooner!”

Charlie imagined the medical men standing face to face with an urgent issue. A child’s appendectomy gone wrong?  An eyelid slit open?

“The boss, Dr. Sheridan, wants to talk to you again. Now! Before your next surgery.”

Crooner and Anderson were quiet until Anderson added, almost out of breath, “Head of Surgery’s waiting now, in his office! For you!”

“Good god, what’s he want now? Did I screw up again?” Crooner asked.

When hurried footsteps lessened, Charlie knew the corridor was emptying. The pre-op room felt even lonelier. No nurse Peggy or Nurse Belle. Not even a Merry Berry. Charlie remembered again the forlorn one-eyed man in Holding. What was the weird blindfold encasing him? What freak accident had he met up with? 

Maybe this is what pre-op amounts to, he thought, leaving you waiting and wondering.  The same Charlie Bunge, who’d always assumed safe landings in soft sand, saw Peggy’s point about contradictions.

“Like in a broken mirror?” he asked Nurse Berry, when she came in at last.      

She acted cheerful without answering. “Dr. Crooner’s ready,” she said softly.

Charlie spread the coverlet farther down his legs, then wiggled his toes. 

“Hallway’s chilly with no socks,” Merry said as she wheeled him down an empty corridor for the day’s last surgery. 

“What’re my odds when my surgeon’s on the carpet?” he asked. 

She stopped and pulled the cover down even more so only his bare feet showed. “You’ll be happy you did this,” she said. 

As they entered Surgery, Charlie chose to believe her, despite himself, but doors closed slowly in the draft.  He wished he’d kept the blue socks.

Author Description: “Blepharoplasty and Blue Socks” tells of Charlie Bunge, a 60-year-old construction worker and truck driver, who proudly and stubbornly describes himself as “a man of my own strength.”  Despite denying that he has poor vision, Charlie must let his wife drive for him in bad weather.  Charlie argues he has no need for medical attention and especially little patience for a paltry eyelid lift, though two medical specialists and his wife say he does. Once at the eye care clinic, Charlie gradually learns.

Download a copy of Blepharoplasty and Blue Socks – Roger McKnight, PhD

Bio: Roger McKnight, a native of downstate Illinois, has studied and worked in Chicago, Sweden, Puerto Rico, and Minnesota.  In addition to teaching English and Scandinavian literature, he worked as an orderly in a Swedish health care institution. He has traveled extensively in western Europe and Latin America. McKnight’s fictional writings commonly portray ordinary persons facing crucial life decisions.