the Care Giver

The woman enters the office and sits down across from Dr. Eldinor, the Care Giver. Dr. Eldinor is wearing a black dress that stands sharp against the white chair, the white walls, and the white examination table, in the same way that her hair, pulled back tightly, sharpens her flawless features.

The woman across from her is very beautiful. Large lashed eyes and high cheekbones with the tearstreaks seared across them that nearly everyone has and that nearly everyone tries to hide.

Dr. Eldinor sets aside the woman’s file. “Tea?” she asks.

The woman accepts the teacup with a polite smile. Perfect teeth and lips glossed in a shade that daddy (rest his soul) doesn’t like.

“Please tell me about when your trauma began,” Dr. Eldinor says.

The woman begins to speak and Dr. Eldinor nods. “I’m so sorry,” she interjects at the appropriate points.

The woman continues, her eyebrows creasing and her knuckles turning white as she wrings the handle of her purse, and Dr. Eldinor nods but says nothing, her hands folded professionally in her lap, since, research says that the best thing to do when someone is upset is to listen.

And then the tears begin, as they often do. Dr. Eldinor leans forward, watching as the tears well up on top of the woman’s lower lash lines. The left tear spills over first and Dr. Eldinor notes how it eats through the woman’s slightly powdered skin, etching a new tearstreak down her cheek.

“I’m so sorry. Don’t cry. Drink some more tea,” Dr. Eldinor says, swiftly refilling the woman’s teacup.

The woman complies, taking another long draft of tea and then finishes her story.

After a moment of silence and politely looking away, Dr. Eldinor says, “Thank you for sharing your story. It is my opinion as the Care Giver that you are a good candidate for tearstreak removal. It says in your file that you would prefer to go straight into surgery if approved, but do you still feel the same way?”

The woman nods.

“Please make yourself comfortable,” Dr. Eldinor says, gesturing to the examination table. She opens a packet of blue power and pours it into the woman’s teacup.

“Drink this. It will make you sleep during the operation,” Dr. Eldinor says.

When the woman has fallen asleep, Dr. Eldinor pulls out a tray of steel tools and a pot of silver paste.

She first takes the scalpel, her slender fingers positioning it just so, and shaves away the raised edges of the woman’s tearstreaks right down across her blended rouge, lash line to jawline, left cheek then right cheek.

She sets the scalpel down on the tray.

She picks up the pot of paste, dips a fingertip into it and applies the paste, filling in the tearstreak scars. Three silver stripes down the left cheek and three stripes down the right, gauze taped over the top.

And then she takes the smaller scalpel, and makes two incisions, one into each inner corner of the woman’s eyes.

Her tear sacs are close to the surface, two glistening sacs that are easily extracted with the pair of steel tweezers, leaving two small hollows that Dr. Eldinor fills with a small syringe of clear gel. She finishes with a smudge of silver paste and some more gauze.

She stands back for a few moments, leaving the silver paste to do its work and then slips a nude painted nail underneath the tape. She peels back the gauze to reveal the woman’s now flawless cheekbones and seamless skin.

When the woman wakes up a few minutes later, Dr. Eldinor hands her a mirror. After the woman leaves, pleased with a scar-free face that no longer reflects her past, Dr. Eldinor allows herself a smile, knowing that once again, doing everything that she can as the Care Giver has been enough.

__

The next appointment of the day is a middle-aged woman with chinchilla furs and a decoupaged hat and the telltale tearstreaks. She has traveled from across the ocean to see the Care Giver.

“You are from Altalia, aren’t you, child?” the woman says.

“I am,” Dr. Eldinor replies. “I came here during the war when I was very young.”

The woman nods and sips her tea. “You are still young. And yet your country gives you the title of Care Giver?”

Dr. Eldinor blinks, unsure of how to define the role that the government has given her to this not-so-foreigner.

“I do everything that I can,” Dr. Eldinor says.

The woman nods and sips her tea, at ease with the silence between them.

“Would you like to continue with the appointment?” Dr. Eldinor asks.

“Of course, child. Regardless of what title your country has given you, you do what you do well.”

Dr. Eldinor nods. “Please tell me when your trauma began.”

“When one gets to be my age, one has had many traumas. I am not here to run from my past. This is a selfish indulgence, child.”

Dr. Eldinor nods again and picks up her silver plated pen and the woman’s file. “I see that you only have the tearstreak removal box marked,” she says. “I do not wish to influence your decision, but if the tear sacs aren’t removed, this procedure would have to be done again. As I’m sure you know, this is a very costly procedure that would only have to be done once otherwise.”

“You are young, child,” the woman repeats. “But I’m sure you’ve had people, things that you care about. God forbid that trauma happen to my family, but when it happens, I don’t want to stand there, unable to do anything while the rest of my family cries.”

“But—the tears—and more importantly, the tearstreaks, do nothing after the trauma has come and gone. They won’t make it go away,” Dr. Eldinor says. “Why not make tears as finite as the trauma so that you can help the best that you can?”

“I have lived a long life, child. I’m old enough to be selfish. But I’m not that selfish,” the woman says. “I don’t want my tear sacs removed.”

Dr. Eldinor puts down the pen, picks it up again, sets it down, and then picks it up, finally deciding to clip it to the woman’s file. “As you wish.”

After the woman has gone to sleep and Dr. Eldinor has done everything she can with her scalpel and silver paste, the woman leaves, and Dr. Eldinor reaches to the chain on her neck and reels in the heart-shaped locket hanging down her back.

She pops the catch on the locket to reveal an old print photograph of a tearstreaked, war-torn girl, taken in the war prison, before she had been brought to this country and poked and prodded by the government doctors. Before she was given hundreds of pages of written tests and told to relax in a chair by a woman in a gray suit and count back from ten until she fell asleep. Before she was placed in that special school with the label of “Empath—Class A” and commissioned by the government to continue her research with precious metals, skin grafts, and herbal brews. Before she took a scalpel and tweezers into her bathroom and put her own tear sacs in an empty jam jar.

She’d put the picture in this locket on the first day of her medical apprenticeship, the day when she was flown back to the capitol in a black jet and given the position of Care Giver, where she vowed that caring was doing everything that she could in word and deed and that doing everything she could was erasing people’s pasts and giving them a fresh start. The day when she had vowed that those under her care would never have to cry again.

The next appointment of the day comes in and sits across from Dr. Eldinor—a woman with an apron and a sundress.

After offering tea, Dr. Eldinor sits back and says, “Please tell me when your trauma began.”

The woman begins and as the tears begin to etch their way down the woman’s face, Dr. Eldinor, her face still, touches her own cheekbone, still perfectly powdered and dry, before saying, “I’m so sorry. Don’t cry. Please drink some more tea.”