Read Online Girls Fall Down by Maggie Helwig - Free Book Online Page A

know. Maybe there was poison in the air and you just got lucky and missed it. Or maybe not. Like you said, what’s the difference between emotions and chemicals? Something knocked them down. Who am I to tell them what it was?’
    â€˜But you don’t believe it was some kind of actual chemical, do you?’
    â€˜I believe that belief in poisoning is moving through population groups. I believe there are actual chemical changes involved in belief.’
    He took a bite of his sandwich. ‘Honestly, I’m tired of the whole thing.’
    â€˜Okay by me.’ Susie shrugged, sipping her beer. ‘So, this project of yours.’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜You go out and do this every night?’
    â€˜One or two nights I stay home developing. Weekends I go out in the day, it’s not that I’m doing night shots on principle.’
    â€˜And the idea is what? A book of some kind? A show?’
    â€˜There isn’t an idea as such.’ He swirled what was left of the beer in his glass. He didn’t have to say any more. He shouldn’t. ‘I just want to get as much of the city on film as I can.’ He paused, glanced up at her. ‘As many parts of it as I have time for.’
    â€˜Time?’
    He had gotten too close to stop. ‘I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to work,’ he said, and finished the glass quickly.
    She was waiting for him to go on, but he couldn’t, not on his own.
    â€˜That doesn’t make sense to me,’ she said at last. ‘Alex, is something wrong?’
    He looked down at the table, folding his hands into fists. He was at the verge of it now, the worst thing in the world, worse than anything she or anyone else had ever done to him, and he had never said this aloud to a human being before.
    â€˜It’s called diabetic retinopathy,’ he began slowly. ‘It’s … it’s an eye condition that varies a lot in severity. The capillaries in the eye, well, they overgrow, and the excess ones, they’re very fragile, they, ah, they can break or, or hemorrhage pretty easily. Most people have somebackground retinopathy when they’ve had diabetes as long as I have. It doesn’t – if it’s just minor, it doesn’t do anything really. But in my case it’s started progressing. Apparently fairly quickly.’ She was watching him, her face still. He couldn’t lift his head.
    â€˜I, ah, I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s not affecting my vision very much yet, but when it does, it can be fast. I mean, it’s always different but, well, this is potentially the bad kind. The kind people go blind with.’ He stared at his hands, knuckles pale and knotted. ‘There are, ah, laser treatments that can slow it down quite a bit. You can’t stop it, but you can slow it down. But, see, there’s a cost, you’re, well, basically buying some central vision by losing peripheral. Maybe some colour perception too, maybe some night vision – well, I’ve lost some of that already from the condition itself. Maybe after the treatment somebody can’t see in very bright light either, or maybe sight’s just generally less acute. And you, you don’t do the lasers once, see. You stop the deterioration for a bit, and then it comes back and you start, ah, bleeding inside your eyes again, and you have to do the lasers again, and you lose more peripheral, more acuity … What they tell you is, they can keep you from going blind now, and it’s true, they mostly can, but … I mean, they’re trying to preserve enough vision that you can read a bit and basically walk around. Not enough that you can, that you can drive a car, say. Or, say, be a photographer. That’s the bottom line here.’ He realized that he was breathing heavily, his voice sounding choked and strange. ‘I’ve started seeing floaters,’ he said, resting his