The building is like a face that’s had plastic surgery: sleek at first glance, dilapidated at closer inspection. Some architecture firm must have charged good money for coming up with this exact combination of glass panes and concrete slabs. In another life, I might look at it and say something along the lines of: They’ve done a decent job of it, in fairness to them. In this life, no architectural wizardry in the world can make me appreciate this place. Every cell in my body recoils as I turn the corner off Dorset Street on my approach.
Inside, it is a maze. I must have been here at least ten times now and I still can’t find my way to the ophthalmology outpatients department without getting lost and having to retrace my steps and start over. Every time, I think to myself that it seems impossible to turn left so many times without ending up back where you started.
Those who make it to the ophthalmology department without getting lost on the way get lost on arrival. It is a place that eats time and patients, like a black hole, and it gnaws away at my patience every time I return. The time on the letter doesn’t matter, I know that now. You walk in and take a seat and the space-time continuum erupts. The files are never where they should be. The consultants are always stressed. The secretaries never listen when I tell them that no, I don’t need to see a nurse first; I’m the extreme exception, the freak accident, and apparently I don’t follow any rules or predictable patterns but trust me, I know who I’m here to see.
My grandfather was a planning engineer. My memory of him is of a quiet man who whistled more than he spoke, seemingly happiest when at his desk in the home office, comforted by charts and unassailable plans.
My mother is her father’s daughter, so I grew up in a home that had alphabetically organised book cases and laundry baskets organised by colour as well as wash temperature.
Me, I’ve developed a habit of working Sunday evenings so that I’m always a few steps ahead of everyone else. I keep burnout at bay by putting out fires before they start. What’s the worst that could happen, I ask myself, not in the spirit of acceptance but in order to make circumventing decisions for better outcomes. Not it’ll be grand, in the spirit of the Irish, but rather: let’s put on our planning engineer hats and make sure to avoid that shitshow.
“One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage,” our London GP said upon confirming the presence of hCG in my urine. I had expected a celebratory atmosphere but got nothing of the sort. “If we were meant to give birth in water, we’d be living in the sea,” she declared when I asked about water births and midwifery-led care.
“It’s good news! It’s good news!” a foetal medicine specialist obstetrician declared four months later, when she found us waiting outside the maternity unit where I would be induced to give birth to a baby incompatible with life. Good news – as at odds with the situation as it seemed to us at the time – because she’d had confirmation of her suspicion that it was just terribly bad luck: a condition with a one in 50,000 risk, which was exceptionally unlikely to happen to us again.
When my next pregnancy ended before it had even properly begun, registered as two faint lines on a stick before the lower back cramps and bleeding started, I deduced that I’d managed an impressive 100 per cent – two out of two – of a statistically predicted one in 50,000 and one in four.
My assigned consultant ophthalmologist wears kitten heels, the click-clack of which I quickly learn to recognise. It’s funny what happens to your senses when you’re in a black hole, in an alternate reality where time means nothing, but the sound of click-clack might.
The architects describe the new Eccles Street entrance as “a unifying ‘hospital street’ which allows for intuitive wayfinding between existing, new and future buildings”.
The internet describes the space-time continuum as a mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time.
The orthoptist describes my fusion as excellent, yet in terms of intuitive wayfinding I feel utterly lost in this place.
“I don’t find comfort in statistics,” I say to the kitten-heeled consultant, thinking about but not mentioning the son I don’t have.
“I understand,” she says, unaware that she doesn’t, her facial expression barely changed. “For context, these risks are so rare that I have never once experienced them in my career. In your situation, I would predict a very straight-forward procedure with a very beneficial outcome – but we are obliged to inform you of the risks. It’s ultimately your choice.”
I recall the time, some 12 years prior, when the foetal medicine obstetrician in London opted to use the word ‘choice’ in the context of two equally awful, devastating options, neither of which resulted in a living child, but I spare the ophthalmologist that information.
What’s the worst that could happen, my mental script echoes. Worst, not most likely, because likelihood is a fickle mistress.
But this time, in this black hole, I let myself slip.
Why? I put it down to one or both of two factors:
1. A global pandemic
Picture me in an urban park, just as the magnolia trees are bursting into soft pink. Picture my young sons, carefree, kicking a ball around. Picture my cheap yoga pants, mucky from a stint in goal, and imagine my epiphany – an acute realisation that this is it, this is everything, despite all the things I thought I could control having suddenly and unexpectedly fallen away. What’s the use of planning anyway?
2. A lifetime of a subtext of me, the woman, as hysterical
Exhibit 2a: A male GP in his 60s laughing when I express concern over symptoms like extremely heavy periods and fainting, assuring me that there’s no such thing as hormonal imbalance, because isn’t that the very premise of being a woman?
Exhibit 2b: A junior doctor with terrible bedside manners informing me what my obstetrician will and will not “let me” do during labour, e.g. use a birthing pool (will not).
Exhibit 2c: The very word ‘hysteria’ itself, from the Greek word for uterus, coined by Hippocrates in the 5th century BC and used well into the 1900s to describe emotional unpredictability and unreliability in women, believed to be caused by a wandering womb.
Picture me furiously criticising this culture that’s convinced both medical professionals and women that women’s instincts are unreliable at best and that things would be a lot easier for everyone involved if they would just stop asking so many questions and being so bloody difficult. Picture me, ironically, simultaneously internalising the very idea that maybe things would be a lot easier for everyone involved if I would just stop asking so many questions and being so bloody difficult.
So I cling to ‘likely’, after a consultation during which I am handed an information sheet with a list of risks ranging from very common to extremely rare and devastating, the ‘choice’ dumped in my lap, different versions of ‘worst’ printed in black on white.
When, weeks later, the kitten-heeled consultant stands at my recovery room bedside where I am still dazed and disoriented from the general anaesthetic and says, a pained expression on her face, “I’m so, so sorry,” all I can think is: Are you fucking kidding me?
I thank my wise subconscious for having used an enamel mug for the boiled water to cool, as it hits the tiles of the bathroom wall beyond the shelf above the sink with a clangy sound about a second sooner than my now useless eyes have communicated to me that it might. I have no depth perception. But hey, I see two of everything!
It’s funny what happens to your senses when one of them goes, in an alternate reality where you realise you’ve always walked with your eyes more than your legs, and now your hands and ears must lead the way.
“Just rest,” he says, more instructing in tone than he’s ever been to me before, because instructing me to rest and meaning it is about the only thing he can do right now. (The only thing, except all the cleaning, cooking and shopping, all the laundry and homework, the school runs and training runs, the playdates and birthday parties; all the things he’s ever done and all the things I’ve ever done that require either vision or lifting or both.)
As I lie on the couch, my line of so-called vision presents me with the top corner of a half-open door in front of a framed art print with a thick, white mount and the name of the artist in capital letters at the bottom: HILMA AF KLINT. We joke about me having Matilda eyes, from Matilda the Musical, which we went to see in London just a week earlier, back when leaving the house, putting one foot in front of the other without tripping, and seeing things below city lights happened without effort or any semblance of gratitude. Matilda has brains so powerful she can use them to make objects move by just staring at them intently enough. My superpower, as the orthoptist says, is fusing. I lie there, my stare just as intent as Matilda’s, making double picture frame corners merge into one, making fuzzy lines sharp.
The part of me that is a planning engineer is the same part of me that comes with a painfully stubborn sense of justice. That part sees things in black and white. You do things properly, always – and if you fuck up, you put things right.
Other people might call this part of me privilege. Or, as Björk sang: I thought I could organise freedom – how Scandinavian of me.
“We’re going to support you through this; we’re with you all the way,” they say. Until they realise that no one really knows all that much about these extremely rare but devastating outcomes, by virtue of them being so extremely rare. All the way, then, turns out to be not that long a way at all, because things sort of slow down until they stop at a crossroads where no one can see the benefits anymore for all the risks, and so stopping becomes the preferred, or default, option.
Much like the architectural maze that links existing, new and future. Except there’s no going back to where we started with this thing.
I wait ages for a referral for a second opinion to materialise. Eventually, I call and find out that it was never posted in the first place. I should’ve known the black hole would eat it.
We have new house rules now: no piles of clothes or books on the stairs and no bags left on floors, because mamma doesn’t need an obstacle course she can’t see, on top of it all (subtext: she could trip and fall and die, and she’s been through enough).
It’s funny what it does to your senses when you have to use every ounce of your mental capacity to focus in order to see properly. At first: that impression of improved hearing and heightened awareness of your limbs. Then, eventually, as the exhaustion kicks in: a dulling of everything but the eyes.
“Wait a second, honey, I can’t listen – I’m trying to see,” I tell my sons when fusing hard to be able to slice a loaf of bread or read a message from the school on my phone, erasing the awareness of all other impressions to boost my chances of success.
In his book, A Heart That Works, actor and comedian Rob Delaney describes the “insane” hospital designs that result from initially architecturally sensible buildings being continuously updated over time, featuring “elevators that can’t be accessed without going outdoors and re-entering another part of the hospital” and “hallways that directly bypass high-traffic wards, allowing you to see or hear them, but not access them”.
Rob’s son was born in a birthing pool at the Whittington Hospital in north London and later went on to spend months there for treatment of a brain tumour before he died. When I read the book, on the page, between the lines, I read about my own experience of those very lifts and winding corridors. My first time on the Whittington labour ward came with a sign of a crocus taped to the door of room number one – subtle shorthand for bereavement; a forewarning for anyone entering. My second time started with a brief stint in a birthing pool before I was wheeled up to the labour ward – a different route of arrival, no crocus in sight, but my spatial senses on high alert as I realised exactly which room we were headed for. I was about to give birth to my son within the same four walls that let go of his brother.
It’s funny what happens to your senses when, as they say, your body keeps the score.
The space-time continuum determines that the speed with which you move through space changes what you witness en route. Through a phenomenon known as time dilation, time appears to be passing more slowly when you move at a higher speed. When a child dies, life changes so instantly that time appears to be standing still. The walls may be the same, but the space within feels entirely askew.
More than six months after the freak accident, I arrive at a red-brick building with domed cupolas and carved limestone cornice to get a second opinion so that I can choose between worst and most likely ahead of another, now riskier and more moderately hopeful procedure. The directions are clear and I find my way to the ophthalmology outpatients department on the first attempt. I am seen by the orthoptist without delay and can’t help but feel that a place like this couldn’t possibly do me any harm.
“I don’t find comfort in statistics,” I say to the ophthalmic surgeon, who says that he understands and proceeds not to give me any, at which point I realise that, in the absence of them, I have very little to cling to. On the other hand, how do you run the numbers on the status quo? How many peer-reviewed studies are there to determine the likelihood that I die while out running, my limited peripheral vision failing to inform me of a car that’s coming from around the corner?
What’s the worst that could happen? They’re only touching one eye this time. The worst case, I conclude, leaves me a one-eyed statistical marvel, finally free from the black hole and the maze of no return.
Linnea Dunne is a Dublin-based writer who was recently awarded the Arts Council of Ireland’s 2025 Agility Award to work on a long-form non-fiction project. She is the author of two non-fiction commission books and has a degree in Creative Writing. Her essays have featured in a range of Irish and Swedish publications.