What is the dimensional difference between beauty and something repellent? I understand, but I must confess, it's easier for me to think of her as human when her face is covered up. You think I haven't told myself that?īut you see, nurse, I've, I've looked underneath those bandages.ĭeeper than that pitiful, twisted lump of flesh.ĭeeper even than that misshapen skeletal mask. You know, once in a while, a miracle does happen just often enough to let you know that you're not wrong or foolish to hope for one.įorgive me, but you mustn't let yourself get personally involved here. You do everything medically possible, everything humanly possible and then, in the end, you cross your fingers and you hope for a miracle. Well, you try to be impersonal about these things. You've been under a great deal of tension. Miss tyler! Miss tyler, stop this immediately. It hasn't the right to penalize somebody for an accident of birth! It hasn't the right to make ugliness a crime! Who makes all these rules and conditions and statutes, the people who are different have to stay away from the people who are normal? Now, you know you can't expect to live any kind of a life among. Your presence here in this hospital 1s proof of that.īut you're not being rational, miss tyler. You're talking about a ghetto, aren't you? Now, one of the alternatives, just in the event that this last treatment is not successful, is simply to allow you to move into a special area in which people of your kind have been congregated. There are many others who share your misfortune. If, if 1 sit out there in the darkness, then the whole world is dark, and I'm more a part of it like that, not just, one grotesque, ugly woman with a bandage on her face with a special darkness all around. May I just go and, and sit in the garden? In your case, think of the time and the money and the effort expended to make you look. You realize, of course, Miss tyler, why these rules are in effect.Įach of us is afforded as much opportunity as possible to fit in with society. There's no way of telling till we get the bandages off. You may have responded to these last injections. Well, you're kind of jumping the g*n, aren't you? We're not permitted to do any more after 11. No more tries.ġ11s the mandatory number of experiments. I'm sorry your case is not one that we could have handled with plastic surgery, but your bone structure, flesh type, many factors prohibit the surgical approach. There's no telling, of course, till we get the bandages off. However, we're very hopeful for what this last treatment may have accomplished. Nothing we've done so far has made any difference at all. Up to now, you haven't responded to the sh*ts, the medications. Of course there's a, there's a kind of a comfort living inside this cave. You know, sometimes I, I think I've lived my whole life inside of a dark cave with walls of gauze, and the wind that bl*ws into the mouth of the cave smells of ether and disinfectant. We'll have those bandages off you very soon. Yes, I thought it was, but I couldn't be sure. Well, it's warm this evening, Miss tyler. This happens to be the twilight zone, and miss janet tyler, with you, is about to enter it.īlood pressure and temperature are normal, no change.Ĭome back about 11:00, nurse. In a moment, we'll go back into this room.Īnd also, in a moment, we'll look under those bandages, keeping in mind, of course, that we're not to be surprised by what we see, because this isn't just a hospital, and this patient 307 is not just a woman.
Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss janet tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness, a universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of the swath of bandages that cover her face. If it were mine, I'd bury myself in a grave someplace. Bernardi, evening report on patient 307, no temperature change, resting comfortably. It doesn't really make much difference whether it's two weeks or days now.ĭr. I just wanted people not to scream when they looked at me. I mean, I never wanted to look like a painting.
I, I never really wanted to be beautiful, you know. People have turned away when they looked at me.įunny, the very first thing I can remember is another little child screaming when she looked at me. Well, yes, but, it's pretty bad, isn't it?Įver since I can remember ever since I was a little girl. Until they decide whether or not they can fix your face. You know what I mean? People, ships, anything you want, really. If you stare at them long enough, they become things.
I never was much for staring up at the sky. You're traveling through another dimension.Ī dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind.Ī journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.
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