Of glasses and jeans (solo)

The receptionist guided Verdy into the small room and handed the paperwork she had meticulously filled in to the doctor waiting there. He nodded her to a seat and observed her answers with a detached air- as if he had no idea the headache reading the questions and writing the answers had been. He probably didn’t. He read over the answers, seeking clarification here and there and asking her to pronounce her name. Which he then massacred, but recognisably.

“Your active X-gene-” he peered at her, as if seeking the visual manifestation of the gene “has it any effect on your sight?” She shook her head. “No magnification? Heat vision? Ability to see in the dark?” at each shake of her head he made a mark on his list, a list he was evidently using to determine if he would be able to help her. It did seem silly to prescribe glasses to someone with laser-beam eyes, or contact lenses to someone who could taste with their eyes (what a strange mutation to have, whatever would it be useful for?). Her mutation, however, had no impact on the doctors tools, or on the glasses he would prescribe.

The tests were over quickly. Look through this lens. Now that one. With one eye, with the other, with both. Now read the first six lines. How many dots? She gave him her old reading glasses to look at as well, as badly broken as they were, and he made a note of that too, on the seemly never ending page of notes on herself. Hopefully all would go smoothly, being 20 she was far past the legal age for leaving home, and if ever there had been an auto-tab attached to her name, alerting the authorities that she had been found, it was long gone. Still, it made her a little nervous.

After another few tests she was asked to hand the assistant the prescription and wait until they made the glasses up for her. They would make up two pairs, he explained, one for reading and writing and the other for working on the computer. The reading ones were fairly simple and after she had picked out the frames they would only take half an hour. The computer ones were more complicated and could take up to two.

The frames were easy enough to pick out. Black squarish glasses for reading, the more rounded cousin in the same brand for the computer glasses. Leaving her name and details with the lady at the front desk she informed her that she was going to step out for a bit, but would be back before the half-hour was up. The woman made her pay before she left and, although surprised, she figured that was reasonable. Who knew how many times they had been robbed by a glasses-stealing mutant. Or, you know, had people forget.

Next door to the optometrist there was a slightly quirky teenage clothing store and she entered it to have a browse, she was only just out of her ‘teen’ years, earlier that month in fact. She still applied to the teen store. She flicked through the overpriced hoodies and shirts, cute or interesting, yes. Worth the price-tag, no. The jeans were much more reasonable (probably because of the profit they were making off the shirts) and she chose a pair that had a reduced sticker on them simply for missing a button on one of the pockets. It was about time she got some new jeans, judging from the stains on the pair she was wearing that just wouldn’t come out.

The odds and ends bucket yielded glasses cases with the superman ‘S’ plastered on them in one of two colours. She bought one of each. A lunchbox and a cheaper T-shirt sporting an adorable boy in a dinosaur suit followed. Her phone bleeped the fifteen minute alarm she had set, and she moved quickly through the checkout, accepting the bag proudly carrying the store’s logo and back to the waiting room next door.