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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/orangeplr on 2024-09-14 23:11:22+00:00.

Hospitals, to me, feel like an extension of the afterlife. This is surely not an original thought. The long hallways, lined with shuddering fluorescent lights and medical carts, the somber staff and weeping families: it becomes a sort of limbo after a while. Not life, and not death. Even when you finally leave, your clothes still reek of suffering. 

Sitting in the waiting room, I felt like there was nothing outside of these walls. Nothing but an eternal black void. My phone buzzed loudly against an uncomfortable plastic chair, and I raised my hand to the receptionist, as if to apologize. I sent the caller to voicemail without even checking the contact. 

“Mr. Sharpe?” 

The doctor’s voice cut through the suffocating quiet of the wide hall, and I sat up, adjusting my shirt that had bunched up around my waist from slouching. 

“That’s me.” 

He was pushing a wheelchair, and I smiled when I saw my wife, sitting upright and smiling back - tired, but overall normal. I stood, giving her a quick hug and a kiss on top of her head. 

“Mr, Sharpe, your wife is doing just fine,” the doctor told me, looking between us. I sighed. 

“Thank god. I was sure it would be much worse…” 

“Well…” the doctor glanced around us at the nearly empty waiting room, as if he didn’t want to be overheard. “There’s something I’d like to speak with you about.” 

I frowned. “Yes…?” 

“It’s her eyes.” 

I took a step back, and got a better look at Dahlia. She was wearing her clothes from home, the ones I had brought her considering the ones she’d come in had been drenched in blood and green paint, and other than a bandage around her head, she looked normal. 

“Take a closer look,” the doctor said, as if he had read my mind. 

I leaned in closer, examining my wifes face. I gazed into her blue eyes, and my heart sank. 

Instead of only one pupil in each, there were two. They looked strange and almost wispy, and they appeared to bulge against the edge of her irises like they were stretching them out. I gasped. I didn’t know how I hadn’t noticed before; they made her look alien. 

“We need to do more tests,” the doctor muttered as I stared, mystified, into Dahlia’s eyes. “It must have been the blunt trauma from her fall that caused this. Normally, we would label this condition Polycoria, however-” 

“Normally?” I interrupted, my tone brisk. I felt a little unsteady on my feet. 

“However,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “That condition is very rare, and I haven’t seen it caused by trauma before. Usually one would be born with something like this, rather than it developing. We need to make several follow up appointments, but her vision seems fine, and besides that, she only needs to rest and get back to her life.” 

“Are you serious?” I looked around, at the patients and their families who were now staring. I lowered my voice into a hiss. “She looks like a… a monster. She can’t just be okay…” 

Dahlia took my hand. I took a deep breath, trying to self regulate. For her sake. 

“Honey,” she said softly, pressing my hand against her cheek. “I’m fine, I promise. I feel fine. And the doctors are very nice, they’re going to figure it out. Look at me…” 

I looked at her again, trying not to panic at her otherworldly appearance. 

“I’m fine,” she said again, giving me a gentle smile. 

I straightened up, getting ahold of myself. I chose to believe her. 

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled in the doctor’s direction. “I’m sorry, I’m just tense. This has all been… a lot.” 

“I completely understand. Both of you need some rest, I would say.” 

He couldn’t have been more right. My own eyes didn’t feel normal, like there were strings holding them open. I felt like I had been in this hospital for years, even though it had only been a few days. I couldn’t imagine how my wife felt. 

I helped her to the car - the doctors wouldn’t let her walk, not until she was off their property, even though she insisted she was able to. On the drive home we were quiet, but I took her hand, squeezing it occasionally. We were both a little in shock, I think. 

When we got home, we both stopped in the living room. I hadn’t been home long enough to clean, and the sight of the toppled ladder laying beside the pool of dried blood must have been a lot to process. She stared for a long moment, blinking her new eyes. 

“Is this the color we chose?” She asked finally. She bent over, picking up the dried up paint roller off the floor and taking a closer look. 

I stared at her, incredulous. I couldn’t believe that that, over everything else, was what she was thinking about right now. 

“Yes, honey,” I told her, wrapping my arm around her waist hesitantly, as if she might shatter like glass. “October mist. Remember?” 

“Huh,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “Alright…” 

I guided her to our bed, and she pulled the heavy duvet over herself, letting out a breath like she’d been holding it for days. 

“Sorry about all this,” she whispered after a while, clearly only half awake. I chuckled. 

“Don’t be sorry, my love. I’m sorry.” 

She didn’t respond, falling asleep as quickly as she had fallen off of that ladder. 

When my wife finally woke up again, late into the afternoon the next day, I was long past done cleaning up the living room, and I was waiting with the kettle running and her bottle of pain medication. I poured her a mug of Earl Grey, and I stared at her as she blew on it, taking her usual seat at the kitchen table. 

Her eyes were no less jarring than they had been the day before. I felt like I couldn’t look at her, like every time those second pupils fixed on me something squirmed in my stomach, something deeply wrong. 

“How are you feeling?” I asked when she finally looked up at me, not wanting to make her feel insecure about her condition. 

“I feel good,” she told me, and she smiled. Somehow, she looked even happier now than she had before the accident. I bit my tongue, just barely able to stop myself from blurting out: why? 

“Really?” 

“Yes.” She sipped her tea. “I mean, my head hurts a little. But I feel good… I feel like I’ve woken up from a long dream.” 

Her words made me feel uneasy. I laughed nervously. “Well, you were asleep for a while…” 

She laughed too, and shook her head. “Not that kind of dream, Ben.” 

Dahlia almost seemed… giddy. Now that she wasn’t tired anymore, she was more lively than ever, and she kept looking around as if she were a child seeing the world for the first time. I only realized why when we stepped outside for our usual late-afternoon walk. I had wanted her to rest longer, but she insisted that she wanted to. 

Dahlia gasped, and her hands flew to her mouth. “It’s beautiful.” 

I followed her gaze to the orange and pink sunset, just beginning to creep up above the trees and houses of our neighborhood. It was pretty, sure, but nothing we hadn’t seen before. 

Her pupils, all four of them, widened, swelling into each other. I winced. 

“I know this sounds strange, but everything seems brighter,” she told me, practically skipping down our front steps. “All the colors are more vivid, I feel like my vision is even better than before… this must be incredibly rare, don’t you think?” 

I bit the inside of my cheek, trailing after her warily. “That’s great, honey… I’m so glad it’s not worse. You really could’ve lost your vision.” 

She didn’t seem like she was even listening. She led me like a stray dog down the street, pointing things out to me that I never would have noticed before. How the neighbor’s doorknob was a vastly clashing shade of yellow to their red door, the oil-slick shimmering on the feathers of the crows, all the spots where graffiti had been painted over again and again that seemed impossible to spot with the naked eye.

It gave me such a strange, sick feeling. I couldn’t name it. But my wife was so happy, so who was I to bring her down? 

I truly felt that way until a few days later. My wife shifted and yawned as she woke up, rolling to face me, and I could barely keep myself from screaming. 

Dahlia had three pupils in each eye now, like three black holes, shrunken from the light streaming through our bedroom windows. Her irises looked pinker than before, as if they were cracking from the pressure of holding them in, keeping them from spilling into the whites of her eyes. It was unnatural. 

I sped to the hospital, my wife protesting the entire way. I ignored her. This wasn’t right, it wasn’t normal, and something had to be done. 

I stayed with her as they checked her vitals and shone lights in her eyes. I had to look away as her pupils widened and contracted, just like regular eyes. It made me feel nauseous, or like I might faint. 

They tested her vision again. I watched the doctor’s face carefully as she finished each trial, but he was surely being cautious not to give anything away. He just nodded and moved on each time. 

Finally, he sat back in his seat, scratching at his head with the capped end of a pen. 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said, shaking his head. “Mrs. Sharpe, your vision is amazing. You have twenty-ten vision in both of your eyes.” 

“How is that possible?” I looked between both of them, shocked. The doctor looked confused, but my wife only looked ecstatic. “She only had twenty-forty last time she checked! She needed reading glasses!” 

The doctor shrugged, checking his records. “Like I said, I don’t know what to tell you. I think all we can do is give it some time, and keep watchi…

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