Andrew dives for the volleyball but he misses by an inch; it drops to the sand, hard and half a foot in-bounds.
He doesn’t get up, and at first we’re afraid he’s injured, but he’s rubbing at his eyes. “I forgot to close them!” he shouts. “Hang on!” He stumbles off the court, pulls a small travel bottle of contact solution from his shorts (”Were you a Boy Scout?”) and tries to wash off his contact lens, which he’s just removed from his eyeball.
He’s still got sand in his eye. He’s rubbing at it furiously. His face is covered in sand. His eye is growing redder and redder.
I hand him a bottle of water, and he washes his hands with it, then douses his face. He tries cleaning the contact again. He puts it in. It still hurts. He takes it out. His eye hurts badly now. He paces away from us, rubs at it some more, and eventually comes back.
Alicia offers him the cap to her water bottle. “Wanna put it in here?” she asks.
Andrew drops his contact lens into the cap and drips some more solution in.
The opposing team has begun bumping the ball amongst themselves as they wait for us to resolve our ocular emergency.
Andrew’s intently scrubbing at the contact lens. Both his eyes are watering now. The bottom half of his face is still covered in sand.
“You should get LASIK,” suggests Alicia casually.
Andrew stops what he’s doing and looks at her in disbelief. “Now?”
I laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
