The Clear Disc

The small preparation room of an eye department in a London hospital on a foggy November morning, milky light through a tall steamed window, white tiled walls, on a stainless steel tray laid with a white cotton cloth three shallow glass dishes of clear saline and a row of fine curved steel instruments, a slender copper-coloured eye lamp bending over the tray, an open steel sterilising drum behind, two hands in thin pale brown rubber gloves holding fine forceps above the middle dish, in their tips a tiny clear biconvex disc of acrylic plastic eight millimetres across, catching the lamp light in one bright point.