This is the last part--thank you so much for reading/editing. ^_^
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She squeezed Miles’ hand and left him for Neuhaus’ shoulders and the dark of the hallway. The slight damp his hand left behind chilled her palm, made worse by the cooled air between dark stone walls. The doctor looked right at home—though Margot’s Frankenstein stitches were hidden in brunette, she suspected that without her silk-cloth costume she’d belong there, too.
He led her to the very end of the dark hallway. It was low and cramped, and shrunk as they went like some bizarre convent-themed funhouse. Neuhaus was carved into a plaque on the very last door. It had fallen victim to the damp that permeated every brick pore and was rusting, silently. Margot couldn’t imagine what was about to happen, but that did not distress her as much as it would others. She followed him, knees numb with the cold, into the room.
It was dark until he turned on the lights—bare bulbs embedded in the ceiling; long tubes of fluorescence that threatened to burst and rain shards of translucent glass on them both. She pushed herself onto the exam table and let the wax paper crinkle beneath her. The vinyl was faded blue and torn in places, exposing yellowed foam behind snags that looked like they had been the work of bear claws. Neuhaus fumbled through papers on his desk, which was situated next to a table shrouded in white. Dark stains colored the concrete around the drain that sat, rusting, beneath it. A mottled human finger poked out from beneath the sheet, pointing towards the door.
It was an omen.
“Now, Miss Margot,” he said, pulling a stool out from behind his desk and sitting in front of the exam table. “How did the incision heal? The stitches?”
She brought a finger to the raised groove on the back of her neck. “I can’t bend my neck all the way.”
He patted her knee. “We must all sacrifice something for relief, yes?”
“What relief?” She thrust his hand away. “I haven’t dreamt in years—all you did was crack open my head so you could have a look for giggles. There’s no relief—unless you call going weeks without proper sleep and feeling your skin ready to burst every time you move your head relief.”
“I did my best.”
“You did your best? Then why can’t I sleep? Why can’t I dream? You promised to fix me. Either you knew you could and were too cheap to follow through, or you’re a quack.”
“Margot, Margot––”
The door opened and the milkman stepped in, toting a crate of jars half-empty and sloshing. She kept the knife drawn as the doctor turned toward him and smiled. There was a thin sheen of sweat on his temple that threatened to bead up into droplets. “Morning, Otto.”
“Morning, Frank.”
The milkman’s eyes flickered up toward Margot and left soon as they had come. “She gonna be ready in a few?”
“I think so.” He swallowed. “Have you…have you gotten close, at least?”
“Paper says I got some French teacher and a baker lady, but not Celia, not yet. Keep forgetting to mark ‘em so I know which is which.” Margot watched with horrified fascination as he knelt next to the shrouded exam table and unscrewed the lid to one of his milk bottles. He held the glass lip up next to the spigot on the underside and twisted the hatch open. A thin stream of yellowed, chalky fluid poured forth and mingled with the milk already in the jar. “Coulda sworn her servants have been drinking the stuff for her—got a bunch of ‘em sick, but it’s never her.”
“Be careful?”
Frank shrugged. “Trying. Some kid crashed my truck into the curb; I’ve been walking the route ever since. Not easy on the good ol’ knees, I’ll tell you that much.”
His Good Ol’ Knees cracked as he stood up and left, with full bottles now swinging from the basket at his fingertips. Dr. Neuhaus waited until he had left before turning back to Margot. “Nasty divorce,” he said, by way of explanation. “Now, dear, if you’d lie on your stomach we can have a look-see…”
Margot pulled her knife out of her pocket and flicked it open. “I’m not six!”
His eyes widened. “Margot, Margot, dear, don’t be rash—“
“I’m not being rash,” she said as she hopped down from the table. He began to push his stool backwards with his feet, heading right where she wanted him—in the cobwebbed corner. “I’ve nothing to live for, and I’m taking you with me.”
She didn’t notice the second drain in the floor.
There was a sickening crack as the heel of her shoe caught in its grille and twisted, propelling her toward the floor. Her ankle was bent and useless, and she scratched at the concrete to pull herself up again. It was no use.
The doctor mopped his face with his tie and reached for a syringe.
___
(4)
And that’s how I learned the lesson
that everyone’s alone,
and your eyes must do some rainin’
if you’re ever gonna grow.
Miles never went back to school. He was, as Margot had predicted, too ugly and old for anyone to adopt, and so he sat in the garden most days with Sister Tabitha, hidden behind a trellis where she could hold his hands and kiss his cheeks. He didn’t mind. She wasn’t hurting him, and, if anything, it was only a slight infraction on her covenant with God.
“I heard,” she whispered, giggling drunkenly. “I heard you murdered someone.”
Her fingers felt like spiders crawling up his arm, and he gently pushed her away. “I didn’t murder him. Someone else did.”
“Who?”
“A nurse.”
She gasped. “That’s awful!”
“It was.”
He clenched his teeth as she worked her hands around his torso like a boa constrictor in a nun’s habit. “You shan’t murder me?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay. Good.”
He ran his fingers absentmindedly through the grass. Something stopped his progress—a small white lump, half buried in the dry soil. He scratched at its edges until he uncovered the rim of a pearl necklace, large and gaudy and—
“Whose is that, Miles?”
“It’s—It’s—“ He swallowed, hard. “It’s Margot’s.”
She frowned. “Who’s Margot?”
He flung it against the brick and it shattered, the beads flying every which way like a horizontal snowstorm. When they came to a rest in the ground from whence they came, a sigh of relief streamed through his nostrils.
“Nobody,” he said. “Just nobody.”
