“Okay, Penelope,” he finally says from between my thighs, my feet in stirrups, his cold breath slithering down the inside of my knee making me shiver. “All done,” he finishes cheerfully as though we haven’t just made a pact.
As though I haven’t just betrayed Billy by keeping a secret from him, trusting this man I don’t know to keep our conversation private, believing he’ll keep to his doctor’s code.
The wheels of his stool glide effortlessly backward, the seat of it turning him away from me, giving me his back as he removes his blue medical gloves with a snap. The foot pedal of the binforces the lid to open with violence as he taps his foot to it, letting it bang shut with a loud metallic thump. That’s how I see it, the large black anklet around his left foot, an electronic tag that police use on criminals with curfews or location restrictions. I stare at it for a moment, a crease carving the space between my brows, when a shiver shoots up my spine, and without looking up, I know he’s looking at me once more.
The feeling of his eyes crawling over me, my naked body covered by nothing but a disposable paper gown, the back of it open, my feet out of the stirrups now, legs together, but I’m still bare. Alone in a room with a man I don't know, one who has just had his hands on all of my intimate places.
Gingerly, I slide my legs over the side of the doctor’s couch, the icy temperature of the room making all of the little hairs on my body stand up on end, goosebumps prickle my skin.
I reach for my clothes, pulling on the long black T-shirt dress directly over the paper gown before tearing it off underneath, letting it drop down to the floor, quickly threading my arms through the balloon sleeves of an oversized dark pink cardigan, and rushing to pull my black cotton underwear up beneath it all.
“Keep those wounds clean and dry,” he clicks a pen, the noise of the nib scratching against paper like claws down a chalkboard in my ear over the tense thudding of my heart. “Undressed,” he states, forcing my eye to him, “to let the air get to them.”
He stares at me, still smiling, and I stare back at him, holding his gaze. And I wonder if I could take him. If I could win, if he were to do something to me. Totryto do something to me. I think of the razorblade hidden inside the slouched ankle of my white sock and feel better.
Gentle knuckles rap on the door, and without waiting to be called in, a young woman steps inside. Keeping her eyes downcast, she crosses the linoleum floor, white with greyspeckles, and collects the swabs and blood samples the doctor took from me.
Her skeletal hand lifts towards her face, curtained by long straight ashy-blonde hair that she tucks behind her ear, revealing a long red scar risen thickly on the light skin of her complexion. It tracks its way from the back corner of her jaw, up and around, following her hairline and continuing around to the other side of her face that I currently can’t see. She doesn’t introduce herself, keeping her head low, chin dipped, and she turns away from me, leaving through a second door on the same wall as the one she entered through.
“Don’t mind her,” Doctor Jay tells me with a smile, peering up at me from the low wheely stool that he’s still seated on, moved up beside a computer desk now. “Amaranthine’s not much for conversation.”
I smile tightly, wringing my hands together as unease continues to cloak me, washing me over all hot and cold at the same time. It feels like every breath I take is hot, humid sludge filling my lungs. I’m standing in the centre of the clinic room, everything white and clean and smelling like bleach. And the way this man, this doctor’s eyes monitor me, my every move, my every breath, his gaze even seems to track the pulse point in my neck, it all makes me uncomfortable, makes me feel dirty.
“We’ll have the results back in just a couple of days, Miss Hart, and once I’ve shown them to Father Black, I'll be sure to call you back i-”
“What?” I blink, my eyes focussing once more, “What do you mean, once you’veshown them to Father Black? Why would he get my results before me? Why would he get them at all?”
Doctor Jay smiles, his lips stretching wide, showing his perfectly straight, white teeth, “Because,” he says so simply, “he’s god.”
The door opens abruptly, staying wide at Billy’s back as he enters the room.
“We good to go, Doc?” he asks, his eyes quickly flicking up the length of my body before he switches his attention to Doctor Jay.
I follow his gaze, the doctor now looking at Billy, the same smile, same stare. Cold, dormant, deadly.
“Sure are,” he smiles wider, standing from his stool, he places his hands in his slack pockets, standing back from both Billy and I.
“Come,” Billy commands of me, my feet moving me into his open arm without second thought. His hand comes to my right shoulder, curling over and around me, “Let’s go, Little Lamb.”
We’re only just stepping over the threshold when the doctor calls out, “See you soon, Penelope.”
Billy leads me away, and I pad heavily through the halls like lead bricks are on the end of my legs. I don’t pay attention to where he’s taking me until my feet feel like ice, and I feel the wind touch my face, long hairs whipping my cheeks.
A graveyard stretches out before me, miles of headstones, tombs and mausoleums as far as I can see in the low afternoon sun. My shoeless, sock covered feet sink lightly into the damp earth, wet grass blades attacking the bare skin of my calves.
Billy stops us as we approach the entrance to a tomb, a huge grey marbled structure with smooth round columns and a tall open gable roof. He leaves me at the foot of the wide steps, taking the three of them quickly, and pushing open the heavy marble door at the top. He turns back to face me, looking down, and offers out his hand. My fingers slide between his, lacing our hands together as we walk inside the tomb.
The walls inside are the same dark grey marble, veined with a light shade of silver, and the ceiling is high, higher than it looksfrom the outside because we have to take seven stairs down to get fully inside.
My fingers slide over the lid of a black marble coffin, gold writing etched into its top, but I don’t get time to read it because Billy speaks, and like always, I can’t not give him my complete attention.
“I have zero morphology.” He releases my hand, stepping slightly back from me, his nose scrunching as he looks down at his feet.
“What?” My own nose wrinkles in confusion, my head cocking to try and catch his eye. “What is that? What does it mean?”
“It means my sperm are not the right shape to conceive.”
“Right shape to conceive…” I repeat slowly, not fully understanding what he’s saying.
