Chapter 72
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
“Bend over.”
“Not unless you’re prepared to buy me dinner first, Doc.
” I grinned, planted my palms out in front of me, and leaned over the exam table.
My pants scrunched up and resting on my shoes as I gave Dr. Lambert a bird’s-eye view of my chocolate starfish.
Soaped up and scrubbed down between all the little crevices.
Just how he liked it or I guess how I assumed he liked it. Didn’t think many people enjoyed a dirty asshole.
He ignored mine—despite how clean it was—and went straight for my spine as he pressed a gloved thumb over the highest scar and followed the trail down to the last incision just above where my cheeks dipped in. He never went any farther than that. Never slipped a hand around the front either.
Guess he really wasn’t interested in everything I had to offer. That might have been a first. Most of the others didn’t care where they put their dicks, as long as there was a hole to put ?em in. And if there weren’t, some of them made holes of their own.
Sex was just another form of currency. Na?ve enough to think otherwise and they’d use it as punishment instead. Didn’t take me long to realize I preferred getting something out of it before I let someone put something in it.
“My mother’s not a whore, ya know,” I announced after a few seconds of strained silence, the doc scribbling down in my chart and me shifting my weight from foot to foot.
Mostly because it pissed him off and partly because I really couldn’t control myself.
Staying still felt like holding my breath under water.
If I didn’t pop up for air, I was just gonna drown.
“Okay.” His pen stopped moving but only for a second. He never let me see what he was writing. It was a lot easier to poke around in his office after hours with the chair gone now, though.
“I heard them tell you she was a communist whore.” I lifted a shoulder, and he pressed down on it to keep my spine straight. “I wanted to clarify that she wasn’t.”
“Yeah, mine wasn’t either,” he grumbled under his breath. “Think you deserve a cookie or something?”
“Why, you got one?” I spun around, and he immediately spun me back to face the table.
“Nope.”
“Shame. There ain’t much I wouldn’t do for a cookie,” I hummed while counting all the little cracks in the wall. Anything to keep me from going stir crazy.
“So I’ve heard,” the doc said.
“From who?” I asked him.
“You. Or don’t you remember?”
“Right. Just making sure my shit ain’t getting around too much. There’s no such thing as secrets at B-wood.”
The doc dropped his clipboard onto the counter, my cue to pull up my pants and turn to face him. He stared at me for a long moment before replying. “I don’t know. I think there are plenty of secrets hidden inside these walls.”
He scanned the room, eyeing each of the four corners, as if he were trying to sniff those secrets out. They were a lot more obvious to those of us who grew up here. All it took was one person eavesdropping and whatever it was, was spreading faster than the warts on Hare’s dick.
After that, you were stuck with them. The gossip and the warts, because neither one of them disappeared completely.
“Yeah, like what?” I jumped up on the table and kicked my feet back and forth.
The sensation was still new. Or old. Or both. The weight of my lower body. The way the cuffs of my pants brushed at the sides and had the air tickling my ankles. I couldn’t be sure if I actually felt it or if my brain just remembered how it was supposed to feel and had me thinking I did.
Honestly, it didn’t matter as long as I could move ?em.
I wasn’t stumbling around like a baby deer. But I had to focus on not tripping over my own shoes more than I remembered having to do back when walking was a regular occurrence for me. Which was hard for someone so used to focusing on everything and nothing at once.
“What happened to you, for starters.” The doc pushed his chin out towards my legs, his hands shoved into his pockets and the bottom of his lab coat folded back behind him.
He tried his hardest to look professional.
Not a hair out of place and those nerdy glasses propped low on his nose. “Your parents. Even your name.”
“I told ya my name, Doc,” I reminded him.
“You told me a lot of things. Not all of them true.”
I cocked my head to stare at him across the room. “Everything I say is always true. It’s just not always true anymore.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” the doc cursed. He was losing his cool. You could tell ?cause he didn’t usually curse around the patients or the other docs. He was trying so hard to fit in. To pretend he belonged here.
What he didn’t realize was that he belonged here as much as the rest of us. He was just standing next to the table when he should have been strapped down to it, having his head examined too.
It was the thing I liked most about him. The fact he was so messed up on the inside and he didn’t want anyone finding out.
“It means…” I took a long breath. “What’s true now ain’t always true later. And what was true before might not be true anymore. Hell, what’s true for me might never be true for you. Doesn’t make it any less true, does it, Doc?”
“That’s just a bunch of words, kid.”
“Maybe for you. But for me, it’s just the truth.” I shrugged, letting my lips curl into a half-smirk. “Okay, think of it this way. What if I told one of the nurses that Dr. Lambert is wearing a yellow shirt today? Would I be lying?”
He glanced down at himself as if he didn’t already know what he was wearing. “My shirt is green.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Doc. Would I be lying?” I repeated.
“You wouldn’t be telling the truth. So, yes, you’d be lying.”
“Now, what if I told you I was color blind?”
He quirked a brow. “Are you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is… what I see is yellow. What you see is green. Two different truths depending on whose eyes you’re seeing them from. If you ask me, life is like that a lot of the time.”