The Boy in Black

T W E N T Y - S E V E N

The doctors office smelled of rubbing alcohol and bleach. It caused her to squint her sensitive eyes and hold back the bile that threatened to rise from her throat and spill out of her mouth and onto the clean, white floors. She swallowed hard to get rid of it, and focused her eyes upward to see a child crying.

He had a Mickey Mouse bandaid on his arm, and was most likely traumatized by the sight of a needle going into his flesh before his hot, dark blood ran through a tube.

She thought back to when she had to get blood drawn. She was younger, and still distinctly remembered the feeling of the blood being sucked from her veins and then taken to a lab. She thought of it as a death lab as a child, and all of the doctors were demons aching to get ahold of her innocent, clean blood.

She bit her lip, nervousness coursing through her veins.

"Mattie?" Dr. Pilgrim called from the wooden door across the room before walking closer to her. "The nurse told me you were here," he hesitated, "without your mother?"

She swallowed her fear and nodded. "Yes, I came in secret."

Dr. Phillip Pilgrim was her doctor since she was a little girl. He gave her almost every shot since the nurses made her nervous, and gave her cherry dumdums each time a tear fell down her cheek from the sharpness of the needle.

He was almost like a family member; which made the situation she was in even more difficult. Dr. Pilgrim then turned around before scratching his slight grey stubble on his chin, as if making sure nobody was looking- as if anybody cared for the girl with the pale face and sickly chapped lips. Everyone had their own problems.

Goosebumps arose upon her skin as she felt the air conditioning turn on full blast- she shivered shortly afterward, but it wasn't just from the cold. She was nervous; for it had been her first time at the doctors by herself. Which might not have been the brightest of ideas knowing that this was a pediatric doctors office.

She knew if her mother hadn't babied her all of her life that this wouldn't have been a big deal- however it was. And that was the problem, everything was a big deal in her life.

She wasn't allowed to go check the mailbox without her cellphone in her pocket just in case if, in her mothers words, a white van came by to swoop her up. She'd seen that on an episode of Law and Order, and ever since watched her daughter like a hawk out of fear.

It was upsetting that fear was starting to overtake the feeling of freedom that the world used to offer. It was down right tragic, and not to mention scary at how fast happiness could turn into fear.

"Follow me." Dr. Pilgrim said in a low voice, walking her through the waiting room and into a section of many rooms.

The sound of babies crying and children hollering pounded at her eardrums, quickly causing a headache and a familiar pinch of fear that she always felt walking through those halls that reeked of sanitizer and rubbing alcohol.

After passing about five doors, they reached one at the end of the hall. It was one of the biggest, and had one of those chairs that looked quite similar to those you would see in a dentist office.

"Take a seat." He gestured to the chair before setting his brown clipboard on the counter and closing the door. She obeyed his orders and stepped upon it, leaning back afterwards for comfort.