The Peculiar Night of the Blue Heart by Lauren DeStefano

Author:Lauren DeStefano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

12

Lionel hid in the shadows outside the living room, watching as the doctor opened his suitcase.

Marybeth sat on the couch with a thermometer in her mouth as Mrs. Mannerd paced and fretted before her.

Marybeth did not look at all sick. In fact, she’d made an effort to appear normal. She’d brushed her hair and even braided it. She wore a green gingham dress that was free of any wrinkles or stains, despite being secondhand, and white socks whose holes she had sewn shut and whose lace trim she had repaired.

Only Lionel knew Marybeth’s face well enough to see that lines were beginning to form under her eyes. They were very faint and tinged with blue.

She glanced across the room and spotted Lionel in the shadows, and she tried to give him a reassuring smile around the thermometer.

Lionel did not like doctors. He had learned to be like a cat and hide his illnesses when they came so as to avoid the tonics and the pills, but especially the needles. Maybe the only things Lionel hated more than doctors were needles.

As for Marybeth, she had always enjoyed doctors. She enjoyed eating vegetables and brushing her teeth and scrubbing her face until it was pink, making sure her spectacles were straight, her hair combed and clean. She enjoyed being told that she was healthy as a horse—which she always was. She even enjoyed the needles, because the liquid left the syringe and went into her blood to keep her well. She was like a house that cleaned itself, Mrs. Mannerd liked to say.

The doctor was tall and thin, with a complexion almost as gray as his hair. He was very old. Older than Mrs. Mannerd. But he was the only doctor in town who still made house calls, and he never charged Mrs. Mannerd full price for his visits, because he said that she did a noble thing caring for so many children as she did.

The doctor took the thermometer from Marybeth, looked at it, and said, “A perfect ninety-eight point six.”

Marybeth sat up a little straighter, proud of herself if only for the meager achievement of passing this test.

Lionel cowered from a distance. He had promised to stay nearby, in case the blue creature returned and he needed to help tame it. But he would not get any closer than this.

The doctor reached into his suitcase and unfolded a footstool. With a grunt and the creaking of bones, he knelt before Marybeth and shined his flashlight down her throat. He checked her reflexes, even looked in her ears. One after another, she passed each of his tests.

But then Lionel saw it. The doctor had outstayed the blue creature’s tolerance. He had prodded at her one too many times. Lionel knew this when Marybeth gripped her skirt in her fist. Her chest stopped moving as she held her breath, and her face was determined. She crossed her legs, which were shaking from the strain of trying to stay in control.

Lionel swallowed his fear of the doctor and crawled out from the shadows.

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