Chapter 27

On Tuesday morning, a black town car and a uniformed driver arrived at the large house. Mila was beside herself with excitement. She stood there looking at him through the window as he came up the walk and up the porch. This would be a million times faster than walking. The man rang the bell, startling her so that she jumped. She dropped the curtain and hurried to open the door.

“Good morning,” he said politely, “I’m looking for Milo Thorne.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” Mila said, frowning at the name.

“Where would you like to go today?”

Mila had put a lot of thought into it, and she knew she had to go to the grocery store if she was going to be staying in this house. She told the driver as much and ran to retrieve her backpack before coming out of the house.

She sat in the backseat as she had in the taxi, and the driver competently maneuvered the car out of the long driveway and onto the street. They drove to a one of the nearby chain stores, and he said he would wait for her in the lot.

“All right, thank you,” Mila said, getting out of the car. She strode into the store, commandeered herself a cart with two squeaky wheels, and pushed it down the first aisle. She bought everything that looked good out of the frozen food section, and three pints of ice cream, then moved on to snack foods. She avoided foods she didn’t know how to prepare, and soon found herself at the register with an overflowing cart.

She happily swiped her bank card, absolutely thrilled with the fact that everyone seemed to accept this little plastic rectangle for virtually anything. The bagger reloaded her cart with the now-bagged groceries and Mila wheeled it back out into the sunshine. The driver lurched out from his hiding place at the corner and pulled up to her at the curb. He hopped out, helped her stow the items in the trunk of the car, and got in again while she returned the cart.

“Home again?” he guessed.

Mila realized they would have to refrigerate the food, so she nodded with confidence. This was possibly the best Tuesday in history. The chauffeur took her up to the house again and helped her carry in all the groceries. Mila put all the frozen aisle goods in the freezer and everything else, including bread, into the fridge. She could learn about it all later, but right now, she had places to go.

“Where to next?” he asked when she appeared again.

“Doctor’s office,” she said, fingering the empty pill bottle in her pocket.

“Where’s that?” he wanted to know.

She pulled the bottle out and read off the doctor’s name, “Dr. Anthony Krank.”

“I don’t know him,” the driver shook his head. “Do you have an address? Could you give me directions?”

“Not if my life depended on it,” she blurted, then immediately felt stupid. Who didn’t know how to get to their own doctor’s office?

“Is he in the phone book?”

“Oh!” she gasped. “What a good idea!”

She retrieved the big book and thumbed through it. “Here’s one.”

“Looks promising,” the man said.

They got back into the car and this time Mila watched the houses and businesses roll past for half an hour before they found themselves in a rundown part of a town.

“You sure this is your doctor?” the driver said dubiously, and Mila nodded with an assurance she didn’t feel. She opened the car door and got out, grateful the sun still illuminated every inch of the dirty building. The painted sign in the window was chipped, but still spelled out Dr. Anthony Krank plainly enough. She hesitated at the door, but forced herself to go through.

Inside the waiting room was empty, and a dark, obese woman sat behind the front counter.

“Can I help you?” she asked, looking up from her desk.

“Um, yes, I am here to see Dr. Krank,” Mila said.

“Do you have an appointment?” the woman said, looking Mila up and down.

“No,” Mila said nervously.

“That costs extra,” the woman said.

“All right,” Mila said, slightly alarmed by the direction of the conversation.

“Co-pay is required up front, and it’s double today-- two hundred dollars.”

“Okay,” Mila said, pulling her bank card out.

“Uhn-uh, we don’t take cards. Cash only.”

“Oh, right, of course,” Mila said, quickly storing the card again, and dragging her backpack up onto the dingy counter. She unzipped it and counted out two hundred dollars which she then handed to the woman in the stained white uniform.

The woman counted it again and told Mila to take a seat. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

This wasn’t quite the reaction she’d expected, but she directed herself to the seats anyway. She stood for ten minutes, unable to decide which seat was cleanest, and finally gave up and chose to stand with her arms crossed in the middle of the room. She was moderately concerned about the bloodstain on the corner of the wall by the door, but kept it to herself. Eventually the woman appeared at the doorway between the waiting room and the rest of the clinic and called Mila back.

Mila followed the fat woman down a narrow hallway in which the latter barely fit. She had to stand to the side so Mila could squeeze through the doorway to an equally narrow exam room. The nurse shut the door after her and made her way back down the hallway.

This room wasn’t much cleaner than the rest of the rooms, and there was a surgical tray on the counter that looked like it had seen a lot of use. Mila was baffled as to why her mother had chosen this man to be their physician. Her mother was always a stickler for cleanliness, citing its proximity to Godliness almost daily. The doctor arrived as she stood there puzzling, and greeted her gruffly.

“So you’re the kid,” he said, sizing her up. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Your mother hasn’t called for your refill in almost a year. I was beginning to think you had croaked.”

“Am I…supposed to croak?” Mila gulped nervously.

The doctor laughed, “How should I know? So where’s your mother? It’s not like her to come down here unless she needs something. Usually she just calls and bullies my staff until she gets her way.”

Mila had no response for that other than, “She’s dead.”

“Really?” Dr. Krank seemed mildly disappointed. “That’s a shame. She was a good client. So you’re here, though, what do you need? Percocet? Vicodin?”

“Um, no, I need you to refill my prescription,” Mila said, reaching for the bottle in her pocket. She handed it to him and a light of recognition went on in his eyes.

“Oh, yes…” he said slowly. He looked at her then, a slight tinge of something she thought was regret in his face. “You still want to take these? Do you…know what they’re for?”

Mila shook her head, almost holding her breath while he spoke.

“Well, you’ve been taking them a long time,” he said, running a hand through the thin, greasy strands of gray hair still clinging to the sides of his otherwise bald head. “Something like a dozen years, right?”

She nodded, still not saying a word.

“You look much younger than I thought,” he frowned. “How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-five,” she said. “I’ve been taking them since I was thirteen.”

“Thirteen?” he seemed surprised. “But that’s… how did you… Well, all right then. Your mother must be very supportive.”

He pulled a pad out of his pocket, but she stopped him with a question. “My mother was supportive of what?”

“Well, your desire to be a woman instead of a man,” he said.

Mila stood there, stunned, while the doctor scribbled on the pad. “What do you mean?”

“Well, that can’t have been easy, to know at thirteen that you wanted to be a woman and not a man,” the doctor said. “I always did wonder why your mother came to see me; she had plenty of money from what I could tell. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but maybe she didn’t want her social circle to know she had a miscreant for a son.”

“Miscreant,” Mila said dully, her head spinning.

“Sure, I figured she must have been embarrassed,” he concluded. “Why else would she come here?”

Why, indeed? Mila wondered, looking around at the small, dirty room.

“That’s a cash payment, as usual, and it’s gone up to $800, you understand,” he said, waving the prescription under her nose.

“Oh, sure,” she said, reaching for her backpack once more. She pulled out a wad of money and an envelope with her mother’s handwriting on the front. She stuffed the envelope back in the bag and hurriedly counted out eight hundred dollar bills and handed them over in exchange for the prescription sheet.

“Great,” he said, pocketing the money. “I’ll see you in six months, or you can just leave the money at the desk and I’ll phone the prescription in to the pharmacy.”

Mila nodded like she’d understood of any that, but really, she had stopped listening. Something very strange was happening here. The doctor bid her good day without looking at her, and Mila showed herself out. This time her walk through the waiting room yielded a woman with nervous eyes seated in the far corner of the room. She looked away when Mila came through, and Mila hastened to do the same.

Once outside, Mila shivered, even in the sun. The driver hopped out and opened the car door for her, and she thanked him dazedly as she climbed in. She instructed him to drive her to the pharmacy, and as the car rolled away from the peculiar doctor’s office in the dodgy part of town, Mila wondered at all the things she hadn’t known about her mother. She reached into her backpack and pulled out the envelope. Maybe it was time she found out.