Beneath the Sawdust Moon
Dex, before. (DD Season 3 Spoilers. Pre-Canon. Character Study. Transphobia.)
While the title was taken from the song Glass in Your Feet by Fruit Bats, the album Everywhere at the End of Time-Stage 3 by The Caretaker is what really set the mood while I wrote.
This whole thing was inspired by a few comments I read on Tumblr and my own thoughts on how his doctor should have set up a better support system before her passing, but my very next thought was that there must have been one and it ultimately failed as well.
I had a big problem with referring to Miriam as 'he', so if there are any instances when a character should be using the wrong pronouns but uses the right ones say something so I can fix it.
Obviously, I'm no medical practitioner and I don't know how Poindexter's foster parent should be speaking with him if anyone has anything to contribute I'd like to know it. I'd all so like to remind you that Miriam is not meant to be a perfect saint, so anything she does that doesn't seem quite right feeds into that.
The first time Dex met Miriam Lamb was her stomping into the police station to pick him up. She'd halted just at the entrance to shake the snow caught up in the full head of silver braids she sported, brushing at the snowflakes clinging on the grey wool of her jacket, and continued to stomp her feet in a clear attempt to rid her boots of a majority of the slush that'd built up.
She'd told him on that very first night, with stubborn snow melting off her boots onto the clean tile floor, that she was only ever going to do for him what he needed, that he couldn't expect anything extra out of her. She wasn't his mother and he shouldn't be expecting her to be a replacement. But he'd caught glimpses of her standing amid the gathered crowd of spectators more than once at his baseball games, head held high as if she were proud of him. He'd told Dr. Mercer about it afterward, just to see if she would smile over it.
But there was no more Mercer.
"You aren't going to force me?"
She scoffed, finally glancing up from the bills scattered across the tabletop with narrowed eyes. "No. It won't do any good to make you go if you don't want to... Why, do you want me to?"
"No."
"Then I don't suppose I will..."
Silence invaded the kitchen again, or, well, as quiet as it could get in Queens. He could hear Georgina screaming at her husband about coming home late in the next apartment over, a dog barking at some passerby from where he'd seen it tethered to the rod-iron fence out front, the squalling of two birds fighting over food on the fire-escape, and the constant rush of traffic from the street.
"Sit." She finally relented with a sigh, setting her pencil down and pulling her glasses off to rub wearily at her face. "Is there a reason why you're still standing?" She asked when she replaced her glasses.
"No."
"Then sit your ass down."
He had to set the stack of papers sat on the chair across from Miriam aside before taking a seat.
"Mercer wouldn't have recommended just about anybody," she said after a moment, "You know that."
He didn't bother to speak, only grunting with a false indifference and his head kept down to hide the sour rage he knew to have taken residence on his face.
"I looked him up, this Dr. Hatfield."
Dex couldn't help but glance up sharply in surprise at that, "Yeah?"
Miriam had a single eyebrow raised in response, "Nice and normal, seems he's pretty good at his job."
"I don't want him, I don't care how nice or normal he is, I want Dr. Mercer!"
"Yeah, I know." She acceded, "You've made that very clear..."
He huffed, mollified by the acknowledgment. "Yes."
"This is your choice," She finished, "You're too stubborn by half for me to drag you into Hatfield's office. If you think you can handle things then you can, if you can't..."
The unspoken threat was clear, she wouldn't put up with an foolishness if he insisted on following this path. If it came down to it he'd be seeing something more unbearable than Hatfield whether he wanted it or not, and if he denied it from that point further he was to get out.
"Comprendé?"
"Something like that."
She rolled her eyes with a smirk dragging the corner of her mouth up, "Then head to bed, you got school tomorrow."
•
"Hey! Benjamin!"
Halting his decent halfway to the second floor, Dex pushed aside the automatic annoyance that sprouted up at the landlord's voice and resisted the urge to simply ignore the man.
"Yeah, Martin?"
"I'm guessin' you don't know, being your here." Martin continued, shuffling to the bottom of the stairs with his cane in hand, "Miriam ain't here anymore, she had an accident."
"What?" What remaining annoyance he had all but evaporated at those words, making his way back down the stairs.
"Fell down the stairs, yeah, I know. Seemed weird to me as well."
"And? She in the hospital? Why-"
"After the accident, her kids came by, Hannah and Hank or something equally stupid," Martin rambled, "Took all her stuff, said she wouldn't be comin' back. Load 'a—Hey, where you goin'!"
He couldn't be bothered, cutting off anything further Martin had to say slamming the door behind him.
Miriam hadn't liked to talk about her family, and if he remembered correctly saying 'like' in relation to her feelings towards them was putting it lightly. So she'd had a fall, and what? Broken her leg? Then the two kids came around after something like twenty years to take care of her? He doubted it.
There were eight Hank Lambs in the phone book, twelve Hannas. And that was ignoring the Henrys and Harrisons. He had better luck with Facebook, there was no Hank lamb, but a Henry with a sister named Hannah who looked like they were Miriam's, and didn't know to set their pages to private.
From there it's no trouble to track Henry Lamb down, his place of employment listed right up next to his name.
When Dex managed to track the place down there was a girl sat behind the front desk, furiously entranced by her phone, face pinched with discomfort.
"Henry in?"
"Oh!" The phone comes down on her desk with a crack at the sight of him, her face beet red. "Sorry, I didn't see you there. What can I do for you?"
"Henry Lamb, he still in?" The nameplate on the desk saying April Lou, "April."
"Um... No, I don't believe he is." Flipping her phone up to get a nice view of the shattered screen, pressing the home button to bring the screen back to life to check the time. "He left... Eleven minutes ago."
"I guess I'll have to drop by his place then, he still lives over at..."
"Barrower apartment complex? Yeah. Still there with Gloria." She offered with a strained smile. "Say 'hi' to Gloria for me, will you."
"Sure."
Making an appearance at Henry's doorstep didn't invite a warm welcome, especially when the first words out of his mouth following Henry's greeting was:
"Where's Miriam."
"My Father—"
"Henry? Who's at the door?"
"Just work, Honey, give me a minute."
Dex was forced to take a step back as Henry himself stepped into the hallway and shut the front door behind him for an illusion of privacy.
"So?" He pressed, arms crossed over his chest as he stared Miriam's son down, "Where'd you send her after the accident?"
Henry took a looming step forwards, a pitiful attempt at intimidation on his part.
"He's my father, no matter how little interest he had participating in my life. So I made sure he was set up in a nursing home. You're the foster kid he took in? Where were you when he fell, huh? Did you pay his medical bills?"
"I would have, she deserves better than whatever shit you've managed to scrape off the bottom of your shoe! So. Where. Is. She."
•
"Can I help you, sir?" The lone secretary asked, at last, looking up from her computer screen.
"Yeah, I'm looking for Miriam Lamb."
"Let's see here, " She said turning back to her computer, "Visiting your mother?" She guessed, frowning at the screen. "When was she admitted?"
Leaning forward onto the raised desk edge with his own frown Dex spoke, "March twenty-second, I believe."
The additional information didn't diminish the secretary's sullen expression a bit, seeming to only deepen it further. "Are you sure..." She pauses, seeming to mull over her own words before turning to look him in the eye. "Are you certain she was placed here."
He could see Henry's face in his mind's eye, teeth grit in anger as he finally spit out where he'd thrown Miriam away at.
"—A Robert Lamb."
"Excuse me?"
Clearing her throat awkwardly she repeated herself, "The closest we have is a Robert Lamb, he came in March twenty-second. Like you said—"
"—Miriam did." Of course, that's the kind of thing her kids would do. "Where's Robert Lamb?"
"The second floor, elevators are to your left."
The grimace came naturally at the sight of the grimy control panel, pressing the button for the second floor with his knuckle instead of his fingertip. The second floor was no better, the floors and walls looked clean but the air was stale and smelled off.
"What do you need?" A passing employee asked, seeming to catch is displeasure.
"I'm looking for Robert La—"
"Down that hallway" The man pointed to the left, "Turn left. Then it should be the third door on your right, wheelchair in the corner by the window. Don't expect much." The nurse was gone before he could formulate a reply, the hamper of dirty laundry clicking sharply on the titles in his wake.
Dex found her exactly where the nurse had directed. Miriam sat slumped over in her wheelchair, silver hair buzzed down to just fuzz, and dressed in the same drab getup thin from too many washes he'd seen the other patients dressed in.
The comments the guys down by the convenience store had said when he would stop by as a teenager had always gone ignored. He had no use for their demeaning comments then and in turn, such things had fallen on deaf ears, but they'd come true. Here Miriam sat dead-eyed with her head shaved short and being called Robert instead of her name. The one he'd seen on her license ignored by her bitter kids and complicit staff.
He didn't bother to make a promise that he'd return to the husk at the window. That wasn't Miriam, just as the slab of granite with Dr. Mercer's name on it wasn't her, no matter what anyone said to the contrary.
My favourite flooring makes an appearance (not really), that's a joke you'd get if you saw how much I brood over asbestos vinyl tiles. It's a lot.