Thanks for continuing to read my story!

Thank you PhantomBove, Batty Dings, Mominator124, EvaLark, amandarhoads1, Child of Dreams, WolfShadow1, MrsDianaBlack, Crol6425, peanutpup, and the guest for reviewing my last chapter! I appreciate it.

Note: One of the reviewers asked a very fair question regarding the open way the "trio" discuss their plans for the Shah/Khanum. I added details to the last chapter to explain why they are comfortable doing this. You can find it right before Christine's "genius suggestions" :)

Note 2: Another shortie, but next chapter will be much longer.

Erik

Chapter 23

The Doctor

Marie Perrault was ill.

At first, it wasn't anything dire - simply a chest cold, it seemed - but when the fever hit and she struggled to get out of bed, even my mother grew concerned. Thinking back, I truly feel she was merely worried because losing Marie would mean being left with only me, but I digress.

My mother did the unthinkable: She went into the town that shunned her and asked for help. Not the common folk of the village, of course, but the doctor. He, as expected, turned her away, claiming that he simply had too many patients to look after - but he pointed her in the direction of a new doctor in town, a fairly young man who'd only just arrived a week ago and didn't yet have any patients (and, as I'd learn later, didn't actually need any, as he'd inherited his parents' large sum of wealth and only chose the occupation to pass the time).

Pierre Gamache.

She found his place of work. He naturally kept to himself and didn't yet know of the monstrous boy and his cursed mother, so when he met her, saw her beauty, he was smitten. He agreed to come and help - free of charge. All of this I'd overhear in quiet conversations in the weeks to come.

He met me while under the assumption that my mother had no children - this wasn't far off from the truth. I wasn't my mother's son. I was Marie's. I always had been.

So when he heard me greet my mother as Mother, saw me lying maskless next to Marie, my nanny wheezing in every breath, he was faced with two shocks:

The woman he was now very interested in had the added baggage of an existing child.

The child looked exactly like a living corpse.

Monsieur Gamache's brown eyes went wide, his face cloud-white.

My mother flew into a rage.

She pulled me from the bed, screaming at me to put my mask on.

Marie didn't even wake up.

Shaking, I did as she asked. I went to my own bed, sitting against the wall, my knees against my chest.

The doctor saw to Marie. He conducted tests on her, all while she slept.

Pneumonia.

She had pneumonia.

Sometimes people recovered.

And sometimes they didn't.

I closed my eyes.

I hoped that this was just another nightmare too.

At first, the doctor went home every night.

But after two weeks, he started staying.

He started staying in my mother's room.

I didn't know, honestly, what they did in there. Obviously, I knew they slept - but sometimes I would hear what sounded like wailing from the room when I went through the house to get a glass of water late at night. I would hear her yelling his name, him returning the gesture with her name - Madeleine.

Perhaps my mother really was distraught over Marie's illness. Perhaps the doctor was too. But what a strange way to grieve - by shouting each other's names and moaning.

Now that Marie was severely afflicted - and not getting better - I took on the task of cooking and cleaning. I made enough food for the four of us - I didn't like Monsieur Gamache's presence, but he was helping Marie get better, so I included him in my measuring of ingredients. I couldn't purchase groceries, so he took on the task. He never handed me the food directly - he never liked meeting my gaze. I'd find bags on the counter ready for me.

I never ate with them. I took my meal - generally a soup of some kind, as that was all I knew, really, how to make - as well as Marie's to my bedroom. I helped her eat it, sometimes feeding her directly if she was too feverish and in pain to even lift a hand.

She'd taken care of me all these years, so I would do the same for her.

At around the three week mark, the doctor began saying that he wasn't sure Marie would recover at all.

I prayed. I prayed every night that she would. My stomach was in absolute knots. I continued cooking and cleaning because it was helping me keep my mind off of what was rapidly becoming the inevitable, but I couldn't eat the food I made. I could barely sleep at night either.

At three-and-a-half weeks, I heard him speaking to my mother in the dining room.

He said that he wanted to marry her.

He said that he wanted to start fresh with her.

That though he'd only just moved here, he was willing to leave and go somewhere else. He had family in Toulouse - and it was beautiful there.

But he wanted it to be only them.

To start a family from scratch.

He said he knew someone who could take me - someone who would be very happy to take me.

I went to bed that night, bitterly glad that if I lost Marie as well as Sasha, I would at the very least be given to someone who wanted me there.

At the four-week mark, Marie wouldn't wake up.

She felt cold to the touch, and she wasn't breathing.

I called for my mother, for the doctor.

The doctor ran up. He checked her.

Dead.

She was dead.

Marie was gone.

I'd been so...calm up until now.

I didn't know how I'd been calm up until now.

I think there was a small piece of me that had held hope that she'd survive. Marie had been a constant in my life since the moment I was born.

But now-

Now she was gone.

And I was alone.

Truly alone in the world.

And the worst part was that I was responsible.

If I hadn't insisted on burying Sasha, she wouldn't have stood in the rain.

And if she hadn't stood in the rain, she wouldn't have gotten sick.

I screamed.

I picked up the bedside lamp and threw it against the wall, breaking it.

I went to the ground and pounded at the floor at my side with my fists and feet, tears streaming down my face as I made inhuman noises.

I ripped off my mask, feeling like I had a lack of air, my chest and throat feeling tight. I screamed until my vocal cords were raw.

I had so much grief and I had nowhere to put it, and that was making me feel absolutely insane.

My mother was backed up into a corner.

She feared me; she'd never comforted me and certainly wouldn't now.

There was every possibility that no one ever would again.

I closed my eyes, sobbing.

I opened them again with a gasp of surprise as a sharp pain went into my arm.

I looked down at it, to see the doctor pushing a needle connected to a tube of liquid into my limb.

I was about to ask him, through my tears and wails, what he was doing.

But the world began to slow down, become less defined. I felt suddenly quite happy, felt the desperate need to sleep. I forgot what I'd been crying about at all.

My eyes shut a second time and I drifted away from consciousness altogether.