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Over and over to himself he mumbled, “Wasn’t the lavender. Wasn’t the…it was only the…I saw the. I don’t…I can’t…where was the paper? Where were the plans? What was the plan? What?”
The shadow of Edwin’s head crept across the wall and when the doctor spotted it, he stopped himself and sat up straighter. “Parker, I’ve had a little bit of an accident. I’ve made a little bit of a mess. ”
“Do you need any help, sir?”
“Help? I suppose I don’t. If I only knew…if I could only remember. ” The doctor slid down off the stool, stumbling as his foot clipped the seat’s bottom rung. “Parker? Where’s the window? Didn’t we have a window?”
“Sir,” Edwin said, taking the old man’s arm and guiding him over to his bed, in a nook at the far end of the laboratory. “Sir, I think you should lie down. Mrs. Criddle says supper comes in an hour. You just lie down, and I’ll bring it to you when it’s ready. ”
“Supper?” The many-lensed goggles he wore atop his head slid, and their strap came down over his left eye.
He sat Dr. Smeeks on the edge of his bed and removed the man’s shoes, then his eyewear. He placed everything neatly beside the feather mattress and pulled the doctor’s pillow to meet his downward-drooping head.
Edwin repeated, “I’ll bring you supper when it’s ready,” but Dr. Smeeks was already asleep.
And in the laboratory, over by the stairs, the whirring and clicking of a clockwork boy was clattering itself in circles, or so Edwin assumed. He couldn’t remember, had he left Ted on the stairs? He could’ve sworn he’d pressed the switch to deactivate his friend. But perhaps he hadn’t.
Regardless, he didn’t want the machine bounding clumsily around in the laboratory–not in that cluttered place piled with glass and gadgets.
Over his shoulder Edwin glanced, and saw the doctor snoozing lightly in his nook; and out in the laboratory, knocking its jar-lid knees against the bottom step, Ted had gone nowhere, and harmed nothing. Edwin picked Ted up and held the creation to his face, gazing into the glass badger eyes as if they might blink back at him.
He said, “You’re my friend, aren’t you? Everybody makes friends. I just made you for real. ”
Ted’s jaw creaked down, opening its mouth so that Edwin could stare straight inside, at the springs and levers that made the toy boy move. Then its jaw retracted, and without a word, Ted had said its piece.
After supper, which Dr. Smeeks scarcely touched, and after an hour spent in the laundry room sharing Ted with Mrs. Williams, Edwin retreated to his cot and blew out the candle beside it. The cot wasn’t wide enough for Edwin and Ted to rest side-by-side, but Ted fit snugly between the wall and the bedding and Edwin left the machine there, to pass the night.
But the night did not pass fitfully.
First Edwin awakened to hear the doctor snuffling in his sleep, muttering about the peril of inadequate testing; and when the old man finally sank back into a fuller sleep, Edwin nearly followed him. Down in the basement there were no lights except for the dim, bioluminescent glow of living solutions in blown-glass beakers–and the simmering wick of a hurricane lamp turned down low, but left alight enough for the boy to see his way to the privy if the urge struck him before dawn.
Here and there the bubble of an abandoned mixture seeped fizzily through a tube, and when Dr. Smeeks slept deeply enough to cease his ramblings, there was little noise to disturb anyone.
Even upstairs, when the wee hours came, most of the inmates and patients of the sanitarium were quiet–if not by their own cycles, then by the laudanum spooned down their throats before the shades were drawn.
Edwin lay on his back, his eyes closed against the faint, blue and green glows from the laboratory, and he waited for slumber to call him again. He reached to his left, to the spot between his cot and the wall. He patted the small slip of space there, feeling for a manufactured arm or leg, and finding Ted’s cool, unmoving form. And although there was scarcely any room, he pulled Ted out of the slot and tugged the clockwork boy into the cot after all, because doll or no, Ted was a comforting thing to hold.
Part Two
Morning came, and the doctor was already awake when Edwin rose.
“Good morning sir. ”
“Good morning, Edwin,” the doctor replied without looking over his shoulder. On their first exchange of the day, he’d remembered the right name. Edwin tried to take it as a sign that today would be a good day, and Dr. Smeeks would mostly remain Dr. Smeeks–without toppling into the befuddled tangle of fractured thoughts and faulty recollections.
He was standing by the hurricane lamp, with its wick trimmed higher so that he could read. An envelope was opened and discarded beside him.
“Is it a letter?” Edwin asked.
The doctor didn’t sound happy when he replied, “It’s a letter indeed. ”
“Is something wrong?”
“It depends. ” Dr. Smeeks folded the letter. “It’s a man who wants me to work for him. ”
“That might be good,” Edwin said.
“No. Not from this man. ”
