Chapter 25 Emily #2
“There’s a mark on the sheet,” Emily said, pointing. Her nerves jangled, but she pressed on anyway, spying an opportunity to see how the doctor would react. Also, she was angry. “That doesn’t seem very sanitary. Especially when so many girls are dealing with disease.”
Stone stared at Emily as though she’d just asked to have her shoes licked clean by the doctor. “The sheet is changed at intervals adequate enough to maintain the health of the inmates,” she said, once again sounding as though she were regurgitating an instruction manual.
“It’s clearly dirty,” Emily said. “It’s wet. Look. Last time there was a hair on it.”
But Dr. Stone did not look. Her eyes remained locked on Emily.
“Up on the table, Radcliffe,” she said softly, “or there will be consequences, I assure you.”
One of the patients in the beds behind the privacy screen cleared her throat. Emily didn’t want to break eye contact first, but did anyway. Reluctantly, she shifted her body up onto the table, ensuring her gown was pulled down far enough to cover the wet spot on the sheet.
The doctor pulled the cart over and reached for the can and scalpel.
She treated the warts as Emily stared at the mottled, water-damaged ceiling.
There was a spiderweb in the upper corner of the room that she’d taken to monitoring, to see how long it would be before someone noticed and took a broom to it.
She held her breath as she heard the metallic click of that horrible tool, the pressure and pinch as it was inserted.
She tried to take her focus off the pain, wondered how often the infirmary got cleaned.
And by whom? It occurred to her that she’d never been set to cleaning duty here. She would need to ask the other girls.
And then, without warning, there was a jab of something deep in her belly and everything from her ribs to her knees felt as though it were on fire from the inside out. She writhed, sobbing as tears spilled down her temples.
“What are you doing?!” she cried, feet pressing hard into the stirrups. Her legs were trembling. “Stop it! Stop it!” But Dr. Stone didn’t stop.
Emily didn’t know how much longer it went on. Maybe seconds, maybe minutes.
When it finally ceased, she was disoriented, aching and terrified. She felt a violent tug between her legs as the tool was removed. Relief only barely tempered the lingering shock.
“I hear you’ve been taking it upon yourself to teach other inmates how to type,” Dr. Stone said, standing up from her stool.
“You will quit doing so immediately. The only lessons these women are capable of learning are simple and painful. They are like animals.” She leaned in now, her face inches from Emily, who wished she weren’t lying down.
“And despite your delusions, Radcliffe, you are no different. Do not think for a moment that you are in control here. We are in control.”
Emily nodded, swallowing hard.
“I’ve just taught you a little of what childbirth feels like,” Stone went on quietly.
“Labour pain, from a dilated cervix. Just like this. Keep that in mind, should you ever take it into your head to pollute the population with your deficient offspring. This is what it will feel like. Hopefully worse.” Her eyes lingered on Emily’s.
“Perhaps this will make you think twice about procreating, and about your little typing class. I do not want to hear of you doing it again. Your next exam with me will reflect your behaviour in the interim.”
She stood and disappeared to the other side of the privacy screen. Emily released her breath as a sob crept up her throat. She blinked hard at the ceiling as the word floated on her vision, the word that would be a headline all its own in the middle of her article.
TORTURE
The following Wednesday, Emily was sitting at breakfast with Annie.
As always, Gertrude, Lizzie, Peggy, Eliza, and a couple of other women were at another table together off near the doors.
Emily had told them that Annie’s true nature wasn’t what rumour and malice had chalked it up to be, but the other women hadn’t taken up her invitation to sit with them.
Despite her assurances, there was still a stigma attached to the Blues, even the few like Annie who were permitted to engage with the broader prison population.
It’s like they think insanity is contagious, Emily thought.
Annie, though, had been doing better lately. She’d confided to Emily that her depression often became more acute as her son Gregory’s birthday approached each year. It was coming up in a couple of weeks, but this year, she’d said, she felt stronger, better able to face it.
“Are you all right?” she asked Emily now, abandoning her lighthearted report of her chat with Matron Carnegie about the matron’s recent misadventure with a mouse at the bottom of her wardrobe.
“No, actually, I’m not, Annie,” Emily said.
“What is it?”
Emily had spent the past several days unable to think about much besides Eris Stone and her experience in the infirmary.
The excruciating pain had faded almost instantly after Stone removed the tools, but her abhorrence of Stone’s decision to torture her, to “teach her a lesson,” was lingering like a malady.
She still couldn’t quite believe it had happened.
That it had confirmed, once again, one of the Incorrigible note’s allegations.
Perhaps the biggest one: that the doctor was, in fact, evil.
“Something happened with Stone, in the infirmary,” she began in a low tone.
“What was it?”
TORTURE
Emily closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them into Annie’s concerned face.
“I saw a side of her that was uh…truly disturbing. Before, she was mean and dismissive. But this time she hurt me. Very deliberately. As though she were enjoying it,” Emily finished.
Her legs pressed together and she began to tap her thigh. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
She looked to her friend, wondering if Annie had.
“Dr. Stone is no one to trifle with,” Annie said seriously. “I’m afraid of her half the time, even when I think she might be trying to help me. There’s a darkness in her that’s just…” She swallowed, eyes wide.
“I know that now,” Emily began, “Really, I do. But I need to understand her. I think she infected me with something, too. I need to know why.”
“She’s a horrid woman. I don’t know if there is any explanation.”
“Well I need one,” Emily snapped as the pain from her warts surged. “I’m sorry,” she added, quieter. “I’m not feeling well and…”
Annie reached out, her hand warm on Emily’s arm. Emily looked into Annie’s eyes, and in that moment of true connection, she felt close to tears.
“Why do you care so much?” Annie asked. “She’s not worth understanding. Can’t you just wait out your sentence, then put her behind you? This is just how it is here, Emily. There’s no fixing it.”
Emily looked into Annie’s big blue eyes.
She was sure they had once been soft, but had been hardened by all that was done to her by her husband, by this prison.
Emily longed to explain who she really was, what she was trying to do.
After all, Annie had entrusted Emily with her own deep secrets. Perhaps it was time.
Emily glanced around the room, making sure no one was watching them, but the inmates at the other tables were focused on their food and conversations, the matrons monitoring the room in a half-hearted way. Still, she shifted her chair a little closer to Annie, and leaned forward.
“We’re friends, right?” she asked.
Annie nodded, smiled. “Yes.”
“And I can trust you?”
Her smile faltered a little then, replaced with a shadow of concern. “Yes. Of course.”
Emily took a deep breath. “I’m a journalist,” she whispered. “For a magazine. I’m here to expose the story of how the inmates are treated.”
Annie’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“I know,” Emily said, keeping her voice quiet. “I know. But I’m still me. I’m still your friend. I just wasn’t sent here for the reason I told you before.”
“You’re here voluntarily?” Annie breathed. “But this is so dangerous, Emily!”
Emily nodded. “Yes. But I’ll be out in December, and then I’ll write this story. I’ll tell people what happened to you, if you’ll let me. They need to know the truth of how women are treated here.”
“Who does?” Anne asked, confused.
“The public! The government that funds this place—barely,” she added.
Annie’s mouth opened and shut again as she tried to absorb the revelation.
“But…no one cares about us. Not even our families,” she said, eyes watering.
“We’re a bunch of lunatics and criminals and…
prostitutes.” She whispered the last word, eyes darting around the room.
They fell on June, then shifted back to Emily.
“I’m going to make them care,” Emily stressed.
“So…” Annie stuttered. “How does this work?”
Relief flooded Emily. Annie knew, and was on her side. She glanced at the clock above the door. They didn’t have long, but she might have enough time to enlist her help.
“I’m just here to observe, really. I’m taking note of what I see, what the women and girls tell me about how they ended up here, and what they’ve experienced.
And I’m experiencing it myself, first-hand,” she added.
“I need to talk to the other girls, try to get a bit more detail about their visits to Stone, how they ended up infected with whatever this is. And I want to know how and why you’re still here, Annie,” she said emphatically.
“You seem perfectly sane to me. Can’t you try to get a clean bill of health from Stone, and get released? ”
Annie’s eyes welled with tears, and Emily felt the keen sting of guilt in her chest. Her friend shook her head.
“I never stay well for long enough,” Annie said, her voice brittle, bitter. “And Stone says I would need to be stable for months before she’d talk about discharging me.”