Chapter 27 Emily #2
After the factory, Emily was due for what would hopefully be her last treatment in the infirmary, where Stone would sign off that her infection had cleared.
Just before the bell rang to signal the end of the shift, Matron Lockheed swept into the room and over to the desk where the matron on duty sat. After a brief exchange, she stood.
“Matron Lockheed will read out some names. If your name is called, you will accompany her to the infirmary for routine examinations.”
Emily’s eyes snapped to the clipboard in the matron’s hands.
“Irene Fox. Anna Lawrence. Louise Beaumont. With me.”
Irene and Anna were June Jones’s new compatriots, and Louise was one of the girls who had come over from the St. Agnes maternity home back in the summer, due to give birth any day now.
She was built small like Eliza, slim little shoulders and no hips with a huge rounded belly in front.
She looked like a child playing house, with a pillow stuffed beneath her shirt.
No girl that age should be pregnant, and Emily didn’t want to think of how her condition had come about.
“Why them?” June’s voice boomed from behind. Emily turned to face her, along with most of the other women. No one else ever talked back or questioned the matrons, but somehow June always got away with it.
“None of your business, Jones,” the matron on duty said. The bell rang shrilly near the door. “That’s it, clean up and get a move on to your next shift, girls.”
Emily swept up the errant white threads on her workstation, set the thimble and measuring tape in the little tray beside the machine, and got in the queue to return her scissors to the matron, who checked off each inmate’s name before they were allowed to leave the room.
Outside in the hallway, Emily ducked into the bathroom to pee as she puzzled over June’s reaction to her girls getting called to the infirmary.
She washed her hands, then made her way quickly upstairs to the second floor.
June, Anna, and Irene were right at the front of the line outside the infirmary door.
Emily took her place at the back. The little Louise came up the stairs a moment later, clutching the railing for support.
She paused at the top to catch her breath, belly heaving, before falling into line behind Emily, who offered her a small smile.
Emily felt she should say something comforting, but she had no idea what.
She turned again to face the front, leaning one shoulder on the brick wall. Noise from the floor below was drifting up the stairwell. A psych prisoner shouted something from down the hall. Emily wondered what serene silence would feel like, and savoured the idea that it was coming.
The infirmary door opened, and Emily straightened, alert. She strained to see around the heads of the women in front of her. June was at the front, saying something to the matron. She went in, and the door shut with a snap.
Not five minutes later, it opened again, and June sidled out, her face inscrutable.
“Lawrence, Fox, out of line,” the matron said. “Report to your next shift. The doctor doesn’t need to see you.”
Emily sidestepped the girl in front of her for a better view. Irene and Anna smirked at June, who winked almost imperceptibly. Without another word, they scurried off together toward the staircase in June’s wide wake.
It wasn’t until Emily was prone on the infirmary table, preparing herself as Dr. Stone’s face disappeared behind the tent of her legs, that the pieces of what she had just witnessed finally fell into place, jolting her like a car crash.
All through supper that night, Emily tried to engage in conversation with her friends, but her eyes kept roving over to June Jones, Anna, and Irene.
The three were laughing together as they finished their bland shepherd’s pie.
The dish was mostly potato—mashed with water instead of butter—with a thin layer of beef along the bottom and a sad measure of canned peas sprinkled throughout.
Emily had smothered hers in salt and pepper in an attempt to revive it, thinking longingly of her mother’s version.
Not long now, she told herself.
After supper, she found Annie and they headed upstairs together.
Emily had lost track of June on the way out of the dining hall, but soon spotted her on the staircase up to the third floor, where the common room was.
June liked a good time, and often held court at the card table of an evening, playing rummy and Go Fish.
Emily strongly suspected that the madam could hold her own at poker like any male card sharp, but settled for easier games in the absence of other inmates who knew how to play.
“Common room tonight?” Emily asked Annie with a smile. The psychiatric inmates who ate with the general population were also permitted time in the common room on Tuesdays and Fridays. Annie nodded.
June was indeed there, playing solitaire this time as her companions gossiped at a table nearby.
She looked up as Emily and Annie passed, but made no comment, turning back to her game as the other two found a pair of chairs near the pitiful little library shelf, just a dozen battered cast-offs from the local library branch and some churches.
Foot jiggling in anticipation, Emily waited until the room filled up more—the collective noise causing everyone to raise their voices to be heard over the din—before she made her move.
“I’ll be back in a few,” she told Annie, standing. “I just need to go talk to someone for a minute.”
“Who?” Annie asked, looking mildly hurt at being abandoned.
“June Jones.”
Annie stared. “The…madam? Why? You’re not…?” She gaped a little in horror at Emily.
“No, goodness, no. It’s nothing like that,” Emily said. “It’s for…you know. My project. I’ll be right back.”
“Emily—”
But Emily stood, a prickle of guilt tickling her gut as she turned away from Annie and walked casually over to June. She paused, then sat down across from her in the empty chair. June looked up slowly, glowered at her with a defiance laced with something like amusement. “What do you want?”
Emily leaned forward. “Did you pay off Stone to leave your girls alone?”
For the first time, she saw discomfort flash in the madam’s face, a crinkle of a frown around her mouth.
“She’s infecting inmates with VD,” Emily said confidently.
“I can’t imagine that would be good for your business, if your girls brought it back to the house.
” She spat out the last bit, watching to see if shock or doubt would cross June’s face, but she saw none.
There was, however, an icy sheen to her eyes.
“Outside,” June said, setting down her cards with a snap and standing. Emily followed her out of the room, down the deserted hall and around a corner, stopping just beside the stairwell. After making sure no one was around, June turned to face her.
“I think you know,” Emily accused before June could speak. “You know what Stone’s doing and you’ve gotten your girls exempted from the infection. How? And why is Stone doing it?”
“Kid,” June said with a sardonic smile. “Sometimes you seem real smart. And then you ask stupid questions like that. Why does anyone do anything? Money,” she said. “It’s always about money.”
Emily’s eyes widened, mind racing. “So someone’s paying her? To infect the inmates? But why?” She thought of the endless queues, all the girls who worriedly compared experiences on the lancing and the stinging sprays, the pain.
“And then…to treat them.” Emily’s brow crinkled. “Why? And how did you find out?”
June actually rolled her eyes. “I come back here after a summer away, and all of a sudden half the population’s got VD? What, these girls are all rubbing up on each other in the breakfast line?” She scoffed. “I knew there was more to it than that.”
“So Stone is getting paid to treat us?” Emily pressed.
June looked at Emily as though weary of reprimanding a disobedient puppy. “Well, I’ve never seen those aerosols she’s got now, I’ll tell ya that. I know VD, the usual treatments, and I’ve never seen whatever that stuff is.”
Emily recalled the label on the can.
Trichloroacetic acid—trial preparation.
“So it’s new?” Emily asked, more to herself than June. “Then…” The penny dropped with a clink. “She’s testing it. A drug trial. Right?”
June licked her lips, but didn’t answer.
“For whom?” Emily demanded. “Why is she doing it?”
But June was already backing away. “Jesus, honey,” she said. “I’ve never heard anybody ask that question as much as you do. You’re the only one who gives a shit why. What did I just tell you?”
Emily watched her as she began to stride slowly backward down the dimly lit hall, big hips swaying beneath her faded brown dress.
“Money,” Emily said.
The ghost of a smile flitted across June’s face. “Gotta get that money, honey!”
As she backed away, another thought flashed for Emily. “And why is she so vicious? What’s going on there?”
June’s eyes narrowed and she shook her head. “That one’s got nothing to do with money. And I’d advise you not to dig too deep on it, reporter lady. She’s dangerous.”
Emily took a step toward June. “Will you help me with this?”
June’s red eyebrow arced. “I thought I just did.”
She disappeared around the corner and for a fleeting moment, Emily wondered why she was being so forthright.
But then she remembered that June could expose her at any moment, get her thrown out of the prison—or worse.
Emily might have sussed out June’s under-the-table accord with the doctor, but if it were to get out, it wouldn’t be the madam suffering for the bribe—it would be Dr. Stone.
Emily gave a half laugh. June didn’t need to care how much Emily knew.
She still held the cards, and that was all that mattered to her.
What is going on in that office? Emily wondered, her mind jumping ahead to what lay beyond Stone’s door, right beneath her feet on the floor below.
There had to be a paper trail of some kind for this drug trial, whatever it was.
Or at least enough detail to fit the pieces together with some accuracy. Enough for the story.
A shiver skipped down Emily’s body, goosebumps erupted on her bare arms.
The better story. The real story. The one she’d had no idea was even lurking beneath the surface of all the truths of the whistleblowing inmate’s note.
If Eris Stone was not only abusive but actually corrupt, that was the real scoop.
And—another tingle crept from the back of her neck downward—if the corruption led back to the government’s front door, for funding a vermin-infested, dilapidated institution where women were subjected to this kind of horrific abuse for profit… that was headline, national news.
But this wasn’t just about Emily’s career anymore.
This wasn’t about a promotion or an office with a window, her name in the byline.
It wasn’t even about escaping a marriage she didn’t want in favour of the life she did.
This was about her existence as a woman, and Annie’s and Eliza’s and all the girls who were imprisoned here—or could be—because of that law.
She’d come to know them now, knew that they had lives and dreams that were constantly overshadowed and ruined by the fear of living in this system where women could be imprisoned and abused and even tortured on the government’s dime.
Fire burned in her gut. She needed to break this story. For all of them. It was a moral imperative now.
She needed to see the patient files, Dr. Stone’s personal records. Anything concrete she could get her hands on to prove the drug trial, the abuse of power.
She needed to break into Stone’s office.