Chapter 30 Emily #2
Emily ran across the hall to Eliza, and looking left, saw the infirmary door burst open at the end of the corridor as Matron Jansen emerged, her arm around the shoulders of her single patient, ushering her quickly forward.
The patient was pale, awkwardly trying to tug a shawl around herself.
She was in sock feet. They sped past Emily and Eliza, who both still pressed their hands to their ears, desperate to dampen the terrible, rhythmic clanging that only paused for a few seconds before starting up again.
Eliza nodded to her, and without so much as a backward glance at the stampede of panicked inmates and matrons making their way downstairs, Eliza sprinted toward the open infirmary door.
Emily followed, a nervous cold sweat breaking out on her back as she ran.
Over the threshold, Emily skidded to a halt to get her bearings as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Eliza was already across the room, crouching down in front of Dr. Stone’s office door.
“Turn on the light, I need to see,” she shouted to Emily, who located the switch.
The overheads flickered to life and she wove her way through the maze of beds and over to Eliza, trying to catch her breath.
She watched, face screwed up against the continued noise as the girl squinted into the keyhole, working with a paper clip in each hand.
The noise from the floor above had ceased, but Emily could still hear the prisoners below.
They’d never had a fire drill, and she wondered where they were congregating.
The dining hall, perhaps, though the matrons might risk taking them all outside.
Surely the fire brigade was on its way. Her pulse pounded as she wondered what would happen when the firemen arrived.
Would that extend or cut short the time they had available in Stone’s office?
“How much long—”
“It ain’t a key!” Eliza snapped.
Emily’s finger drummed her own thigh in agitation. “Eliza—”
There was a tinny clink as something fell to the floor. “Damn it!” Eliza swore. “It broke!” She scrambled to pick up the pieces of the paper clip, then threw them away in anger.
Emily’s eyes darted around the infirmary for something small, something metal. Anything they could use to pick the lock…
“Wait! Here!” she gasped, reaching up and pulling the hairpins out of her bun.
“Oh thank Jesus,” Eliza breathed, snatching them.
A full minute later, she grunted, then gasped and withdrew the pins. They were in.
The room was small, with no window. There was a desk and chair in one corner, a spindly table upon which sat a hot plate, teapot and set of cups, and a coat tree with two of Stone’s white jackets hanging a few inches off the floor, hovering like ghosts above an old brass umbrella stand.
And there: the filing cabinet, just where June said it would be.
“Shit,” Eliza said, and Emily’s heart fell. There were four drawers, each with an individual lock. They were labelled:
A-E
F-L
M-S
T-Z
Emily tugged on each in turn, but of course they didn’t budge.
The relentless clang of the fire bell paused in its rhythm, and in the distance, they heard the unmistakable wail of a siren. Panic spiked in Emily’s chest, and for a moment she debated abandoning the operation.
“Which one first?” Eliza began. “We don’t have time fer all a them.”
“Um, M to S,” Emily answered quickly. Her own file would at least tell her something of the drug trial in practice. There would be notes about her treatment, and possibly something more incriminating about the trial itself, the date of infection or some such detail.
Eliza dropped down and began to work at the lock as Emily stood behind her, feeling helpless. The sirens had abated, which meant the firemen were at the prison now.
How much time do we have?
Three or four agonizing minutes later, Eliza let out a hiss of satisfaction as she wrenched the door open.
“Yes! Eliza, well done!” Emily nearly shouted to be heard over the bell.
“Which one next?”
“F to L. I need Annie’s,” Emily said.
“Why—?”
“Just do it, please!”
Emily knelt in front of the now-open drawer, a little squashed between the filing cabinet and Stone’s desk beside it, as Eliza worked on F–L. Emily ran her fingers through the manila folders to R, snatched up her own file and began to read.
It was mostly what she would have expected, but there, in the margin for each treatment log, was the aerosol drug’s name:
Trichloroacetic acid.
She tried to focus on the details as the fire bell hammered her brain. She cursed June; this all would have been so much less stressful with only the distant sounds of a fight to manage instead of this assault to the eardrums.
The second drawer opened faster.
“Always easier once I figure out the first in a set,” Eliza said, stepping aside. Emily shut her own file and sought out Annie’s. It was over an inch thick. She dropped it, and several of the sheets slid out onto the floor.
“Damn it!” Emily scrambled to stuff them back into the folder. She shook her head at her own rattled nerves, and as her eyes slid to the right, her gut flipped.
“Wait, Eliza, there!” She pointed to a thin drawer affixed to the underside of Stone’s desk beside her, which was only visible from her vantage. It had a lock on it. Surely a half-hidden, locked drawer would be where the doctor would keep her most personal or highly sensitive documents.
She swept up Annie’s mess of a file and scooted aside to give Eliza some space in front of the drawer.
“Yeah, that’ll be it, won’t it?” Eliza grinned, then bit her lip and, bending her neck awkwardly beneath the desk, began to pick the lock as Emily opened Annie’s file. As she read, her face grew hot and her fingers cold.
“Emily, I can smell smoke,” Eliza said suddenly, her voice rising on the last word.
“I know. I know,” Emily said absently, still horrified by what she was reading in her friend’s file.
“Wherever the fire is, it’s either getting worse or closer or both!” Eliza screamed.
APPEAL FOR DISCHARGE DENIED 1/23/1960
APPEAL FOR DISCHARGE DENIED 8/16/1958
APPEAL FOR DISCHARGE DENIED 10/4/1955
APPEAL FOR DISCHARGE DENIED 2/10/1952
“EMILY!”
Emily tore her eyes away from Annie’s records to look at Eliza, whose hands had begun to shake. She dropped one of the hairpins and swore.
“I’m leavin’!” Eliza bellowed over the fire alarm. “I ain’t about to die in a brick oven! This wasn’t the deal—”
“Eliza, just wait,” Emily begged, “we’re almost—”
“No!” Eliza backed away from her, toward the door. “Every window is barred up here, I’m gettin’ out. We need to go!”
“I can’t!” Emily shouted back. “I’m—”
“God help ye then,” Eliza said, and bolted out of the office.
“Eliza!” Emily tried to shout, but her voice cracked. She began to cough. The smoke in the air was undeniable now, more than just a distant odour. And more than smoke. There was something chemical about it that choked her.
Her watering eyes went to the drawer beneath Stone’s desk again.
It was only a matter of time before Stone realized Emily and Annie’s files were missing—it would make no difference at this point if the doctor knew her personal files had also been accessed.
Besides, they might go up in flames any minute now, anyway.
She had to retrieve any bulletproof evidence that might exist before it was all destroyed.
She needed something sharp or hard or wedge-shaped to force the drawer open.
She cast around the small room, fighting her panic.
She spotted the umbrella stand beside the door and lunged, withdrawing a long black brolly with a heavy mahogany handle.
She bolted back to Stone’s desk and stood in front of it, coughing.
She hauled the desk away from the wall, then, with a guttural bellow she’d never before produced, overturned it, scattering the stationery, pen cup and other detritus.
Emily lifted the umbrella and, with another almighty roar, brought the handle down hard onto the back of the drawer.
Panting and coughing, she repeated the assault three more times as sweat dripped into her eyes before the drawer gave way with a crack of splintering wood.
Emily threw the umbrella aside and knelt, ripping the pieces of the drawer apart.
With a leap in her chest, she gathered up the lone file inside and tucked it under her arm.
Then she reached into the drawer and pulled out the limited contents; aside from the folder, there was only some cash, a chequebook, and a few personal sundries.
Seizing her own patient file and Annie’s, Emily made for the door, out into the infirmary and the corridor beyond.
Smoke filled the air, and coming from the stairwell, she heard deep male voices: a sound that hadn’t reached her ears since the judge sentenced her six months ago. The firemen were headed to the second floor.
Wheezing, Emily took a moment to shove the files down the front of her dress. Annie’s was thick, and bulged a little, but she had no other option, and hopefully no one would notice the lumps in her dress amid the chaos.
Emily made toward the stairs, then skidded to a stop.
My notes.
She spun and pounded back toward her open cell, dove to the tap and wiggled her fingers in to retrieve the roll of tightly coiled paper. She tucked it into her brassiere, then fled back out the door.
She was at the top of the stairs when she heard muffled screams coming from the psychiatric ward. The gates were open, but all the cell doors were shut. Emily’s insides turned to ice.
Annie!
She ran to the ward and through the iron gates, following the screams, and stopped outside Annie’s cell. Her friend’s terrified brown eyes were in the window, and bulged when she spotted Emily.
“EMILY, HELP!” she screamed, pounding on the door. “We’re locked—”
“Just—just wait!” Emily shouted. “I’m going to get help!” She coughed, and feeling a little sickened, turned away from Annie and her stricken face, back toward the staircase just as the firemen had reached the landing.
“Miss!” one shouted. There were four others on the stairs behind him, all dressed head to toe in their alarming-looking gear: navy-blue coats, hard hats, gloves, and smoke-repellent gas masks. She could hardly see his eyes through the goggles. “What are you doing up here? Get down—”
“There are people!” Emily cried, then doubled over in another coughing fit. “Th—there!” she croaked, pointing toward the psych ward. “They’re locked in!”
He began shouting instructions to his fellows, who all rushed forward through the gates. Emily was rooted to the spot, unable to leave until she saw that Annie was safe.
“Sir, my friend—!”
“The fire is out, miss,” the firefighter shouted over his shoulder. “They aren’t in great danger; we’ll get them out.” Emily’s panic came down a notch. “But the smoke is toxic, it’ll burn your lungs. For God’s sake, get downstairs and outside with the others!”
Emily’s eyes flicked back to the ward, where the firemen were now shouting at the patients to stay back from the doors as they hammered their axes at the locks.
“Go, miss!” the fireman urged, and Emily scrambled down the stairs. She flung herself around the corner. It was freezing down here. To her right, the front doors of the prison were wide open. With a final burst of adrenaline, she sprinted toward them and out into the frigid December air.