But June shook her head.“Gone.Stone tossed your cell the morning after Annie died and found them under the mattress.Lizzie was listening, watching from her cell door.And before she got sacked, Carnegie told me Stone burned them.”
Emily’s heart fell, but there was nothing to be done.Maybe they could find some other way to prove Stone’s actions, but the important thing now was getting the hell out of this prison.
“What aboutmynotes?”she asked suddenly.
Silence.“What notes?”
“I’ve been taking notes almost since I arrived, writing them on toilet paper and hiding them in the tap in my cell.”
June and Eliza’s mouths fell open.Rose cackled.
“Lizzie didn’t say anything about that,” June answered.
“I have to check,” Emily insisted, as her mind finally zoomed in on the situation.This was it.This was her escape.It was happening.“I need those notes, if they’re still there.”
June took a deep breath but nodded.“All right.Let’s see if we can get up to the second floor first, then out the back door.Eliza, stick with us, but let Emily do the talking, because we got to convince these cops she’s the prison doctor.”
“Yer still gonna hold up yer bargain, right?”Eliza demanded.“That I can come work at yer place?”
“Yes,” June said.“As soon as you’re out.You have my word.”
Eliza nodded, visibly relieved.“But how are we gonna get you out with ’er?”she asked, indicating Emily.There was a moment’s pause as allfour women looked from one to the other, then June’s eyes landed on Rose.On her knife.
“Can I have that?”she asked Rose, who hesitated, but handed it over.
A policeman shouted at some unseeable inmate at the top of the staircase as June held her left hand out flat.Emily sucked her breath in through her teeth as she watched June slice into her own palm.
“June—!”
“Yer feckin’ crazy,” Eliza said, matter of fact.Rose chuckled darkly and accepted the knife back.June grimaced, then palmed the side of her face, her temple, up into the freckles on her flaming hairline, then brought it down her neck for good measure.
“There,” she said, meeting Emily’s eyes.“I got hit in the head, bleeding like hell.Tell them you need to get me to the hospital, and say it with authority.Convincethem.I know you can do this, kid.’
Emily swallowed the lump in her throat and fought to latch on to the bead of excitement in her belly instead as she ascended the stairs beside June, Stone’s starchy white coat billowing out from her hips.After months of this drudgery, days in the hole, June Jones, of all people, had orchestrated her escape.
They emerged into the main corridor upstairs, right at the X-junction, and Emily struggled to take in all that she was seeing and hearing.It was the same prison, but it was as though someone had let a pack of wild animals loose in the corridors.Pieces of furniture littered the floor, a battlefield of splintered wooden legs.There were smears and muck on the walls—remnants of the shepherd’s pie, she thought.Women were running to and fro, blue and brown dresses alike, some cackling with glee and frenzy and others with pinched, angry faces.One of the pregnant girls from the shuttered maternity home hurled a dining chair at a raging policeman, and Emily’s jaw fell open.Nearly all of the women turned to look at June and Emily—who suddenly felt very conspicuous, both because she was sporting Stone’s white coat, and because she knew these women were all aware now of her true identity.
She swallowed hard, and she and June stepped forward.She was vaguely aware of Eliza behind them, though, rather ominously, Rose seemed to have melted into the ether along with her knife.
Suddenly, another woman was in front of them.Thelma.She paused, chest heaving, then smirked at Emily, raised an eyebrow, and bolted away.Emily watched, her senses overloaded by the chaos unfolding in all directions, as Thelma darted across the hall toward the fire alarm.It was a pull-rod that ran a thin red pole all the way up the wall to the alarm several feet above their heads.
“You better get us the hell out of here,Doctor!”Thelma shouted, then yanked on the rod.
The bell began to peal its deafening rhythm.Thelma grinned maliciously and ran off into the fray, pursued by a policeman, leaving Emily, Eliza, and June covering their ears.The noise was twice as loud down here as it had been in Stone’s office the last time it went off.It added significantly to the distraction they were all working to create for Emily’s escape, but it also meant the fire brigade would be there soon.
June was clearly thinking along the same lines.“Go!Upstairs!Now!”
They ran as fast as they could, and found the second floor nearly deserted.It had been recreation hour, so the cell doors were open.Emily hurried to her cell and found it in a state of disarray; the mattress was on the floor, the chamber pot on its side, lid beside it.Just as she had the night of the fire, Emily darted to the tap and, with a surge of relief, found the roll of paper notes.It had not been discovered.Shoving it into her brassiere, she returned to June, who was speaking with Lizzie in the cell next door.Emily looked in to find Lizzie sitting on her bed, holding Peggy to her with her hands over her ears as tears poured down Peggy’s face.
“I’m so sorry,” Emily shouted over the bell, shaking her head.She felt wretched about what they were putting Peggy through.“I’m sorry.”
But Lizzie’s calm brown eyes met Emily’s, and in them she found the forgiveness she needed.“Just get us all out of here, Emily.Please.Go.Go!” she urged, and Emily, June, and Eliza made for the stairs.
“We need to find the cop in charge!”June said loudly in her ear as they reached the landing of the main floor.
Emily nodded, then picked a direction, turning toward the dining hall.They looked in as they passed, and Emily’s guess was confirmed.The riot had clearly begun as some sort of food fight, combined with furniture destruction.Several of the women and police were clustered in here, engaged in too many stand-offs and battles for Emily to fully process it all.But she gasped at the vision of Gertrude, who was standing on one of the remaining dining tables, taunting a police officer below and dancing out of his reach as he took a swing at her ankles with his rod.She looked up at Emily with surprised triumph on her face, and the cop turned, too.His brow furrowed at June.
“Hey!”he shouted.“Jones!What—”
