June 21, 1961
Day 2 (181 to go)
“Now lie back, put your feet in the stirrups, and stay still.”
Emily swallowed and complied with the prison physician, Dr.Eris Stone.She was a short woman in every respect: her stature, hair, tone, nails, temper.She was clipped and efficient to the point of being disconcerting, and wore a white coat over a black dress.Her hair was black, and her eyes were dark in a pale face.She was as colourless as the prison itself.
The smell of bleach from the sheet beneath Emily filled her nostrils as she stared up at the ceiling, hands clenched together on her abdomen.Through her trepidation about the medical exam, she thought of her grandmother, how she smelled of bleach until the day she finally stopped working at the Royal York laundry.Emily had always wondered whether the years of exposure to all the chemicals were responsible for the asthma and lung troubles that now plagued her nana.
Emily gasped and her focus was jerked back to the present as something cold and hard pressed up against her vagina.
“What is that?”she demanded, alarmed.She’d never been with a man.No one had ever touched her in such an intimate, sensitive place.
“The genital exam,” Dr.Stone said.
“But what is that—”
“Do not speak, Radcliffe,” the doctor snapped.“It will only make the procedure more difficult for me.Stay still, or I shall be forced to employ the restraints.”
Emily clenched her teeth, eyes falling on the leather strap near her wrist.There was one on each side.Then she gasped as pain shot through her privates, a sort of pain she’d never experienced, not even during her worst periods.There was a metallic sound akin to screws being tightened.She strained her neck to try to see, but her view was blocked by the white sheet tenting her knees, which began to shake.
“Inmate, I saidkeep still,” Dr.Stone growled.Emily set her head back down, willing herself not to cry out.Why is this necessary?she wondered frantically.Her alleged crime had nothing to do with her body.Why was a genital exam required at all?
The doctor continued poking around, jabbing at her and stretching her skin to the point that Emily feared injury.Blinking back tears drawn from the pain and indignity, she held her breath and did her best to focus on the ceiling until, mercifully, it was over.
“Get dressed and return to your duties,” Dr.Stone said.“I’ll see you again in a month.”She gathered the metal tools and rolled them away on a cart toward the sink.
“Why?”Emily demanded.
“Routine exam.”Dr.Stone disappeared into her office at the back of the infirmary.
Emily sat up, breath coming in shallow spurts.She slid off the table and shuffled to the hook on the wall where she’d been told to hang her uniform.She tore off the hospital gown and threw it to the floor, then dressed hastily, desperate to get the hell out of there.
In the corridor outside, she pressed her back against the brick wall, mind reeling as the ache between her legs persisted.She took a deep breath, then, driven by a trickling sensation, scooted around the corner to the inmates’ washroom.She sat down on the toilet and lifted her skirt to check her underwear, which was heavily spotted with blood.Her entire body went cold.
What did she do to me?
But there was no time to dwell on it; she was due downstairs for cleaning duty.She directed her attention instead to making a mental list of all the details of the infirmary and the horrendous experience.But she stopped short then, horrified at the prospect of sharing with the world the invasive and degrading thing Dr.Stone had just done, the thing she didn’t even have a word for.It hadn’t fully occurred to her that things might happento herat the Mercer that she wouldn’t necessarily want repeated or shared.She’d thought mostly of the things she would witness being done to the other inmates.
She exhaled in a little puff, recalling what she’d told herself the day before: She must try to welcome each event for the sake of the article.Perhaps there was a way she could report on this to simplysuggestthe more personal details.She would speak with Doris about it.But right now, she was already late for duty.She wadded up some crunchy toilet paper for a makeshift sanitary pad and left the washroom, encountering few other inmates on her way.
As Emily headed for her cleaning shift down on the main floor, the prison throbbed with sounds of institutionalized life, much like a school.A constant hum of female conversation was peppered with barked instructions and admonitions from matrons.Doors slammed and creaked, the telephone rang in the warden’s office near the main entry.
Emily wound her way down the echoing staircase and crossed the X-junction of the main hall to the kitchen doors.A handful of inmates was already there and looked up at her when she entered.
“Emily Radcliffe,” she said to the matron on duty.“I was called to the infirmary, but I’m meant to be here now.”
The matron was hardly older than Emily herself, but her features were strained and tired.Her blond hair was pulled back in a bun and her apron was stained in front.
“Emily Radcliffe?”she said, sparing Emily half a glance before consulting a clipboard.“You’re new.First time on shift?”
“No.I cleaned yesterday, but it was in the basement.”
“Ah, you been promoted already?”one of the other inmates asked, smirking.Emily detected a slight Irish accent.She was just a girl, really,hardly older than sixteen.She was a tiny little thing with strawberry-blond hair, bony with a sharply defined chin and high cheekbones, like one of the fairies inA Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Enough, Eliza,” the Matron reprimanded wearily, as though this wasn’t the first time she’d heard the complaint.
“What?The basement’s the worst!”
