Trichloroacetic acid—trial preparation
“Radcliffe!”The voice shocked Emily into nearly dropping the can, which she hastily put back on the cart with a betraying clatter.She forced her face into neutrality and began to undress.
Dr.Stone stepped slowly forward, dark eyes glittering in that eerily pale face.
“Do not touch the materials,ever.They are none of your concern.”
“Yes, Dr.Stone,” Emily answered mechanically.
The doctor took a seat and Emily was about to climb up onto the table, but hesitated.The sheet was damp in a patch down near the end, from the previous patient’s exam.
“Is this a fresh sheet?”she asked.
Dr.Stone looked up at her, slowly.She paused in pulling on her examination gloves.“Excuse me?”
“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’sclearlydirty,” 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 totype,” 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.Weare 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 thatAnnie’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.
