“I never stay well for long enough,” Annie said, her voice brittle, bitter.“And Stone says I would need to be stable formonthsbefore she’d talk about discharging me.”
“And do your relapses happen on their own, or because Stone’s put you on some new medication?”
Annie blinked hard, but kept eye contact.She was silent, but Emily knew the answer.So much of what was wrong with the Mercer prison traced back to Eris Stone; the evidence was piling up at her door.
The bell rang its shrill cry.A deafening scrape of chairs and chatter erupted as the women all stood to move on to the next activity in their pointless, gruelling schedules.
“I’ll see you later, Emily,” Annie muttered.“Please be careful with what you’re doing.I beg you.”
Later in the afternoon, Emily was on cleaning duty.They were in the basement today, with assignments for cleaning out the laundry room, boiler room, dank hallways, and the vacant isolation cells.Emily had only ever seen one or two prisoners in there; as far as she had gathered, women in the general population were usually only sent to isolation for violent infractions.Even the Blues were only separated from the psych ward when their behaviour became impossible for the psych matrons to handle with restraints and sedatives.Annie had told Emily she’d been down there just twice.Once during her second month, and the other five years ago when she was on a medication she said gave her horrific thoughts and paranoia, and caused her to physically lash out at the matrons.
“I never want to be sent there again,” she’d said, eyes hollow.“The rats come out at night.They nest in the boiler room.”
As she descended the stairs and felt the temperature drop about five degrees, Emily ruminated, as she so often did, on Annie’s predicament.She had trouble picturing a man who could so swiftly commit his wife—mother to his newborn child—to a psychiatric institution, then leave her there to rot without a backward glance, long after the acute condition had righted itself.It enraged her that the system was set up so that despicable man could commit Annie so easily, and only Dr.Stone could secure her release.Annie had absolutely no control over her present or her future.She was a true prisoner in every sense of the word—of this place, of her own mind,of her former husband.Her body and mind and child all belonged to those who had wronged her.She had nothing that was actually her own.
“You’re late, Radcliffe.”Matron Smith’s high-pitched voice roused Emily from her cloud of rage, and she looked up to see her standing next to the doorway to the laundry room with a mop and bucket, along with Eliza and the other inmates on their shift.
“I’m sorry, Matron Smith,” Emily said, hanging her head in sombre, affected apology.
“For your tardiness, you can have the boiler room with Eliza.”
Emily clenched her teeth as Eliza glared at her.She took the proffered bucket and headed into the laundry room to fill it in the sink.Eliza followed her as the other two women were dispatched to sweep out the isolation cells and hallway.
“Sorry,” Emily muttered under the roar of the water filling the metal bucket.“I’m a bit distracted.Annie—”
“I can’t believe you’re still havin’ breakfast with that Blue every day,” Eliza said, rolling her big green eyes.“She’s no good.”
“She’sfine,” Emily said with a pointed stare.“Nice, even.She’s kinder than most of the other inmates, Blues or not.You should give her a chance.”
“Why?So’s I can go nuts just like her?Have ’er stab me in the neck with that knife you give ’er every day?I seen you do it.Don’t get caught by none o’ the matrons.”
Emily turned off the rusty faucet with an ear-piercing squeak and shook her head.Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Eliza wince.
“What’s the matter?”she asked.“Are you all right?”
“Got some bloody pain in my fanny,” Eliza said.“Burning, itching.”
Emily set the bucket down.
“I’ve had all the vermin before and none of ’em were near this bad,” Eliza continued, unabashed.“Started yesterday.Got bumps and everything.Worse than bedbugs.”
“Eliza, have you been to see Dr.Stone?”Emily ventured.
Eliza shook her head.“No.But I’ll have to, though, maybe after we’re done ’ere.”
“No, I mean did you go see her sometime recently?The past couple of weeks or so?”
She nodded.“Yeah.Went in for a stomach ache, was heaving up my guts from some milk that’d gone off, me and three other girls got hit with it, all had it in our tea, we—”
“And what did Dr.Stone do for you?”Emily interrupted.
Eliza made a face.“Gave me some pink stuff to drink, then I ended up on the table with my legs spread open.”
“Did you ask why?”
“No!”Eliza said, surprised by Emily’s tone.“How many times I gotta tell you, you can’t question shit around here!Sure as hell can’t question the doc.She’d go nuts on ya.”
“I know she would,” Emily said darkly as her skin prickled at the memory of that visit.“That’s part of the problem.”
