“I’m sorry to hear that,” Annie said.
“How are you?”Emily asked, changing the subject.“You seem bright today.”
“Well,” Annie said, “I meant to tell you; I’ve found myself with more energy and a clearer mind than ever since Dr.Stone stopped the electrotherapy a few days ago.And that drug she’s got me on now…Ip—Iproniazid?I think that’s what it’s called…It’s fairly new, she says, but I think it’s helping.I really do.”
Emily studied Annie.This latest medicationdidseem to be having a positive effect on Annie’s nervous debility.Would Stone allow her to stay on it?If it did indeed bear such a positive result in her behaviour, there would be no further justification at all for her continued incarceration.But then, Emily thought with a surge of anger, there was no option or mechanism for Annie to plead her own case for discharge.Annie’s life and liberty were utterly at Dr.Stone’s mercy.
The end-of-meal bell clanged and the usual deafening scrape of chairs sounded as a hundred and twenty women stood to head off to their pointless pursuits.She and Annie exited the hall with the chattering swarm.They inched forward in the crowd until it began to thin out as the bodies moved off in different directions.Annie was dragging her feet as they approached the psychiatric wing.It was her bath day, something Emily knew she wasn’t looking forward to.The psych prisoners had their own bathroom at the end of the wing; it was smaller than the regular prison population’s bathrooms, but the experience was even more unpleasant.There was never any warm water, Annie said, even for the first bath of the day.The matrons ran it cold, saying the Blues were too deep in their insanity to even notice water temperature, and couldn’t truly appreciatecreature comforts of any kind.The more violent psych inmates were wrestled, screaming and sometimes bound, into the large copper tub and scrubbed with a horsehair brush until their skin nearly bled.Annie, at least, was spared the worst of that sort of treatment, as she was able to clean her own skin with a bar of soap without incident.
Inmates weren’t supposed to touch one another, so Emily didn’t embrace Annie as she left her at the gates of the wing, but she wanted to.There was a chance that Emily would be caught during the course of the burglary that night, and she assumed that would precipitate her immediate unmasking and ejection from the prison.This could possibly be the last time she saw Annie, though she hoped, for several reasons, that that wouldn’t be the case.If tonight’s mission was successful, she might just have enough evidence against Stone to have the dreadful woman removed from the Mercer entirely.With Stone gone and the administration under review, Annie might stand a better chance for release, and Emily would vouch for her in whatever way she could.
She did her best to focus now on the task ahead.She was excited, in a way, at the thrill of doing something so daring.At any rate, the decision was made, and the thing had to be done.
At eight o’clock that night, Emily lingered around the corner from the infirmary in a spot that allowed her to see both the psych-wing gate and the entrance to the inmates’ bathroom at the far end of the south corridor.It wasn’t busy; most of the inmates were now in a tidy line for the bath or had made their way upstairs to the recreation room.Emily could already hear the noise on the floor above.She soon spotted Eliza coming downstairs from her third-floor cell.The girl skittered up to Emily with those short strides of hers, running her hands along the front of her apron.
“Do you know where June is?”Emily asked her quietly.
Eliza shook her head.“No.S’okay, though.She knows how to handle things.”
Emily cocked her head in reluctant agreement.“I just don’t like not knowing exactly what she’s planning to do, or where the commotion will be.”
“Oh, calm yerself, it’ll be fine.Now what have ye seen since ye been ’ere?”Eliza nodded to the open infirmary doors, twenty feet away.“Are there any girls in there tonight?”
“Oh,” Emily stuttered.“I haven’t—”
“Christ alive, you got a lot to learn,” Eliza hissed, and without another word, strode confidently toward the infirmary.It looked mostly dark inside, as far as Emily could tell from a distance, just an orange light emanating from somewhere within, casting a bar of gold across the tile floor.Eliza poked her head around the door frame.
“What do you want?”a voice snapped loudly.Matron Jansen, Emily thought.She wasn’t as bad as Matron White, but came close.
“Sorry,” Eliza said, “I thought Peggy might be in ’ere.”
“Not tonight.For once, not complaining of a headache.It’s a wonder a rattled brain like hers can even contract one.Now, away with you!”
“Hey, ’er man knocked her mind silly with ’is fists!”Eliza replied.“It’s not ’er fault.”She withdrew from the infirmary as the matron barked something Emily didn’t catch, and began walking back toward Emily.
“Just one girl,” Eliza said quietly.There was suddenly a loud shout from the main floor below.“Bed closest to Stone’s office, though.She looked asleep, so we’ll have to sneak carefully.”
Emily nodded.“Eliza,” she said then, unable to resist.“Can I ask you…you have sympathy for Peggy, how her mind’s been affected by her husband’s abuse.How is that any different than the psychiatric inmates?The Blues, like my friend Annie?”
Eliza shook her head in a quick snap, pulled a face as though Emily had just offered her salt for her tea.“Dunno.It’s different if a girl’s got an addled brain ’cause somebody hit ’er, than if ’er brain just did that on its own.My mam gets the headaches, too, ’cause of all the stress Da puts on ’er.You gotta feel sorry for somebody like that.Inn’t her fault.”
A door slammed on the main floor, raised voices sounded.
“But fer somebody that just goes crazy fer no good reason…” Eliza continued.“Look, we got shit to do, Emily, I ain’t talkin’ about this anymore.Now let’s—”
“FIRE!”someone screamed from below, and Emily and Eliza looked at each other, eyes wide.The commotion downstairs was cresting.Another door slammed, women’s voices shouted questions.“FIRE!”
“Is that…is this June’s diversion?”Emily breathed, incredulous.They hadn’t discussed afire.
Eliza gaped.“Christ, that woman’s insane if it is!This place is a feckin’ fire trap, and no mistake!She was supposed to start afight!”
Emily raced over to the stairwell and hung over the railing, trying to see below.At that moment, an alarm sounded that Emily hadn’t yet heard at the prison: a deafening klaxon issuing from a large red bell on the wall beside the stairs, just to her left.She clapped her hands over her ears and watched as women ran about downstairs, brown skirts swishing as they circled together, shouting.A thunderous sound from the third floor began, and Emily backed away from the stairs as the footfalls of over fifty, sixty, seventy women and girls pounded above her head, evacuating from the recreation room and third-floor cells.Matrons were calling instructions over the screaming.
What was June thinking, doing something as risky as this?The plan had been to goad some inmates into a brawl.Was the fire just a coincidence?Emily thought of June’s newfound contempt for Dr.Stone, her ongoing resentment of the Mercer and her determination to maintain her business, the one thing she had control over.
No, this was not a coincidence.June, as she herself had put it, was here to play the game.And she’d just taken a big damn swing.
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.
