“Matron!”Emily shouted, rising from her seat just as Annie slumped onto the table.“Help!We need help!”
She was aware of a sudden silence in the room, then it erupted again in alarmed voices, other women calling for help on her behalf.Panicking, Emily acted on instinct, wrapping her arms around Annie and lowering her to the floor, supporting Annie’s head in her lap.
“HELP!For God’s sake!”she screamed, tearing her eyes away from Annie’s, which had slid out of focus.She was heavy in Emily’s arms.
A crowd of inmates had formed around them, all asking what was happening.Gertrude and Lizzie were screaming at a pair of matrons near the doors.Gert tried to grab at one of them to come, but the woman withdrew.The other followed Lizzie over to where Emily and Annie were heaped on the floor beside their table.
“Gertrude, get Matron Carnegie!”Emily bellowed across the room.Gert nodded and sprinted out the door.If these matrons were too stupid or stubborn to respond, they needed Carnegie.She knew Annie better than any of the others.
“What’s happened?”Matron White was there now, demanding answers from a standing position, hands on her hips.
Emily gaped.“She’s ill, terribly ill, can’t you see?She’s nearly unconscious, something’s wrong!”She hated to say it, but did anyway.“She needs the doctor!”
“The doctor is gone for the evening,” White said dismissively.“It’s after six.”
“Well,youcome help, then!”Emily shouted.Other inmates were goading White now, too, shrieking at her to do something.
“She’s probably just having a fit, she has them all the time, she’s a lunatic!”White snapped back.“Just leave her, she’ll be fine.”
“She doesn’t have fits likethis,” Emily heard Bernie say from somewhere in the crowd.“Just look at her!”
“Emily!”Gertrude shouted, and Emily watched her shove the other girls aside as she led Matron Carnegie over.Relief at the kind matron’s arrival crashed over Emily in a wave that broke the dam of her shock, and then the tears came.
“Please,” she begged.“Help her!”
“Leave her!”White snarled.
“What happened?”Carnegie asked, ignoring White’s protests entirely as she knelt.
“We were talking and she said she didn’t feel well,” Emily recounted, “then she got all pale and clammy and collapsed.”Her own breath was coming in sharp stabs now.Tears fell from her eyes.“Please help her!”
Carnegie fingered Annie’s throat.“Her pulse is dangerously slow,” she muttered.“Matron White!”she snapped, “go fetch some adrenaline and a large syringe from the infirmary.”
Above them, White blustered, “I don’t take orders from you!I’m the head—”
“Just do it!”Carnegie barked, and White’s mouth fell open, but she pushed her way out of the room anyway.Emily frantically watched her leave.Was she going to get what Carnegie needed?Or had she just abandoned them?
“Stone’s gone,” Carnegie said.“We’re on our own.Here, let me try, there’s something I can try, I read about it.Set her head down on the floor, but keep your hands under it for support, just gently.And the rest of you, back up!”she called to the surrounding women, who did as they were told.All was quiet now.
“Okay,” Emily sniffed, complying, feeling as though she might be sick.“What are you going to do?”
Matron Carnegie didn’t answer, but lowered her mouth to Annie’s and blew air into it.Emily watched, fascinated and terrified, as the matron pressed her fists into Annie’s chest with all her might, counting under her breath, then leaned forward and blew more air into Annie’s mouth.She repeated the process several times before exclamations from around the room signalled the return of Matron White, along with two other matrons who now flanked her like security guards.
“Move aside!”she sniped, making her way through the throng.“I don’t know why you’re bothering, but here it is.”She shoved a syringe and vial toward Carnegie, who was still occupied with this treatment she was attempting.She looked up at White and snatched the supplies from her hands.
“Radcliffe, keep doing what I was doing,” she said.“While I prepare the adrenaline.”
“What?Um—” Emily panicked.
“Just do it.”
Emily took a deep breath and followed Carnegie’s lead, placing her mouth over Annie’s with renewed sobs.Her friend’s lips were blue.“Oh my God,” Emily said as she pressed down on her chest in repeated thrusts.“Annie, no…”
“Stop,” Carnegie said.“Open her dress, right to the skin.”
Emily pulled at the fabric, but it wouldn’t give.Her eyes darted to the table next to them and she lunged forward, seizing her dull dinner knife.Several inmates gasped or shrieked as she held Annie’s dress with one hand and, after three attempts, sliced it with the other to reveal her brassiere.
“Wait,” Emily said.“What are you going to—” But she watched in horror as Carnegie plunged the syringe into Annie’s breastbone.
