“I’ll be certain to stay mum about the salt. Would it be looked upon more favorably by the nurses if I were to commend them on how clean the dining room is?” Eunice asked.
Rose laughed. “Oh, that’s rich, believing the nurses clean.” She nodded around the table. “We’re the ones to keep it clean, and mark my words, they’ll soon have you on your hands and kneesscrubbing the floor since you’re new. They enjoy breaking in the new patients right from the start. Think it’ll keep you in line.”
“How delightful.” Eunice leaned closer to Rose. “Speaking of new patients, you haven’t met a new arrival by the name of Mrs. Clement Mills, have you?”
Rose peered at the patients gathered in the dining room before she nodded toward a woman sitting at the far end of the table. “That’s her down there, but what do you want with Helen? She’s completely lost her wits, she has, keeps telling everyone she’s a woman of means. I told her just last night to stop doing that because she’s providing the nurses with far too much enjoyment.” Rose sent Eunice a knowing look. “They relish any opportunity to mock us.”
Eunice twisted on the bench, craning her neck to get a better look at the woman Rose had pointed out. The lady was sniffling into her sleeve, not eating a bite of breakfast, but that might have been because the woman sitting next to her seemed to have absconded with Mrs. Mills’s bread and prunes. She couldn’t tell for certain because of the distance that separated them, but Mrs. Mills did seem to resemble her sister, Mrs. Eastman.
“What do you want with Helen?” Rose asked again.
“Ah, well, we shared the same doctor before we got sent here” was all Eunice could think to respond. “He suggested I try to befriend Mrs. Mills, thinking it would lend me comfort in my new environment.”
“Why’d you get sent here?”
“I’m apparently suffering from acute melancholy and female hysteria. Why’d you get sent here?”
Rose released a grunt. “I had a disagreement with me landlord. The man said I didn’t pay my rent eight months in a row, but I did. He punched me in the nose when I tried to shut the door in his face. I ain’t one to suffer nonsense like that, so I punched him back. Before I knew it, I was carted away from my rented room, taken to Bellevue Hospital, deemed insane, and sent here.”
“Returning a punch doesn’t make you insane,” Eunice said. “Have you no one to intercede on your behalf and get you out?”
“Not anyone who’d want to risk being shut up here as well.”
As Rose returned to her bread and butter, Eunice returned her attention to Mrs. Mills, who was now hunched down over the table.
Eunice turned back to Rose. “Are the women allowed an opportunity to socialize at any point in the day?”
“Occasionally,” Rose said, taking a slurp of her tea. “Sometimes the nurses will have someone play the piano for everyone, and during that time, we can talk to one another. Just depends on which nurse is in charge.” She set aside her tea. “It would be nice if we got the piano time every day because it breaks up the hours, but the nurses don’t like us gettin’ too friendly with one another. They’re afraid that’ll give us ideas.”
“Like escaping?”
“Shh...” Rose whispered. “You’ll be sent to the Lodge for sure if anyone thinks you’re planning to...well, you know. TheEword.”
Sending Rose a nod, Eunice spent the rest of mealtime in silence and was less than encouraged to discover that there was to be no socializing after the meal. Instead, all the women were expected to sit in silence on benches that seemed to grow harder by the second, none of them allowed to get up from the bench, even to use the retiring room.
Thankfully, after being made to sit in silence for over an hour, with anyone who spoke getting a swift slap from one of the few nurses who would occasionally walk up and down the table to check on everyone, a woman by the name of Nurse Riley clapped her hands, drawing everyone’s attention.
“It’s time to clean the hall.” She scowled at the room at large. “I would urge all of you to remember what happened to Jane yesterday when she decided to dally instead of scrub the tables.” Nurse Riley gestured to a woman sitting on the bench, her arms wrapped around herself and an ugly bruise staining her cheek.
“If you don’t want to end up looking like Jane,” Nurse Riley continued, “put your back into whatever task you’re assigned. I assure you, if you don’t, you’ll be sorry.”
CHAPTER
Twelve
Five minutes later, armed with a bucket and rag, Eunice was on her knees, scrubbing the floor, but making her way one swipe at a time toward Mrs. Mills, who was wiping down the table.
Waiting until she was only a foot away from the woman, Eunice squeezed the water from the rag, ignored that the soap was beginning to burn her hands, and lifted her head. “Mrs. Mills?”
Mrs. Mills stilled before she looked around, her attention settling on Eunice. “Are you speaking to me?”
“Are you Mrs. Clement Mills?”
“I am. How did you know that?”
“I need you to be very quiet as I explain, but know that I’ve been hired to get you freed from here.”
Mrs. Mills abandoned her task and sat down on the bench. “You’re here to get me out?”
