Air had never smelled so sweet, even the foul air of the dispensary. She wanted to tell Anna how happy she was to breathe, but she couldn’t speak yet. Her throat burned and her jaws ached and every muscle in her body throbbed.
Don’t throw up. They’ll just do it again. The others had told her. Deep breaths.
The mess they’d poured down her throat lay like lead in her stomach. She tasted the sharpness of iron. Blood, she knew, seeping from the cuts in her mouth. She probed them gingerly with her tongue, testing each one, teasing the ragged skin and savoring the delicious twinge of pain because it proved she was alive.
“Elizabeth?”
She opened her eyes. Anna’s wasted face came into focus. Elizabeth smiled to show she was all right.
“Miss Miles?”
Elizabeth flinched at the sound of his voice, but when she looked into his face, she saw the kindness again. She was lucky to get him, they’d told her. The other doctor enjoyed hurting the women.
“How are you feeling?” Dr. Stanislov asked.
“Terrible,” she croaked, or tried to.
“I know that is not a pleasant experience, but we have no choice. We cannot allow you ladies to die.”
Just what Mrs. Bates had told her.
“I must tell you how much I admire your dedication,” he said, his dark eyes moist. “I would never have believed American women could care so much for freedom. I have seen women in Russia suffer for their ideals, but if I had not seen this with my own eyes, I would not have believed it.”
“Do women in Russia go to prison?” Anna asked.
“Yes, my own sister did, when she would not betray her friends. Her friends were wanted by the government. She went on a hunger strike, too. They fed her after three days, but you women have been striking for almost a week.”
“Doctor,” one of the nurses called, and he hurried away.
“They took Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lewis away yesterday,” Anna said.
“Where—” Her ravaged throat convulsed, silencing her.
“They don’t tell us anything, but they were very sick, so maybe a hospital.”
Anna needed to go to a hospital. Where was Mrs. Bates? She’d make Anna eat.
Her stomach roiled, and she swallowed hard, ignoring the searing agony.
Don’t throw up. Deep breaths.
? ? ?
Gideon pretended to gaze out the train window at the passing scenery, but it was far too dark to see anything. Instead, he watched the reflection of the man he was learning to hate.
Warden Whittaker sat across the aisle of the railcar reading a newspaper but making little progress. He’d actually spent most of his energy tapping his foot and checking his pocket watch.
Gideon hated his ugly face and the spiderlike birthmark on his temple and his stubby hands and his fat feet. He wanted to slam Whittaker’s ugly face into the train window and find out exactly how many times he’d have to do it before the glass shattered.
How fortuitous that his new friend, Mrs. Young, knew President Wilson’s secretary so well. Mr. Tumulty’s message urging Whittaker to return to Virginia at once had worked beautifully. The only problem had been convincing Thornton’s henchmen that he didn’t need their help following Whittaker from the hotel to the train station. They’d finally agreed that the dumb one, Fletcher, would wait at the station with Deputy Klink, and Lester would accompany Gideon. Two men having a conversation on a street corner wouldn’t attract much attention, and so Whittaker had rushed right past them in front of his hotel in his search for a cab.
On the train, he’d split Lester and Fletcher up, one in the car ahead and the other in the car behind with Deputy Klink. Gideon didn’t trust any of them not to betray themselves during what had begun to feel like the longest train ride in history. Finally, the conductor came bustling through to announce their stop. Gideon waited until Whittaker rose and started for the end of the car, then followed at a discreet distance.
When the train had rolled to a stop and the conductor released them, Fletcher came out of the car to his left, and Deputy Klink and Lester descended from the one on his right. A lone wagon stood outside the station, ready to transport any late travelers to their final destinations, its driver slumped inside his overcoat against the evening chill.
Whittaker hurried toward it, but Klink stepped in his path. “Say, ain’t you Warden Whittaker, from Occoquan?” he asked pleasantly.
“What’s it to you?” the hideous little man snapped.
“’Cause if you are, I’ve got something for you.”
Before Whittaker could blink, Klink slapped the writ into Whittaker’s stubby little fingers.
“That’s a warrant, Mr. Whittaker, and you’ve been served. You’ve got to show up at court tomorrow to see the judge. Oh, and you’ve got to produce your prisoners, too.”
“Why, you son of a—”
“All forty of them,” Gideon said.
Whittaker whirled to face him, and then he saw Fletcher and Lester and his beady little eyes widened in fear. “What’s going on here?”
“We just want to make sure you understand,” Gideon said. “That’s a writ of habeas corpus, and we’d better see you at the courthouse tomorrow with all of your suffragist prisoners.”
“And who do you think you are?”
“I’m an attorney for the Woman’s Party, and if you aren’t there, I’ll make sure you’re charged and arrested. I wonder how the guards would like to have you as a prisoner in your own workhouse, Whittaker.”
Whittaker cursed them roundly, questioning the legitimacy of their birth and their ancestral heritage in terms Gideon had seldom heard outside of a saloon. He was so annoyed that he didn’t offer to share the wagon with Gideon when they left the station.
? ? ?
The clanging of metal bedpans jarred Elizabeth awake. Disoriented, she needed a minute to remember where she was.
“Get up,” a nurse said. “You’re going to court today.”
She tried to say, “Court?” but her throat rebelled, and the word came out a croak.
“Court!” Anna said. “I knew it! The hunger strike worked.”
The hunger strike or the lawyers. Elizabeth’s money was on the lawyers. She pushed herself up to see what was going on. The nurses scurried around, prodding the women awake and urging them to get up. Some inmates came in carrying bundles that proved to be sacks containing the prisoners’ personal belongings. They were, it seemed, to dress in their own clothes for court.
Still weak, Elizabeth eased her legs off the bed and gingerly tried to stand. Oddly, she felt a little better than she had yesterday. Much as she hated to think it, the force-feeding had done her some good after all. A nurse plunked one of the sacks onto her bed, and she saw it bore a tag with Elizabeth Miles scrawled on it.