The other women turned their backs on me, making me feel like slime scraped from the bottom of their shoes. Only Annabelle smiled as she hugged her kitten to her chest.
Then Peters was gripping my arm, tugging me toward the door, talking low and fast. “Boy’s in D-14. I’ll bring you up there. There’s a laundry chute at the end of the hallway. You two’ll slide down while I run around and meet you in the laundry and unlock the back door. Your people will be waiting for you there, but we must go quick-like. Carson, he won’t put up with no trouble in his establishment. Once he hears about this—” He waved a hand at the broken window. “No tellin’ what he’ll do to you, miss. He—”
“What” ?—a deep voice boomed through the room—? “in the name of all that is holy is going on here?”
Dr. Alexander Carson strode in, his sharp eyes missing nothing. The shattered glass. The discarded, broken piano bench. Peters’s grip on my arm.
“Good man, Peters,” Carson said. “Take Miss Randolph to the isolation cell. It appears she has become violent. Which means we shall have to reevaluate her treatment plan, after all.”
“Yes, sir.” Peters’s eyes bored into mine. “Come along quietly now, miss.”
I shot a look at the other patients, praying they’d go along with our desperate little farce.
Priscilla and Mrs. Langdon looked away. Lila Jamesson’s troubled gaze locked on mine. For an instant, I thought she might give me up. But as I passed, she gave a quick nod of acceptance. Sorrow struck me then at leaving them. But my mission was clear. Get Doug. Get out.
Then I’d try to find a way to help them, before Carson started carving up their brains.
I went along, acting cowed as Peters marched me across the room. We were nearly to the door when Annabelle Allen suddenly piped up.
“Oh, Dr. Carson,” she said in an eerie little-girl singsong. “Sergeant Peters is taking Miss Randolph outside. He’s taking her from your lovely hospital to meet her friends. I think he is being awfully naughty to disobey you like that. Don’t you agree?”
Carson spun toward us. His eyes narrowed in suspicion as they darted back and forth between Peters and me.
I froze, but Peters didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, what notions these patients come up with, eh, Doc? It’s enough to put you off your feed.”
Chuckling, shaking his head in amusement at the insanity he had to deal with every day, he continued herding me toward the door.
The doctor held up a hand. “Hold a moment, Sergeant.”
Though the command was quiet, the threat was clear enough. The other guards stepped into the room. I tried not to flinch as Peters dug his fingertips deeper into my arm.
Carson knelt before Annabelle. “My dear Miss Allen,” he asked, sweetly. “Is this true? What you said about Sergeant Peters helping Miss Randolph to leave?”
She nodded ardently, baby-doll ringlets bouncing against her shoulders. “Oh yes, oh yes! He said he would take her away from here, just like you do when my kitties get too sleepy.” Annabelle raised the small tabby for the doctor’s inspection. It drooped, limp and lifeless, from her fist. “I hugged her and hugged her, but she will not wake. May I have another, please?”
Carson blinked, hesitating for an instant. “And how many kitties will this be for you, since you’ve been here, Miss Allen?”
“I think . . .” The girl frowned in concentration. Then she beamed at the doctor. “Sixteen!” she told him. “This is kitty number sixteen.”
Behind me, I heard Lila Jamesson gasp.
“And do not forget,” said Annabelle, wagging a finger at Carson. “She must have yellow stripes and a gentle face. She must look exactly like my first sweet Bootsie. Naughty Papa, taking her from me like that and twisting her little head so that she became so tired. I was quite put out with him.” Annabelle cuddled the dead kitten to her chest, rocking it back and forth as she crooned, “Pretty kitty. Sleepy kitty.”
My stomach squeezed tight against my spine as the doctor smiled at Annabelle. He patted her knee as he stood. “Well, then,” he said. “Number seventeen it shall be.”
Chapter 30
THE LITTLE GIRL COULD NOT WALK ANOTHER STEP. How could her feet pain her and feel numb at the same time? She’d not eaten all day, unless one counted the bitter acorns that had made her stomach rebel.
She thought longingly of the scant bites of stringy, half-grown rabbit the boy had trapped the day before. He’d cut himself skinning the small creature. The girl had ripped off a piece of her petticoat and tied it around his injured hand.
He’d worked so hard to sear the meager meal. But the wind that roared through the forest kept rushing down from the treetops to snuff out their pitiful fire. The boy was patient, starting over again and again, but the flames had barely licked at the dripping chunks skewered on a green twig before another cruel gust would undo his endeavors.
Now she could no longer feel the tips of her fingers or the end of her nose. Night was closing in, in shades of silver and gray. When she slumped onto a fallen log, her doll clasped in her arms, the boy perched beside her.
“I think we shall soon find my uncle’s village,” he told her. “And he will help us.”
Though the boy sounded certain, she’d seen his face as he searched the ground and the trees overhead. Though he never admitted it, she knew they were lost. When he heard howls moving closer the night before, he’d woken her and made her run. Stumbling through the darkness, he hadn’t allowed her to slow until they’d left the savage sounds far behind. Finally, he’d helped her into a tree and secured her to a thick branch with his own hempen belt before settling in beside her.
When dawn broke through the icy treetops, they climbed down together. He held her hand as they walked, chattering of his uncle’s warm hearth and his aunt’s rich squirrel stew. Her mouth watered when he spoke of the butter and soft cheese his aunt would smear on piping hot bread. How they would soon be tucked under quilts beside a roaring fire.
He hadn’t stopped talking all throughout the short day. But now the sun was setting again and he’d gone silent when no village appeared.
More snow was falling. And though the thick trees blocked the worst of it, flakes still snagged in the girl’s hair and collected in her lap where she huddled against a great tree. When her stomach twisted and growled with hunger, she curled in over the pain.
“You are hungry,” he said, slanting a glance toward her. “And—” His head bowed. “I—?I lost the flint when we fled the wolves.”
The little girl’s heart sank as she thought of spending another cold and dark night without a fire. Though he’d tried to encourage a blaze by rubbing a stick between his palms until they bled, the wood was too damp to take spark.