Private Tummons reminds her of the cowardly lion. Rose laughs audibly this time, she couldn’t help it and garners the attention of the green men. They let her outburst pass before they go back to whistling the tune that Hawthorne put inside their heads. They seem unsteady and drowsy, like drunks walking home after a long night at the bar.
The green men, she supposes, are like the flying monkeys, and like flying monkeys will obey Dr. Shaw, supporting whatever evil scheme he has in store for her and the other children.
Flying monkeys, she decides, can’t be trusted, but aren’t necessarily evil. They’re just slaves, and she’s just a prisoner, locked away in a dreary dungeon.
Dr. Shaw is the wicked witch, even though he’s a man. Can men can be witches? But, either way, it’s very true that his insides are vengeful, and twisted. The wicked witch wants to hurt her and the rest of the munchkins who live in Munchkin land, and Rose really doesn’t know why. It makes her sad not to be wanted or loved. Everyone deserves love. The closest thing she has to someone who cares about her is Dr. Valentine.
Library time comes to an end, but Rose hasn’t finished the book. She finds the thought of having to wait another week to finish it simply awful. She can’t wait that long, and be left to wonder, and worry about what happens to Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. And poor, poor, Toto.
The guards aren’t looking in her direction. They’re joining the children from the first table up to the long line of the chain. So, without thinking it completely through, she takes the dog-eared book and stuffs it down through the neck-opening of her hospital gown and clenches it tightly under a sweaty armpit. She turns to discover that she’s been found out. Ivy is smiling at her with a big toothy smile that makes her feel ugly inside.
It’s strange, Ivy saw her take it but doesn’t tell on her. All the same, Rose feels guilty about taking what doesn’t belong to her. It’s wrong and decides to never take anything again… after this. Somewhere along the way, it was probably ingrained in her that stealing is wrong. She averts her eyes from Ivy’s pallid gaze and waits her turn to be shackled into a fitting occupancy somewhere along the chain. When her time comes, she’s jerked into place and tied in.
For the rest of the week, she reads portions of The Wizard of Oz, each night, before the generator powers down and the spiraling filament inside the light bulb goes out. She stuffs the little book under her mattress for safe keeping. She plans to return it, on the next library day. What will happen if the green men find the book hidden under the mattress? She doesn’t want to think about that. She’ll read it as fast as she can and then it’s back to the dusty place it occupied on the library shelf.
Rose wonders what it might feel like, what it would really feel like to have a friend like Toto. A little dog to cuddle each night, and to run with across wide-open farmland, and to go on amazing adventures with. Adventures no one in their right minds would ever believe. To have someone in her life who has the courage of a cowardly lion, or the heart and loyalty of a tin man.
Her life is barren of such friends. She falls asleep wondering if she could ever have fast friends like Dorothy. No, not me… she drifts to sleep. The little stars twinkle above the lonely child, like complacent sentinels.
Chapter Nine
“When you can’t look at the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.”
Dr. Merna Valentine furiously finishes her notes and catches up on the neglected charting, gone undone for days. She sits company with an empty coffee cup to wait out the lonely march of monotonous hours.
What are we learning? On an intuitive level, she’s aware her brain is subconsciously attempting to fill in blanks to puzzles and riddles because from time to time she gleans insight on snippets of questions, and confusing perplexities where the children are concerned. There are too many questions and not enough answers.
Merna’s office is in the old administration building, down the hall from Dr. Shaw’s office. She has been making notes on every child she’s been observing, for clues, for answers, for some possible resolution that will correct this nightmare, this end-of-the-world scenario of which she’s an unwilling contestant.
Her hand is cramping from the three and a half hours she’s been pushing a pencil. It’s dull tip plowing across a secondhand piece of scratch paper. She drops it and shakes her hand, forcing blood back into her fingers. She massages away acute acroparesthesia until the tingling slowly disappears leaving behind a slight but persistent cramp.
The charts from last night lay nearby, on a small table. She reaches for them, gathering them together, wrapping a rubber band around the stack. It’s time to discuss last night’s observation with Dr. Shaw.
She’s reluctant, but she stands up from her desk anyway. She feels she must force herself to leave her simple office, and creep down the hall to Shaw’s.
His office door is closed, but there’s some light squeezing out from under it. She knocks.
She calls softly, “Dr. Shaw.”
No answer.
“Dr. Shaw?”
She knocks again, lighter this time finding herself hoping that he’s not there, and there’s still no answer. She opens the door. She’s relieved to find his office empty, and she gets a sudden urge to snoop around. She feels like a child hunting for Christmas presents in her parents’ bedroom closet. Instead of closing the door completely, she leaves it ajar so she can make a quick exit, should anyone come this way.
A single chair, a metal desk, A yellow file cabinet, and a few rickety bookcases are all that decorate the room. It’s the epitome of military furnishing, Sparse, but functional. The minimalistic comforts of Camp Able have become something she has become used to. After all, what choice does a girl have, but to get used to it? It’s not like you can just stroll into a Woolworth’s or a Nordstrom’s these days without getting eaten down to the bone by the Turned.
It would be better to go before she does something she might regret. But before she can turn to leave, a pile of folders, covered partially with a flak jacket, catch her attention.
Curiosity guides her to them. Nervously she lifts the jacket and sits it aside. Lifting one folder, while watching the door, she listens for sound, but hearing nothing, she flips it open and studies the notes.
The folder contains chart on a boy named, Alder. A tear rolls down her cheek and falls to the musty carpeting. Her eyes redden her anger peaks and her nostrils flares. She can feel her head itch and grow hot, coinciding with the rise of her blood pressure.
She lifts another folder, and another, and another. Autopsies. Secrets and lies. She’s been giving Shaw everything, and all the while he’s been keeping secrets from her. Telling lies and misdirecting her. She has been searching for answers that might eventually save the children and help humanity recover from this calamity, and he’s been keeping everything from her. She knows now his only intent is to seek out a weakness and destroy them all.
Shaw, lying, all this time. How could she not have seen it? She wanted to believe him. As much of a struggle as its been. She made herself believe he was on her side. A joint venture to save the world. She asks herself, how can she have been so gullible, trusting everything he’s been saying to her. He never intended anything more than purging the planet of what he believes is an incurable curse.