Lysa’s eyes were immediately on the wet nurse, and they were staring daggers. If looks could kill angels….damn, there was some genuine hate there. Meanwhile, their Judy had rolled up and stowed away the mat, and taken Midori off the hands of a very grateful wet nurse counterpart. Their stroller began to move again.
So this is why you brought us here? So I could watch you get to feel like a big baby instead of a little one?
“No,” she answered, “this is.” She pointed to an approaching, baby blue cot. “I brought you here to see him. Dori!” She called out from the stroller. “Dori! Wake up, baby girl! Time for Boo-Hoo’s!” Dante could hear Midori stirring sleepily, and then begin to wail.
The stroller came to a stop as nursery worker Judy stopped to see what was wrong with Midori. “Watch and learn,” Lysa said to Dante just as she banged on the blue plastic of the giant cot. A second cry joined Midori’s, coming from the cot.
A wet nurse rushed over to the cot, bent over and effortlessly picked up a Latino boy wrapped up in swaddling clothes. He looked to be about thirteen or fourteen from the size of him, though that was the only thing about him that looked like a teenager. He screamed with his mouth wide open and his eyes still shut.
Dante could see that the boy was completely toothless. If he had any hair, it was all tucked under and concealed by the blue cap on his head. Despite the crying noise, no tears came from his eyes. He had forgotten how to use his tear ducts. The wet nurse unsheathed her robe and stroked her nipple across the boy’s cheek. He instinctively latched on and began nursing.
“Dante,” Lysa introduced, “meet Jorge Rivera: The one who showed me the ropes when I first got here. Jorge had been here for about seventy years when I came here. He showed me how to keep my sanity. When he finally started breaking about thirty years later, he decided it was time to try and escape.
“He managed to get all the way out into the hallway before they caught him. Management decided that he was too risky to be left out in the main nursery, so they sent him here and made him drink the pure stuff.
“As long as we’re here, we’ll be treated like babies,” she went on. “We will wear and use diapers. We will be fed milk and burped. We will sleep in cribs. But is that the only thing you want to be able to do, Dante? Do you want the rest of your existence to revolve around breast feeding, diaper changes, and sleeping? Don’t hope for escape, Dante, because this is where escapees end up.”
