That evening, Una joins Dru in the library to study the vascular system. Dru acts strangely, until she confesses that the sight of human blood flowing from a body makes her physically ill and once caused her to faint. Crying, Dru says she should resign before being expelled. Worried about losing Dru’s academic prowess, Una resolves to help. Unsure how to comfort someone, she awkwardly pats Dru’s shoulder, which leads to Dru sobbing on her. Una then rubs Dru’s back in slow circles, as her mother once did. When Dru calls Una a friend, Una feels uncomfortable with the label.

Then, Una drags Dru to the kitchen, cuts her own pinky finger, and shows Dru the bleeding cut. Dru pales but watches for six seconds before looking away and clutching her stomach. Una declares this a promising start and gives Dru cooking sherry. In the demonstration room, Una has Dru practice bandaging the wound. Dru’s trembling hands produce clumsy work, and both women laugh. Una makes Dru promise not to resign, vowing to cure her phobia together.

For three consecutive nights, Una cuts herself and has Dru watch the blood. Dru’s tolerance increases to 15 seconds. Una dismisses Dru’s professions of friendship as business necessity. Realizing finger cuts are insufficient, Una seeks a more radical cure.

During Dr. Pingry’s rounds, Una watches Edwin, wondering why he has not reported her for sneaking into the operating theater. When she splashes disinfectant on herself, he chuckles. For a patient with pyemia, Edwin recommends antiseptic irrigation, clashing with Dr. Pingry, who prefers traditional cupping and orders it despite Edwin’s objections. Edwin’s neck reddens when Dr. Pingry insults his father. Dr. Pingry mentions an afternoon blood transfusion he considers nonsense, and Una decides she and Dru must attend.

After Dr. Pingry leaves, Edwin stays behind to give Nurse Cuddy additional instructions for the patient’s care before Una approaches him. He explains that blood transfusion moves blood from a donor to a patient via cannulas and tubes. Una asks him to get them permission to observe. When her flattery backfires by mentioning his famous grandfather, he starts to leave. Una stops him by bluntly stating she does not care about his lineage and that he is “the least odious physician” (160) she knows. Amused, he agrees but asks for a favor in return.

During the transfusion, a photographer arrives to document the procedure, unsettling Una with memories of her police mugshot. As a surgeon exposes the donor’s vein and blood drips into a basin, Dru gasps and looks away. Una tricks Dru into watching by deliberately misidentifying anatomical terms, forcing Dru to correct her. Dru sways but successfully watches without fainting. The photographer orders Una, Dru, and Edwin to join the tableau. Panicked, Una drops her chin and inches closer to Edwin, hoping his shadow will obscure her face.

On Sunday, Una takes the elevated train uptown to repay her favor, wearing borrowed finery as a disguise. Paranoid about being recognized, she enters Central Park through Miners’ Gate and finds Edwin at Bethesda Fountain, appearing relaxed. He suggests ice-skating on the frozen lake and provides his mother’s old skates.

On the ice, Una struggles with balance but Edwin catches her. He observes she is unlike other New York women, who care too much for correctness. Una challenges his generalization, asking about working-class women. Edwin dismisses them as a different class, but when Una rebukes him, he admits she is right and that he was parroting his grandfather.

They skate to an inlet to see an eagle’s nest. Una tells him her cover story about being from Maine, then asks about his background. He reveals his grandfather’s portrait hangs in the hospital and confesses his father was a disgraced war profiteer who drank, gambled, and abandoned his family, eventually dying in a slum. Una feels empathy, recognizing shared pain.

At the inlet, Edwin points out the massive eagle’s nest. Awed by this natural wonder in the city, Una learns that eagles mate for life and return each year. Aware of their physical closeness, she tries to skate backward, but her blade catches. She grabs his coat to keep from falling, and Edwin leans down and kisses her. After a moment of surprise, Una kisses him back.

Two days later, Una is distracted on the ward, making mistakes while thinking about their kiss. It is the day Superintendent Perkins will decide which probationers continue. Una worries about expulsion, knowing Nurse Hatfield and Dr. Pingry dislike her. The only break in her anxiety comes during Edwin’s rounds, though they avoid looking at each other directly.

At three o’clock, Una passes a crying probationer who was just expelled. While waiting in Miss Perkins’s office, Una concocts a tragic story to elicit pity. Before she can speak, Miss Perkins congratulates her on passing and presents a two-year contract. Stunned, Una learns that despite a rough start, she has good exam marks and patients find her presence soothing. Looking at the contract, Una imagines using the nursing credential as cover for high-class thievery. She signs.

At the reception for new trainees in the medical board room, Dru greets Una ecstatically. A frazzled orderly enters and whispers urgently to Warden O’Rourke, who leaves with a grim expression. When Nurse Hatfield overhears Una mention the cancan, Una claims they were discussing above-the-knee amputation. Dru provides correct medical details, satisfying Hatfield. Looking out the window, Una sees Warden O’Rourke speaking with two police officers near the Insane Pavilion. The sight shocks her, and she drops her teacup, which shatters on the floor.

Una reflects on the “Insane Pavilion’s” poor reputation—understaffed and used to hold patients before transfer to the asylum on Blackwell’s Island. The governing board matrons send her to rest, but instead she hides until the police leave, determined to investigate.

Entering the pavilion with a purposeful stride, Una encounters foul smells and crowded cells. She finds the orderly mopping vomit and lies that Superintendent Perkins sent her to investigate. He reveals there was a death by suicide on the female ward the previous night, and the police were likely seeking a bribe. Relieved the visit was not about her, Una is about to leave when he mentions something suspicious.

He calls Madge, the female ward attendant, who explains the dead woman hanged herself with a belt or cloth about an inch and a half wide. The mention of a belt triggers Una’s memory of Traveling Mike’s murder. Madge reveals the item was missing when the body was found and that the woman’s two cellmates do not talk.  When Una questions if it was a death by suicide, Madge asks if they have met before. Una’s fingers tremble as she denies it, citing her Maine cover story, and then walks out, fighting the urge to run.

Five days after the police visit, Una struggles to focus on her new ward under the exacting Head Nurse Smith. When Una gives an incomplete assessment of a patient, she is lectured on thorough observation. Sent to air blankets on the balcony, she reflects that the newspapers ran only a brief, sensational story and hospital gossip is dying down. The newspaper even suggested a cellmate who believed she was a bird had eaten the leather belt used in the hanging. The night attendant was fired for negligence.

She tries to dismiss Madge’s recognition but cannot stop thinking about it. Back inside, flames flickering in the stove trigger a memory of the match-light from Traveling Mike’s murder. She contemplates a connection between the deaths, noting both involved a belt as a weapon. She questions her own memory, wondering if the person she saw crouching over Traveling Mike was actually a man. She laughs at the unlikely idea but cannot shake a lingering chill.

That evening, Edwin signals Una to meet. She lies to the other trainees and doubles back to a stairwell. Edwin leads her into the hospital’s drug manufacturing laboratory using a skeleton key. Surrounded by pharmaceutical equipment and supplies, Edwin apologizes for his forwardness at the lake, then admits he wanted to see her again. Una teases him, and then their conversation turns serious. He confesses he wishes he had courage to be his own man and tells her about a symposium on antiseptic surgery Dr. Pingry forbids him to attend. Edwin asks to court Una secretly. Though attracted to him, Una refuses, saying she has too many secrets in her life, and leaves.

The next morning, Una skips a lesson and hides near the “Insane Pavilion” to watch Madge in daylight, hoping to determine if they have met before. As Madge drinks from a hidden flask, Una creeps closer through bushes to study her face. When Conor finds Una squatting there, she falls, scraping her cheek. He pulls her out and dabs the blood with his handkerchief. Una asks about the death by suicide, specifically why the rope or belt used to hang was never found. Conor dismisses her suspicions, saying the woman was just another “lunatic” (205) who let the devil in.

Edwin arrives, misreading the scene as intimate. He curtly asks Conor to show him the ambulance because he is filling in as ambulance surgeon. Conor leaves, telling Una to think on what he said. Edwin shoots Una a flinty look before walking away, leaving her with a panicky feeling in her stomach.

Una follows Edwin to the ambulance bay to explain. He needles her about Conor, but she insists it was not what it looked like and that she had fallen into a bush. The fire-gong sounds mid-argument. Conor leaps onto the driver’s seat as Edwin climbs into the ambulance. Una impulsively follows, claiming he cannot tell her what to do. As the ambulance speeds up, Una considers jumping out. During a sharp turn at the gatehouse, she loses her grip, but Edwin grabs her skirt and pulls her inside. They collapse on the bench, Edwin calling her “mad” for trying to jump from a moving wagon.

Then, Una admits she was snooping around the “Insane Pavilion” when Conor startled her. She shows Edwin the scratch on her cheek and swears nothing is happening with Conor. Edwin kisses her deeply. When they pull apart, he makes her promise not to jump from moving wagons again. Una smiles and kisses him instead of lying.