- Before Dr. Fried leaves to go on vacation, Deborah works hard in therapy, trying to fix herself before the doctor goes.
- Deborah gets a transfer down to B ward.
- Deborah is caught between worlds. She wants to get better, but she still believes that Dr. Fried will betray her and never return. The gods of Yr told her she was being set up to be hurt, and Deborah believes them.
- To protect herself emotionally, Deborah tries to forget about Dr. Fried.
- Deborah meets with Dr. Royson. She tries to be loyal to the promise she made to Dr. Fried to give this new doctor a chance, even though Yri voices try to remind her that the doctor "is dead" (19.22).
- Dr. Royson doesn't make much progress with Deborah. He is obsessed with the language of Yr and with trying to convince her that she just made Yr up. This seems more important to Dr. Royson than digging into Deborah's emotions, and it frustrates her.
- Dr. Royson is all reason and logic, where Dr. Fried was honesty and compassion. To Deborah, it feels like he's pulling teeth to get answers out of her, and because he reminds her of the evil sound of a rattlesnake, she names him "Snake tooth."
- Idat, a goddess of Yr, comes to Deborah and talks to her about death and life. Idat tells Deborah to hurt herself in order to cope with the contradictions in her life. Then she'll be in control of the pain and how it comes, and somehow that will be a validation of life.
- Deborah acts on this destructive idea. She starts burning herself with cigarettes to try to put out the fire of the volcano that she feels about to erupt inside of her.
- The self-harm of burning doesn't work, however, and Deborah feels more explosive inside than ever, more separate from the "real" world.
- The burning causes Deborah to get transferred back to D ward.
- Dr. Halle, one of the resident doctors, cleans Deborah's burn wounds so gently and thoroughly that she wants to give him a gift. After much discussion in Yr with the gods, Deborah decides to give Dr. Halle the gift of knowing that because he didn't touch her for very long, he won't die—she is still convinced she's poisonous to other people.
- When Deborah tells Dr. Halle that she doesn't see things properly (she's been seeing the "real" world in shades of gray for a long time), her vision then goes red, and Yr's Collect punishes her immediately.
- Deborah regains consciousness in a cold-sheet pack. A new doctor is checking on her. He's kind and a little clumsy with the key in the lock of the room as he leaves. Deborah likes him because of it.
- When Deborah is back in the ward, she talks with another patient named Mary about what a fit she was having before she went into the pack. Deborah wonders how she ever came out of it.
- Mary explains that those kinds of fits can't last forever. The body and mind won't allow it.
- Deborah seems relieved to know that there are boundaries to the darker fits of mental illness. She's comforted by Mary's insight and the idea that even "poisonous" people can reach down deep for enough courage to help each other.
- That same night, however, Deborah feels the urge to burn herself again.