- Esther receives a monthly report from the mental hospital and learns that Deborah has been moved to the "Disturbed" ward. She basically freaks out.
- Esther writes to the hospital and says she wants to visit.
- The hospital quickly responds that a visit right now wouldn't be a good idea.
- Esther then writes to Dr. Fried asking if she could at least come to have a meeting with Deborah's doctors.
- Dr. Fried writes back and asks Esther to give the treatment time.
- Dr. Fried meets with Deborah again and points out the pattern that every time an Yri secret is revealed, Deborah retreats.
- Deborah then relays another secret to Dr. Fried about an Yri prophecy that the Yri god Lactamaeon told her when she was walking home from school. Deborah interprets the poetic prophecy as foretelling the tumor and coming home from the hospital, or being shamed at camp and then cutting her wrist. She's not sure.
- Dr. Fried tries to chip away at the reliability of the prophecy, since two of the events had already happened when Lactamaeon told her about them. But Deb is attached to the secrecy and magical quality of her world, even though Yr is becoming increasingly cruel.
- Deborah tells about being at summer camp and being called a "stinking Jew" by a fellow camper. When she tried to report the remark, she got the camper's name wrong (it was only her first day there) and was called a liar by other campers and counselors. Yr's voices, which tell her that she isn't one of the people of Earth, started to get louder in response to that incident. Deborah also grew hypersensitive to any kind of negative comments or lies.
- Yr gives Deborah a sense of positive identity by telling her she's their "bird, free in the wind…[a] wild horse who shakes his head and is not ashamed" (Ch. 8.16).
- Dr. Fried points out that most of Yr's so-called prophecies were told in retrospect, so it makes the gods look like they knew what they were talking about. She's hinting that maybe Deborah shouldn't give them so much power and authority over her.
- Back in the ward, Deborah notices that the mental patients have the uncanny ability to sense weakness, insecurity, and mental illness in the staff workers at the hospital. One attendant in particular, named Hobbs, is attacked by the sickest members of the ward.
- One night, a patient named Lucy Martenson punches Hobbs. He lashes out, kicking Lee Miller while he tries to defend himself. His wrist is broken in the scuffle, and some other patients are left bruised and a little banged up.
- All of the ward members are interviewed by a hospital doctor about the incident. The doctor wants to glean why it's always Hobbs who is singled out for these attacks.
- Deborah can see the doctor would interpret solving this puzzle as a feather in his cap. She doesn't like his motives, so she doesn't give him the answer, even though she knows the reason: the patients lash out at Hobbs because he is rude and cruel to them in an attempt to distance himself from them. They can tell that he, too, is a little crazy, and he's scared of what they represent, because he knows it's inside of him, too.
- After Deborah's interview, another patient, Helene, hits her over the head with a lunch tray. Deborah realizes Helene does this to punish Deborah for seeing her in a vulnerable state. An hour earlier, Helene had shared pictures of her family and friends with Deborah.