- Esther and Jacob visit Dr. Fried at the hospital.
- Jacob asks Dr. Fried bluntly if he's wrong for wanting a normal child. He also asks what they can hope for in the future.
- Dr. Fried says that the point of her work with Deborah is to discover what Deborah wants for herself.
- Jacob asks to see Deborah, and Dr. Fried tries to answer calmly that she wouldn't advise it at this time, because Deborah is nervous and shaky right now. It might upset the parents to see their daughter like that, and it might upset Deborah, too.
- Jacob has doubts about why they admitted her to the hospital in the first place. He wishes he had her back—even though she was sick, she was theirs, and they could see her.
- Dr. Fried tries to explain that since Deborah has been mentally ill since early childhood, it is difficult for her to now try to abandon the reality she created for herself and accept the "real" world in a leap of faith. It's going to take time.
- Esther agrees they should wait to see Deborah, but Jacob insists.
- Dr. Fried thinks to herself that families of the mentally ill just want quick fixes for their children. They want them to look and act normal and live according to the family's standards.
- The Blaus drive home after seeing their daughter, both thinking to themselves about how withdrawn Deborah had been.
- Jacob comments that Deborah is pale, and Esther says she looks like someone who'd been "beaten to death from the inside" (14.17).
- The Blaus both resolve to tell their younger daughter Suzy just how sick Deborah really is.
- Back in therapy sessions with Dr. Fried, Deborah goes back and forth between Earth and Yr.
- Dr. Fried decides to tackle issues between Deborah and her father.
- Deborah knows that she is a lot like her father, and it scares her. They both have unpredictable tempers.
- Throughout her childhood, Jacob was constantly warning Deborah about sex maniacs lurking everywhere who wanted to harm her. He spoke graphically about their diseased minds and body parts. It made her think of the tumor in her feminine parts and made her feel like she must have something wrong with her if all these men wanted to hurt her. This belief was cemented when a man exposed himself to Deborah on the street. Deborah wondered out loud what he wanted with her, since she was already "broken into and spoiled" (14.32). Her father smacked her hard after she said that.
- Dr. Fried digs into these incidents and lets Deborah see that her father was afraid because of his own lustful feelings, and he was afraid other men might have those kinds of feelings for his daughter. Because he was obsessed with scaring his daughter with these ideas, Dr. Fried also hints that Jacob might have had inappropriate feelings for Deborah. Deborah remembers feeling scared of that, too, but she doesn't remember her father acting on any inappropriate impulses.
- In Yr, all of these fears about her and her father were dark shadows that loomed large in a place called the Fear-bog. Now that Deborah knows the reasons for the fears, it doesn't seem so awful. She's finally faced the truth.
- Dr. Fried tells Deborah that replacing Yr will be a long process. Deborah will have to trust that the real world will be better than Yr.
- Deborah asks if she can still choose Yr if she finds out she doesn't want the real world. Dr. Fried assures her that her mental health—and living in the real world—will be Deborah's choice to make.
- Back in D ward, Lee Miller tells Deborah a former patient is returning—Miss Coral, a highly educated, petite older woman.
- Miss Coral's presence causes a stir in the ward. Helene and Sylvia get violent. It takes more than a dozen staff members to get everything under control.
- Deborah approaches Miss Coral during the ward eruption to ask if she will teach her ancient languages and math. Miss Coral tells her she'll think about it.
- Deborah then finds two cigarettes in her pocket she'd picked up when a student nurse dropped them. She decides to leave them under Lee's pillow. Lee had told Deborah how smart Miss Coral was, and Deborah also felt Lee still deserved something more for when she stuck up for Sylvia.
- While Deborah waits outside Miss Coral's room, she thinks that she and her poisonous essence must have caused the riot in the ward.
- Then Miss Coral calls out to Deborah and speaks Latin to her, promising her that she'll teach her more tomorrow.