Future Home of the Living God

As the nurse coos over Cedar’s Christmas due date, Agnes snarls at everyone. She accuses the nurses of hypocrisy and demands to know where the babies are taken. Cedar ignores Agnes’s advice not to take the medicine. The drugs cloud her thoughts, preventing her from thinking about Phil or her captivity.

Cedar is unconscious when Agnes attempts escape that evening. The attempt fails, and the staff return Agnes to her hospital bed, chaining her to the railing and heavily sedating her. Cedar stops taking her medicine. Agnes awakes long enough to explain her plan to Cedar, but she does not reveal the full story. That night, the staff take Agnes away to give birth. Agnes recovers, knocks down the nurses, and runs out of the room. Cedar never sees her again. The nurses say only that Agnes “went home” (86).

Cedar’s next roommate is “a young Asian woman who radiates intensity” (86) and silently unravels her blanket throughout the night. As the drugs wear off, Cedar realizes that the food in the hospital is actually rotten. She cannot shake the idea that Agnes was killed after having her baby surgically removed. Cedar makes her own plans to escape and wishes she knew the names of the friendly nurses whom Agnes hoped to meet outside the hospital. Hoping that Phil will launch a rescue mission, she decides to stay strong and active and to be prepared to escape at any time.

Cedar makes light chat with the nurses. A nurse named Jessie explains to her that Agnes “never made it off the delivery table” (87). Jessie was planning to help Agnes before their plan failed, but she is now working on a new plan to save the women in the hospital. Cedar plots while unraveling her blanket, imitating her silent roommate and hoping to form an unspoken bond between them. They have balls of unwoven yarn hidden beneath their beds.

Cedar is shocked to see her neighborhood mailman deliver letters to the hospital ward. He secretly slips a letter into the pocket of Cedar’s robe. The letter is written in Sera’s handwriting and accuses Phil of betraying Cedar to her captors. Cedar rips the letter into shreds but refuses to cry. Over the coming days, she wonders whether the letter might be wrong.

Cedar receives another letter. Inside are pages of Eddy’s unfinished book. His words express an unexpected, worrisome delight in the idea of an apocalypse that purges humanity’s sins. After a brief, confused flush of anger, Cedar realizes that the letter contains a code in which Eddy promises to help her escape to “Indian paradise” (92). That night, Cedar wakes up and sees that her roommate is weaving using her threads of unwoven yarn. Cedar begins to help her, even though the woman still won’t speak. They weave together a rope to try and escape. Over the coming days, Cedar watches the nurses carefully as the rope-making continues. The nurses were all screened and approved by the new religious authorities. Though Cedar talks to the nurses, she struggles to get any clear answers about what happens to the women in the hospital after they give birth. A nurse named Orielee returns Cedar’s religious books, though Cedar doesn’t trust her.

Cedar and her silent roommate both secretly refuse the drugs they are given and continue to work on their rope manufacture. Cedar hides the rope and her diary in a heating duct, which she opens using a secret nail file. Cedar steals more blankets and begins to unravel them with her roommate. A stern nurse arrives and collects samples from the women, including vitals, hair clippings, and nail clippings. As the nurse works, a ball of yarn falls on the floor. Cedar causes a distraction while her roommate collects the yarn. The nurse does not notice.

The rope reaches 20 feet in length. Orielee arrives in the morning to take another blood sample from Cedar, who questions where the blood is sent. The nurse makes strange allusions to researchers wasting the blood collections. Cedar and Orielee chat about the new society and its rules. Orielee mentions that the authorities followed a man “who was helping lots of women hide” (99) and the man led them right to Cedar’s house.

Cedar works on the rope throughout the night, crying while she weaves. She is worried that Phil was captured, that he was the man who helped women, and that his captors tortured him into revealing Cedar’s whereabouts. As she worries, Cedar notices that the nurse pushing the lunch cart looks strangely familiar. She realizes that the nurse is Sera, who gives her a quick message. Glen is okay, but Sera has no idea where Phil is. They hatch an escape plan involving Jessie the nurse.

Cedar receives another ultrasound, but the orderlies and nurses won’t tell her anything about her baby. The rope made by Cedar and her silent roommate is nearly 32 feet long. Cedar has intense dreams in which her biological grandmother warns her about certain nurses, including Orielee. When she wakes, Cedar finds Orielee in her room for an unscheduled linen change. Orielee searches the room meticulously. She finds the nail file but not the rope. Cedar blames the nail file on Agnes. That night, her roommate uses her fingernail to open the heating duct and resume work on the rope.

Cedar worries when Sera does not return. Sera eventually appears with lunch and hides a secret note inside the tray. Cedar reads the note (written on edible paper) and learns the escape plan. She destroys the evidence and prepares for the next evening with her roommate. Cedar writes in her diary, explaining that she believes that the women who survive childbirth are kept prisoner and forced into surrogacy for frozen embryos from looted in-vitro clinics.