The tenpenny presses against her lips, not hard, just enough to keep it in place. Andrea smells the fresh tang of metal. She wants so badly to take a taste.

“Good, Andrea,” says Dr. Baum. “Thirty more seconds and you’ll get a treat!” Her hand is on the spray bottle, humiliating, a punishment for cats.

“Pica” derives from the Latin for “magpie.” Birds, cats, hunting. If they did this to a starving man it’d be torture, or at the least interrogation, but Andrea has no answers to give. She’s just hungry. Ten seconds. Without iron inside her, she knows she’ll break.