Wednesday, January 23, 2008

I was in jail from November 30, 2007 to March 27, 2008 for a D.U.I.. This is an excerpt from the journal I kept while in there.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Day 55. I have had the worst past few days thus far. I don't know where to begin. In fact, I don't even know if the madness is over. Right now I'm in the medical block. I've been here for a day and half and I have no idea how long they intend to keep me here.

It all began Monday morning. That's the day we do "clothing exchange". That is to say, you turn in your week-old-dirty jumpers for clean ones. Also, at that time your cell is searched and depending on the guard that does the search, all of your belongings are strewn about with something invariably missing. This time it was my pen- one of my most valued possessions. Pens are inexpensive but take at least 24 hours to replace due to the way ordering Commissary works. As it happened to me though, it took two days for me to replace it, which happened just moments ago.

So, that is how my week began. I stripped down to my underwear and filed out to the day room and got in line with the my laundry bag containing my jump suit in one hand and my towel, face-cloth and bed sheet in the other. When I reached the head of the line I threw my laundry into a big hamper and a guard asked me "what size?". I said, "Two X." Then he handed me a "Clean Jumper", which by the way, was dirtier than the one I just turned in. It had small hair shaving covering the inside and out and some mysterious white, crusty smudges in various places. But it was a new one and promised to fit better than the worn-out older ones that some people were getting, so I counted my blessings and moved over to pick up my new towel, face-cloth and bunk sheet. They were neatly folded on the picnic table, topped with a roll of toilet paper.

The night before, my bunkie, Darick, and I planned on washing our blankets in the morning. It was a decision that we did not take lightly because we usually slept until at least noon every day. This schedule was made possible only with the aid of the two blankest each of us was issued. They kept us warm in a cell that was down-right cold and acted as a shield for our eyes from the light that stayed on all day in our cell. So we knew we would have to skip on our sleep schedule to allow the blankets to dry. That's precisely what we did.

After breakfast chow I managed to motivate Darick out of bed to stick with our plans. We took a bucket to the shower room and washed all four blankets one-by-one and draped them over the tables in the day room to let them air dry. We were quite satisfied by our efforts when we were dumping out the soapy water that was, now, gray and stale looking. Then we set out to find ways to occupy ourselves until the clothing exchange mob showed up.

After I was issued that crusty jumper and all the guards left with my pen we were let out of our cells again. Darick and I re-draped three of the four blankets out in the day room, opting to keep one in our room so as not to take up too many tables. Now it was just a matter of time.

Darick and I both laid in our bunks and did our best to fall asleep on a bare mat. Just as I was about to drift off I heard it. Instantly a tremor of panic flashed down my spine. My eyes shot open and I listened, Motionless. It was the voice of McNealy, the most evil of all the guards. That key-twirling, pigeon-toed, wretched cur was out in the day room shouting orders and creating chaos. "Lock Down!", his voice echoed throughout the block. Then he began to count down. "Five....Four....". Darick and I both sprang out of our bunks, fearing for our blankets. He beat me to the window where he could see McNealy. "Three....Two...". Cell doors slammed loudly. "One!".

I looked at Darick who appeared to be shocked and horrified at the spectacle. I said "Our blankets?". He said without flinching, "Gone."

There are very few things as precious as your blankets up here. In fact, as far as I'm concerned it's number one on the list. And here I was at nine in the morning, in my new, crusty jump suit, no pen and no blankets. I was having a real bad day.

Later that day, at about 4:30, I was horsing around with Darick. He said something sarcastic to me, the way he does, and I went to give him a playful slap, the way I do. He was on the bottom bunk and as I lunged at him my head did not clear the top bunk. I rammed my head right into the corner of my steel bunk with all of my weight behind it. I instinctively slapped my hands over my head and took in a deep, hissing breath. The pain was excruciating. Then when I pulled my hands away they were drenched in blood. I asked Darick if it was bad - he said yes.
So, Darick fetched the guard, who took me off the block and put me in a holding cell until the nurse would see me. He was skeptical when I told him what happened, which I found to be humorous the first time he asked, but my pride was wounded when he asked me the second time.

Anyway, I eventually made it down to the nurse who cleaned up the wound and checked how deep it was. She concluded it would need to be closed up by a doctor and I was put in another holding cell where I waited for over an hour to be taken to the hospital. Then I was handcuffed and shackled, taken outside in the freezing January weather with no coat and in flip-flops before I was shackled to a bed in a frigid room at St. Joseph ER. I sat for three hours before the Doc took all of about 4 minutes to glue my head shut.

When I first hit my head and I was put in a holding cell for about twenty minutes I began to cry. It was the first time I had been alone since I came here, my head hurt, and I hadn't called home in nearly a week. I just suddenly felt so alone, so far away from home and anyone who cared about me. Throughout this whole ordeal that overwhelming feeling of isolation and sorrow would wash over me numerous times. In the first holding cell, then the second one when I waited to go to the hospital, in the hospital bed, and now in the back of a transport van coming back "home"- my chains rattling on the metal floor.

I could see out into the dark, cold streets where life went on as usual for everyone else while I was secretly returning to my own private hell. I missed my Dad. He would ask me if I was O.K. in his tender way. He would place a hand on my shoulder and peer into my eyes as if to say "Are you really O.K.?" and I would just shake my head "NO" and we would hug and I could cry on his shoulder. But instead I cried alone in the back of that cold van.

When I was being taken back upstairs to my cell, we had just passed a desk where three other guards were congregated when the guard escorting me asked me to stop and wait for him to grab a radio. That's when I heard the sound of girls laughing and talking in a cell right in front of where I had stopped. I realized I was standing in front of a two-way mirror. They could see me where I could only hear them. I resisted the urge to peek in the window on the door until I heard them making comments about me and my "cute glasses". I stepped forward and peered in at four young girls in "suicide vests". I shot a quick smile at them before one of the guards I just walked passed started yelling at me. "What the hell are you doing? Are you an idiot? Do you want to go to the hole?" and various other questions that I hoped were rhetorical.

Then he told the guard escorting me to "Get this stupid fucker out of here" before going back and giving another guard a high-five. Then I distinctly heard one say to the other, "Man, I really miss working with you".

I was relatively undaunted because I was so relieved to be going back to the "comfort" of my own familiar cell. (also because I secretly placed a curse on the "high-five-guard", whereby every time he high-fived anyone he would empty the contents of his colon into his underwear)

Back in my cell, Houge, my other bunkie, saved his anti-psychotic medication for me that night. And since I wasn't given anything for pain all day and had a thunderous headache I accepted and took them gladly. They were two small, white capsules. He said they would knock me out and I believed him since I had seen him sleep away whole days at a time. We stayed up for two more hours playing cards and right before we went to sleep Hogue asked me if I felt anything yet. I did a quick internal assessment and came back with "No, not a thing". He just chuckled and said "You will". But I secretly thought the pills must have been duds and would do nothing for me. Wrong!

I got up in the middle of the night to go pee and I have the top bunk. I swung my legs over the edge and was just about to slide off when I noticed the floor was further away than usual. It felt like I was two stories high. But in my groggy state I hesitated only a second before I forced myself down to the floor. My legs felt like they each weighed a ton, but I managed to go pee and climb back into my bunk. I told myself I would feel better in the morning when the effects of the mysterious white pills would have had time to wear off somewhat. Wrong again!

I awoke to a guard calling my name, rather impatiently, over the intercom in our cell. He told me to step-out, I was going to see the nurse. So, once again I start moving before I was completely alert. I hopped out of my bunk and stepped out into the day room where there were other people waiting to go see the nurse. I made it about ten steps before I began to feel the familiar heaviness in my legs. Two more steps and my head felt the same way. Sleep had muted all these side-effects, but now they were barreling down on me. I finally staggered another ten steps or so and sat at a table where nausea set in hard like a vise on my stomach. Three seconds later, the hot flashes behind the ears that always come before I chuck.

I needed a moment to collect myself- to sit still but the guard was in a hurry to herd us all the way across the jail to the nurses station. I rationalized that I was just going for a routine follow up and that it may be a quick in and out deal. So I mustered my strength and tried my damnest to act as though nothing was the matter, praying that I would make it back to my cell before I was exposed. I was afraid they would see how sick I was and somehow find out I had taken Hogue's medication and we would both be thrown into the hole.

It was no use trying to act normal. I stumbled around at the back of the pack like a drunk. I could only muster a whisper when someone asked me what happened to my head. All the while I am keeping an eye open for a place to puke when the final urge came. At one point I fell so far behind the others that the guard told them to stop. I stopped too and rested my head on the wall and said "C.O., I'm sick. I can't...". So, he grabbed a handful of the back of my collar and held me out in front of him like a dirty diaper the rest of the way to the nurses station. He never once said a kind or reassuring word to me, and in turn, I intended to puke on him when the time came.

Luckily for the guard we made it the whole distance without me vomiting. When the nurses looked at me they were horrified and asked what was wrong. All I could get out was "I'm sick" in that throaty way you talk just before you hurl, so the guard filled them in on the whole fiasco.
Needless to say, they poked and prodded but found nothing to explain my condition, so they proposed it may be a delayed reaction to my head trauma. Therefore, they wanted me put on a 24 hour observation to begin immediately. I told the nurse that I needed to use the toilet, hoping it would abate this nausea and she told the guard to put me in a holding cell with a toilet. Then they put me in a wheel chair and carted me off. My nausea was less severe at this point but I was still very sick and uncomfortable.

Just as I feared I was put in one of those freezing holding cells with a mat but no blanket and, of course, no toilet. I did what I could to try and sleep off the effects but I was far too uncomfortable and cold. When I asked for a blanket the guard returned with four small towels- he said he couldn't find a blanket. This was another one of those moments I wanted to cry, but there were too many people coming and going outside that cell.

At some point a nurse came and checked my vitals and asked how I felt. I told her I still needed to use the toilet and she reassured me I would be put in a cell with a toilet momentarily then left. I didn't hold out much hope for the toilet so after a few minutes I just stood up and pissed in the drain that was in the middle of the floor. All the while guards and nurses passing by the large windows to my cell. Then I laid down, covered up the best I could with those damn towels, and had just managed to fall asleep before I was awakened again. A guard told me to get "my things", which I would have laughed at if I had had the strength. But I grabbed up the mat and four towels to be moved to the medical block. On the way there I asked, a new guard now, for a blanket and he sounded confident that he arrange that and sent me into the block.

The first thing I noticed was how small it was compared to 6A where I had come from. It was lunch time and yet as quiet as I've ever heard it in this jail. There were a few people wrapped in blankets sitting sedately around a T.V. with the volume at a reasonable level. Everything seemed calm and quiet, whereas in 6A the minute the cell doors are opened in the morning the T.V. is turned on with the volume blaring and the entire block population seems to begin talking all at once. But here I don't think a word was spoken when I walked in. I could actually hear what a few scraggly old men were watching. It was "Walker Texas Ranger", which by the way, is an uncontested hit with the jail population, but is still missed on me. I was feeling much more stable on my feet by then so I threw my mat on my assigned bunk and went to investigate this place further. I had no blanket anyway.

I sat down and watched all the "Walker Texas Idiot" I could stand, which was all of about seven minutes. I'm surprised people's eyes don't explode out of their heads and kill them if they watch more than 15 seconds of that awful show. But anyway, after that I took a shower and went to bed and napped off and on with those towels until I was finally given a blanket about three cold hours later.

I was awoke yet again by my new bunkie grumbling to me to get rid of three of my towels. He said the guards could accuse me of stealing if I had more than one. That would result in me getting locked down and thusly him being locked out of our cell for hours at a time. I could see that he had a point but I still resented his advice and thought it was rather unwise of him to wake me up after the day I just had. Also because he only had one arm where as I made good use of the two I had. The thought of beating up a one armed man when through my head briefly.

As it turned out though, he had good intentions and I rather enjoyed hearing his stories after we were locked down for the night. The nurse gave him a concoction of pain pills that made him appear to get drunk right in front of my eyes and made his storytelling become very animated. I never did find out what happened to his arm but I gathered it must have happened relatively recently because he talked of hip pain on the same side of his body as the missing arm and he talked of having jobs that require the use of two hands. (welder and electrician) At any rate he and I stayed up until four in the morning when he was released to the free world.

Here I sit, still in the medical block, unable to get a guard to tell me when I will be returned to my cell on 6A with my bunkies or if I even will be. The only thing worse than being in this hell-hole is being moved around in it. I think the worst is yet to come.