SoC 3:1

Injustice

 

E melda Grumbly watched the white Littleton County bus as it moved into its assigned parking spot. The driver opened the door and two guards exited. A minute later the first of the prisoners exited, dressed in orange detention uniforms. Their hands and ankles were cuffed, and each prisoner was chained to the one behind him to keep them from escaping.

“Losers,” Emelda said under her breath. She despised each and every last one of them, for no good reason, except for the fact that she that she was now partially responsible for them because she was Deputy Matron over the Littleton County Correctional Facility and Hospital for Men. She did not know that they were coming. It was probably pre-arranged by the warden before he left.

The last passengers on the bus were two more guards, who kept an eye on the prisoners from behind, with their billy clubs in hand to keep them in line.

Emelda walked away from the window checked her hair in the mirror, and then she pressed back the wisps of the graying hair that had escaped from the bun she wore. She adjusted her skirt over her generous hips, and walked out of the parlor. She made her way up a flight of metal steps, and continued up a long corridor until she reached room 200, the first place the prisoners were to be brought. It was there they would be stripped, searched, and processed into the population they called the Community.

“Some prisoners just arrived,” Emelda said to Jasper, the wizen old geezer of a man, who manned the office. Jasper had been at Littleton for nearly forty-years and knew every nook and cranny of the place, and he probably knew where all the skeletons were hidden . . . literally.

“How many?” Jasper asked hoarsely. He inhaled deeply from an unfiltered cigarette, coughing as he exhaled. He put the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. Emelda turned up her nose at the smell. The room always smelt like stale cigarette smoke and old ashes.

“Twenty,” Emelda replied.

“Let me get some forms out of the back,” Jasper said.

“Someone should have told me earlier so I could have had all this stuff ready.”

“Hrmp,” Emelda said. It’s not like he had been doing anything else besides watching those damn talk shows. If she had her way, Jasper would be gone, and if she ever got the chance, she would have him declared insane and locked away on the fifth floor in the “wacky bin,” as she called it.

A young, pock faced man with short spikey blond hair stuck his head through the door. “Is Jasper ready for them, Miss Grumbly, Ma’am?”

It was Horace Williams, one of the new recruits. Horace was the grandson of Honore “Red” Williams, one of the old wardens of the prison. The young man was smart, eager to learn, and had promise. He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, nor was he afraid to use force to get the prisoners to comply.

“Where are they from?” Emelda asked

“They’ve been transported from Harrison County. They’re too overcrowded,” Horace answered.

Emelda thought it was absurd. There were convicted criminals. She had no problem crowding them in six at a time in a cell designed for two.

“Jasper’s getting some forms in the back,” Emelda told him. “Give the old bastard about five minutes.”

Horace smiled, revealing uneven teeth. “Yes, Miss Grumbly, Ma’am.”

Jasper came out of the supply room. “I’m ready. Send the first one in.”

Horace escorted a man in. “His name is Raymond Munsey.

He handed the Raymond’s papers over to Emelda, who was busy looking him over from head to toe. She looked down at the papers. “Convicted of murder. Found guilty of shooting his wife in a drunken brawl.” Emelda frowned at the man.

“Wife beater,” she said to Horace, and the other guard, Phil, who stripped Raymond out of his clothes.

Raymond didn’t respond.

“Says here that you beat the piss out of her first.”

“Stop badgering the man,” Jasper said.

Raymond still had not commented, but he watched Emelda with cool, uninterested blue eyes. She reminded him of his late wife, Tammy. They were almost the same height, the same build, and the same voice that aggravated him to death until he picked up his rifle and silenced her.

Emelda handed the paper to Jasper to record in the log. She took note of Raymond’s nonchalant behavior and his refusal to be goaded by her.

“We don’t take too kindly to wife beaters in here,” she told him. “And you answer when I speak to you.”

Raymond just stared at her and Jasper and the two guards watched under their eyes as if pretending they weren’t standing around and listening to the conversation.

“I can make it real hard for you,” Emelda told Raymond.

“Twenty years to life is a long time.”

Horace leaned in the doorjamb, watching the ritual, with his gun trained on the naked prisoner.

Emelda walked over to Raymond, eyeing his naked form. “Nice,” she said. He had broad shoulders and a strong back that rippled with muscles. That’s what she liked, a man who wouldn’t buckle under pressure. “Give me a pair of gloves,” she told Jasper.

Jasper handed her a pair of medium latex gloves. “Spread ‘em,” she told Raymond.

* * * *

Doctor Sam Briscoe beckoned for the two guards to shackle the patient to the examining table. The room was far from sanitary. The equipment was old and rusting, and the tools were cleaned with alcohol to erase the last patient’s blood. He would have preferred to be working in one of those big fancy hospitals in New York or Massachusetts, instead of the rat infested basement of Littleton. It was not his fault that he accidentally killed two patients during his residency. And how was he supposed to know back then that he had to look up medications and their side effects before prescribing them. So he had been banished to the outskirts of west hell to a place where the judges only sent hardened criminals with no hope for redemption, and the clinically insane.

“What’s his problem?” he asked one of the guards.

“Been complaining about stomach pains,” the guard answered. “I think he’s faking.”

“Are you a doctor?” Sam asked the guard.

“No.”

“Well leave the diagnosis to me.” The guard rolled his eyes at Sam, who ignored him.

Sam approached the patient and stopped. “Have we met before?” he asked the man.

“No,” the man said with a moan.

“I’m going to press on your stomach. Tell me when it hurts.”

The patient screamed and nearly bolted from the table when Sam pressed on his lower abdomen.

“Could be his appendix or a hernia,” Sam said. “I won’t know for sure until I open him up.”

The man on the table groaned. He shifted his head to the left, and then vomited.

“Damn,” the guard said. “It’s black.”

“Could be internal bleeding,” Sam said. He walked over to the telephone instead of assisting his patient. “Nurse, call an orderly to bring a bucket of water and a mop. A patient threw up everywhere, and when you finish with that get the operating room ready for surgery.” He hung up the phone.

“How many other patients you got out there waiting?” he asked the guard nearest the door.

“Ten,” the guard answered. “They all complaining about their stomachs are hurting.” He chuckled. “Most of them have diarrhea too.”

“What the hell did they all eat?” Sam asked. He never ate anything the cooks in the galley cooked. He prepared his meals at his home and brought it with him to work everyday and heated it up in a small microwave in his office. He had seen the kitchen and the staff, and he wasn’t impressed.

“The menu said, pork surprise,” the guard said with a giggle. “I guess the surprise is on them.”

* * * *

Horace walked through the dimly lit fifth floor corridor on his rounds. He was met by a highly offensive odor that nearly strangled him. It was the smell of months of unwashed bodies and filthy soiled laundry.

Horace looked around. The walls needed painting and the floors were dirty. He didn’t see any doctors or nurses. He suspected that they were all somewhere goofing off or watching television in the lounge. Not they would have been doing anything if they had been present. Most of them teased, taunted and tortured the inhabitants of the fifth floor. Fortunately, most of them died after a while.

The courts had found most of the patients of that particular floor to be insane, and their lives were signed away by their families who couldn’t afford to take care of them anymore, or those who families just didn’t want to. There were several serial murders and child molesters in residence. He tried to stay away from them as best he could.Someone screamed. It came from one of the treatment rooms. A lot of patients were crying and rocking themselves, while others stared blankly out in space. Some walked around the wards, and some sat around talking to imaginary friends. All in all, the place wasn’t fit to raise cattle in, let alone, patients.

Horace walked into another ward. Most of the patients were tied to their beds. He raised his hand to his nose to block out the smells. He noticed that one of the patients lay still on his cot. His faced the wall. Horace walked over to him and looked down to see if the man was breathing. The telltale sign of the rising and falling of the chest was absent. Horace walked around to the side of the bed. The man’s eyes were open, but he was dead. “Bummer,” Horace said as he looked down at the cold pallid face of the man. He wondered how he died. Did he call out and was ignored by the staff, or did he die peacefully in a drug induced