The man in front of me has exactly one tooth.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. Mr. Henderson has a couple of teeth in the back that are black and in need of serious dental care, but when he smiles, all I can see is that one yellow tooth on the top row of his mouth.
“You’re a lifesaver, Doc,” Mr. Henderson tells me as he flashes ol’ Chomper at me one more time. I’ve told him twice now that I’m not a doctor, but he seems to like to call me that. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
“Happy to help,” I say.
I have done practically nothing for Mr. Henderson. All I have done is give him a prescription for a new inhaler for his emphysema, which seems to have worsened in the last few months. The prisoners have to fill out a kite form, which is a requisition to come see me if it’s not a regularly scheduled visit, and the form Mr. Henderson filled out just says, “Can’t breathe.”
All the patients I have seen on my first day have been like this. I don’t know what these men did to end up in the maximum-security prison, but they are all so incredibly polite and grateful for the care I provide. I don’t know what terrible crime this sixty-three-year-old man committed, and I don’t want to know. Right now, I like the guy.
“I’ve been coughing and wheezing ever since the other girl left,” Mr. Henderson tells me. As if to demonstrate his point, Mr. Henderson gives a loud, wet, hacking cough. I’d love to get a chest x-ray, but the technician isn’t here today, so it will have to wait until tomorrow.
The staffing here is terrible. One day into the job, and that much is painfully obvious. Before I came aboard, Dr. Wittenburg was stopping by occasionally, and other than that, they were sending inmates to the ER or urgent care for basic medical care—at enormous cost to the prison. No wonder they seemed so desperate to hire me.
Desperate enough to overlook my intimate connection to one of the inmates.
“What about Dorothy?” I ask. “Did you tell her about your breathing problems?”
He waves a hand. “She just says stop being such a baby.”
While the men are polite enough, I’ve heard my fair share of whining about Dorothy today. None of them seem to like her much.
“You’re great though, Doc,” Mr. Henderson says.
“Thank you.” I smile at him. “Do you have any other questions or concerns?”
“Yeah, I got a question.” He scratches at the rat’s nest of gray hair on his head. “Are you married?”
Dorothy’s warning about not giving out personal information to any of the patients is still ringing in my ears. But this seems like a rather harmless question. And he can clearly see that I’m not wearing a wedding band.
“No,” I say. “Not married.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll find somebody soon, Doc,” he says. “You’re real young and pretty. You don’t need to worry.”
Great.
Mr. Henderson hops off the examining table and I lead him out of the room, making a few last-minute quick notes on his paper chart. The documentation requirements here are pretty limited, from what I’ve seen. The last nurse practitioner, Elise, just made a few notes in her large loopy handwriting for each of her visits. Whatever else Elise is guilty of, I’m grateful she had good handwriting.
Correctional officer Marcus Hunt is waiting outside the exam room. Hunt is the officer assigned to the medical unit, which means he brings the patients to the waiting area (i.e., the plastic chairs lined up outside the examining room), and he stands at attention right outside the room while I’m with the patients.
Hunt is tall, and while he’s not exactly broad, he looks strong under his blue guard’s uniform. He’s maybe in his early thirties with a shaved skull and a few days’ growth of a beard on his chin. There are no windows on the doors, so it’s comforting to leave the door to the exam room open and know Hunt is right outside. I’ve noticed sometimes Hunt leaves the door wide open, and other times, like with Mr. Henderson, he just cracks it slightly. I figure he knows more about the inmates than I do, so I leave it to his discretion.
About a third of the men today came in with their wrists shackled. A couple of them had their ankles shackled as well. I didn’t ask how they determine who gets shackled and who doesn’t.
I deliver Mr. Henderson to Officer Hunt, and he nods at me without expression. Like Dorothy, he doesn’t smile much, or at all. The only people who have smiled at me since I’ve been here have been the prisoners.
“I’ll take him back to his cell,” Hunt tells me.
I check the plastic chairs outside the examining room. “Nobody else is waiting?”
“No, you get a break.”
I watch Hunt disappear down a hallway with Mr. Henderson, leaving me alone. Not that I’m not glad to have a break, but there’s not much to do around here. The Wi-Fi signal is practically nonexistent, and there’s nobody around to talk to. I should start bringing a book to read if there’s a break in the schedule.
The medical records room is located on the left. I’ve been in there a couple of times today to locate charts since nobody does it for me. I look down at my watch—still another hour before quitting time. Then I look both ways down the hallway.
There’s nobody here but me.
I creep over to the medical records room and use my ID badge to unlock the door. It’s a painfully claustrophobic room packed with as many file cabinets as can be squeezed into this amount of space, lit by a single naked bulb on the ceiling. There’s also a stack of files dumped in the corner of the room, the pages spilling out. Dorothy told me those are from inmates who are no longer here. Since most of these men are serving life sentences, I’m guessing that means they’re dead.
I don’t have much time here before Hunt returns. Fortunately, I know exactly what I’m looking for.
I make a beeline for the drawer marked N. I pull it open, exposing a thick stack of charts packed tightly into the drawer. I thumb through the names. Nash. Nabb. Napier. Neil.
Nelson.
I pull out the chart, my hands shaking slightly. The name scribbled on the tab is Shane Nelson. It’s him. He’s still here. Not that I should be
surprised, since the last time I saw him, he was being sentenced to spend the rest of his life here.
I close my eyes and I can still see his ruggedly handsome face. His eyes looking into mine. I love you, Brooke.
That was what he said to me just a few hours before he tried to kill me. And that’s not even the worst thing he did.
I stare down at the paper chart, wanting to open it and look inside, but knowing I shouldn’t. Morally, I definitely shouldn’t. Legally… It’s a gray area. Technically, as a prisoner of this facility, he’s one of my patients. But if I open this chart, I won’t be looking at it as a practitioner.
I’ve only been here a day. It’s a bit early to be breaking the rules.
When I applied for this job, I didn’t think I would get it, given my connection to one of the inmates. But I was a minor at the time of Shane’s trial, and my parents worked hard to keep my name out of public records. Still—I had believed a background check would give me away. But I was wrong.
Or else the warden knew about the connection, but they were so desperate to hire somebody, they let it slide.
I hear a click, and I realize somebody has used their ID badge to unlock the door to medical records. Panicked, I stuff Shane’s chart back into the file cabinet and slam the drawer shut just as the door swings open. Officer Hunt is standing there, his tall silhouette filling the doorway.
“We have another patient for you.” In the dim light of the room, his eyes look like two dark sockets. “What are you doing in here?”
“I, uh…” I glance back at the file cabinet. “There was just something I thought of on a patient from this morning that I wanted to make a note on.”
I have every right to be in this file room. There’s no way for him to know that what I was doing in this room was far from kosher, although I suspect my burning cheeks are giving me away.
Hunt narrows his eyes at me. “I laid out all the charts for the scheduled visits. If you need any other charts, I can bring them to you.”
“Oh!” I force a smile. “Well, thank you then. I sure appreciate it.” He doesn’t return the smile.
Well, great. I’ve been here less than a day, and the guard already thinks I’m a problem. But it sounds like they need me more than I need them, so my job is safe. For now.
As long as Shane Nelson doesn’t need to be seen in the medical ward anytime soon.
