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For me, taking a bare fisted, solid swing at a wall of white-painted cinderblock, is one of the most effective ways to catch a ticket on Colorado State’s infirmary train, broken hand and all. It was the third time I’d punched it in the ten years I’d been locked down in death row’s solitary confinement, practically destroying a hand that had already suffered from limited function from its last meet and greet with the cell wall.

I smiled through the five by five slab of window, clutching a hand with the middle knuckle completely freed from its skin and looking like something from a horror movie. The knuckle was showing white and fresh blood began to gurgle out over the tissue like water through the crack of some underground reservoir. My hand twitched like it was taking its last breaths and I shouted to the on duty guard—dickhead name Watterson—that my hand had jacked itself up again. I thought it would be easier this time, hitting the wall, as if the pain would’ve been numbed to some degree from the previous time I’d inflicted this injury, but it wasn’t. It was the worst pain I’d ever felt.

Mentally, you have to be able to take a self-induced trip, unassisted by drugs and alcohol—which you’re not going to get anyway—to will yourself to that irrevocable point. Let your mind drift past your custom cell mattress manufactured by Bricks & Blocks, past the metal toilet from Auto Matrons Inc. that self-flushes so you can’t collect, eat or throw your feces at the guards. Get past all that and embrace the minuet, pretty much impossible possibility that something may happen when you are taken to the infirmary this time. The aches that are in your head from the real headaches to the just imagined ones may finally go. Might evaporate like the night’s fallen rain. This time you may finally be free.

To get away from solitary for a night is the most you can realistically hope for though, and the guards, stout men with tough authoritative voices, and bone crippling grips and tackles, still make you put your fuckin’ hands through the opening in the door to be cuffed before they let you out. Fuck them.

“God dammit,” Watterson shouted. “Motherfucker did it again!”

A voice drifted down the corridor, half irritated and exhausted: “You mean Solitary John?”

“That’s right! Solitary John! You’re gonna want to get down here Morg!”

The headache I felt was painting my vision white, so everything light or dark, seemed to have an added glare to it. I honestly think that the pain from the haymaker to the wall was what I had to thank. My stomach was rolling and twisting like I’d dined on a months expired ground beef. I leaned my left shoulder against the wall, clutching my hand, trying to think of ways to keep my mind oblivious of the pain. For a moment weightlessness washed over me like I was suddenly air borne and I nearly fell to the floor, caught myself not breathing refocused on taking in air and keeping the bulk of my weight against the wall.

The guards still took their sweet time getting me and when I was taken out of my cell my head was dripping in sweat. Hard to believe I hadn’t been sweating at all a moment ago and now with the one-on-one time I’d had with the cinderblock I’d put myself in enough pain to pour like a man stranded in the Nevada dessert.

My neighbor, the elderly and gray-haired Devon Thomas from across the hall, ran to his window, his large brownish teeth chewing on a piece of stale bread. He was eating with a smile. “Solitary John’s done did it again!” he shouted, as I was escorted by Morg and Watterson down the hall. The pain had swallowed any real awareness that I had of what was going on around me, and I became lightheaded. I squeezed my eyes shut to bring my mind back, and felt the nausea hit me again like a third degree burn. It doubled me over. With my weight held up by the large hands clutched around the crooks of my elbows, I spewed the prison’s low-grade, bargain rate food, that’d probably been dished out of economy sized cans so massive you couldn’t even locate them at your local wholesaler if you tried.

“Nasty fuck,” Morg said, and the hands around my elbows tightened.

“You gots to come back,” Devon Thomas called from his cell. I could hear cheeriness spilling out of him like it was Christmas Day. “We soul brothers!”

I never understood why he kept calling me soul brother. I was one of fifteen other black dudes in this cell block. Why did I have to be his soul brother?

As I was dragged down the hall, moving my feet to try to gain some purchase, I heard a chant build up behind me. Almost the whole cellblock finding something virtually meaningless to latch onto again.

Solitary John’s done did it again!

Solitary John’s done did it again!

“Please-please-please-please-please-please,” I heard Devon Thomas squealing down the hall through the cell block’s chants, for what seemed no reason at all.

The periodic pools of light that fell over me from the above recessed lighting on my way to the infirmary ceased, and I was in a hall that was bright, a line of windows giving a view of a bright day to my right.

A sadness that cramped my gut like a bad station wagon taco is what forced me back from the brink of unconsciousness. Oh, it’d been so long since I’d been free to see the day. So long.

I was latched to a hospital bed in seconds, by the wrong hand. It hurt like hell, but it was okay because I’d managed to make it this far. At this point I could smell my own stench, wafting off my prison uniform like the rotted entrails from a dead animal, and I had the urge to throw up again.

“He broke his hand again,” Morg said. He was talking right over me, his large overweight stomach bouncing as his spit splattered down on my forehead and eyes like he meant to cool me off.

“Asshole,” I grunted. “Turn your head when you talk all right. I already feel sick enough without you practically French kissing me!”

“Shut the hell up,” he shouted at me.

I was going to say something clever back, but I could hear him leaving the room and seconds later could feel much gentler and cooler hands against my flesh. My attention moved from the ceiling and touched on two separate faces, one to the left of me and one to the right. Both women. My eyes went back to the face on the right, and rested there. I felt at ease at once.

“April.”

Younger than me by seven years this girl was. “Solitary John’s done did it again,” she murmured and gave me a smile. Latex gloves covered the mild-brown skin of her hands, and when Watterson had locked the wrist of my unbroken hand to the hospital bed rail, and unlatched the other, he gave her a nod and she took my broken hand in hers.

I grimaced then forced a smile. Caught my breath. “You know,” I said to her. “It wasn’t intentional. That wall wanted to go bodies.”

She grinned. “And what the heck is bodies John?”

“It’s a game I played back in middle school where I went one on one with someone throwing haymakers at each other without being allowed headshots. First one to give up wins.”

“Heck John. You probably would’ve been better off if the wall just ate it, huh?”

I shrugged. “In a way April, it kind of did.”

It felt like the afternoon again, being in the room. In solitary every day feels the same. Not really like day or night at least until the lights go out. Until they do it really just feels kind of gray, like I’m stuck in between night and day in a kind of gray stretch, and it’s that gray stretch which really seems to give the time in solitary its eternal feel. In that gray stretch the mind goes on a trip, but not like the trip it has to be on for you to willingly break your hand against solid concrete cinderblock. With this trip you zone out. On this trip the mind seems to process the passing of time at a much reduced rate. It finds a way to stretch it out like a thick glob of taffy so that every second feels like a mile run, and you can go on feeling that way until the day ends. But here, in the infirmary, I can see the sun through the windows, the grass in the courtyard, and the prison wall beyond; how the light hits the beds and the wide gray and white squares of the infirmary’s floor, and I know I’m willing to break twenty hands with a combination of punches if in the end it’d get me in here.

Watterson left the room, the door latching shut behind him. I heard his footfalls moving down the hall outside. By the door one overweight security guard sat reading a magazine, smacking on a piece of gum.

April stuck a needle in my swollen hand, and I gave a wet grunt as the pain doubled my vision. She pressed the plunger down. I closed my eyes and let the moment pass.

“Sorry sweetie,” she said. She was fixing me up to an IV drip now, and in a moment had the needle in my arm. In seconds I could feel a cool sensation coursing through me.

“How long—how long you think this time?”

“I could probably get you two nights in here if you’re lucky. You really went all out with your hand this time.”

“I’m telling you April, this time I threw my weight behind the punch. I put in work for this one.”

“You could think of safer, more creative ways, you know. Find a way to lie your butt off.” She laughed.

“But that won’t keep me up here longer than an hour, and when you’re in solitary, they will straight ignore you. The guards only care if they think their asses might be on the line.”

“Yeah, well it was the thing to get you up here seven out of ten times and now your right hand is pretty much screwed.” She glanced at my hurt hand. “I don’t know, you really did some damage this time John.”

The other nurse was across the room now, down about ten beds from where April worked on fixing me up. I tried to sit up, and April put a hand on the section of my chest without puke and pushed me back down.

“I got freaking throw up on my shirt. It stinks.”

She kissed me on the forehead, soft, moist pink lips briefly cooling my skin. The guard on duty didn’t even look up from his magazine, and just flipped a page and smacked his gum.

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 04.06.2016
ISBN: 978-3-7396-5889-6

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