With A Concerned Look On My Face

One of the things I always hated seeing when I got in was all of the day shift Hive crew up in central doing paperwork. Especially when that was where I was headed.

Like today.

They said they had a double. They were taking an inmate out to put him on suicide watch and the cellie tried to push past the officers and run out of the cell. He got pushed rather firmly to the back of the cell while they took the one guy out. Not that big a deal.

Then when they tried to put the first guy in a suicide cell he bucked up and tried to fight and bite somebody and ended up getting sprayed.

Lovely.

Ran into Lt Strong and he was looking harassed. He said "I became shift commander in the middle of a bad count and then this happened! My day is going to last forever!"

I felt sorry for the guy. Bet he wished today that he'd stayed a Sergeant.

The house was full of utilities when we got down there, as they'd pulled everyone to do paperwork. They'd even pulled a caseworker to replace the Sergeant. Ten seconds after I walked into the office I was not happy. I could tell at a glance that my boards weren't right and the numbers were all messed up. That's bad.

A couple of them stayed to try and fix things and finally we just shooed them out and said "It's okay. We got this." and sent them home.

It took several phone calls and some heavy detective work to get all of our numbers straight enough to hope that count might clear. Luckily Stubby found one of our major errors and managed to clear it up. That one would have been hard to find without his help.

But it still took and hour to get things straight. First count cleared and we were on our way.

Later on in the evening Miz Goody came in and said the guy they had slammed earlier was complaining his hands were broken and wanted to see me. I'd seen him on the camera flapping his hands around so I was pretty sure they weren't broken, but I went anyway just to see what his deal was.

He proceeded to tell me the long sad tale of how they treated him mean ever since he got to this camp and wouldn't let him out of the Hive and when he tried to leave three officers jumped on him and strangled him and beat him up and broke his hands.

The whole time he's telling me this he's waving his hands around and wriggling his fingers to show me how broken they were. At one point he said they ripped "a big hunk of meat" out of his wrist. There might have been a scratch. I couldn't see very well. But he wasn't bleeding.

Then he said "They were beating me up and choking me and when I said they were hurting me they all said if I told anybody they would come back and do it again and call me a n*gger!"

"No! They didn't!" I tried my best to look astonished.

"They did, Sarge! They said if I told anybody they would beat me up again and call me a n*gger!"

"Well, that wasn't very nice of them ,was it?"

"No. I didn't like that at all."

I was starting to get an idea that this guy wasn't playing with a full set of hamsters in his wheel.

I stood there and listened to his tale of woe and all of his medical complaints with a look of real concern on my face until he finally wound down some. Then I told him to try and lay down and maybe get some sleep and that in the morning maybe they could put casts on his hands and maybe get him an aspirin or two.

That seemed to make him feel better and he went over and laid down on the slab, propped up against the heater and we didn't hear much out of him the rest of the night.

Then I went back in the office and slapped myself lightly on the forehead and said "Ay-yi-yi! What was I thinking?" If I'd have stayed out on the yard as a COI this would have been somebody else's problem!

Ah, well. I did it to myself and have nobody else to blame.

So. Saturday is going to be National Kazoo Day, Clash Day, Rattle Snake Round-Up Day and National Blueberry Pancake Day.

Sunday is going to be National Corn Chip Day, Curmudgeons Day, Freethinkers Day and National Puzzle Day.

Monday is going to be Escape Day (oh snap!), Inane Answering Machine Message Day, Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day and National Croissant Day.

I'll have butter on everything but the corn chips, thank you.