Left Speechless

It's not often I get left speechless. After all, I've been working in a freaking prison for almost ten years now. And I have seen an awful lot of... pretty awful stuff.

But tonight got to me just a little and I'm not sure if I can even talk about it, let alone should or will.

There are some things that I won't talk about and alot of things I can't and won't say here. Confidentiality issues and keeping my job issues are pretty much numbers one and two on that list. Just not necessarily in that order, you understand.

Deliberately grossing out my readers is another line I don't want to cross too often as well.

Let's see if I can weasel my way around this and at least get some of it out of my head.

There's an inmate who has a certain "medical condition." It makes me uncomfortable to think about and it's even worse seeing it in person. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

It's just freaking gross, people.

Anyway, one of the nurses came down to inform me that his condition was getting worse and it was possible that it might become life threatening very soon. She just wanted to keep me in the loop in case something happened.

I pondered the info for a few brief seconds and said "I believe I'll just pass that buck along to my zone lieutenant." And about thirty seconds after I said that Lt Pants drove up on the cart.

I smiled widely and said "You are just the man I was looking for."
He took one look at that smirk on my mug and said "Aw, hell."

You just can't please everybody, I guess.

I gave him the rundown on what was happening and he went down and talked to the nurse and decided to pass the buck further up the chain and called Captain Strong. The Cap said to call a Code 16 (medical emergency) and have him seen by medical.

Now, when we call a Code 16, we are supposed to include the location and the "nature of the code", whether it's chest pains or bleeding or whatever. I was interested to see how he described the nature of this code.

I said "So... how are you going to word that call?"
He replied "I'm not making the call. You are. How are you going to word it?"

I used a few words that I won't write here. Then I grabbed my radio.
"T-5 to Raccoon Station. I have a Code 16, 10 house, CTC.............. umm..... hernia?"
It was the best I could come up with at the time.
And about as accurate as I was willing to get over an open radio channel.

But being left speechless like that is hard and surprising. It doesn't happen too often.

Anyway, medical decided they couldn't do much for him without a doctor. So they made him an appointment for tomorrow and sent him back to the house.

Which we all knew was going to happen.

And if I never have to see that again in my entire life I will be content.

I Suspect He May Be Crazy

Just so you know the kind of people we have to deal with on a day to day basis. Things have been a little slow on the wobblehead front of late. They have transferred out some of the more crazy ones.

We got an inmate on suicide watch the other night. We only kept him down in the Hive for a night or two then sent him back to his house. Some little old guy I had never seen before. Seemed harmless enough while he was down there. Didn't give us any troubles.

I looked in his file just to see why they had sent him to us. It read:

"Eating dirt and threatening staff with a rock and trying to smoke hair."

Ok, ummm....... yuck. Ummm.... yeah. Might want to keep an eye on him for a little while.

Whoo.

Now I'm glad we didn't keep him very long. That just gave me a case of the gee-whillikers.

And he seemed like such a nice little old guy.

Bleah.