Chapter 13
Emily barely made it through the week.
She carried out the therapy sessions, mending the broken, medicating the suffering, nodding sympathetically her head every now and then.
“I feel like the country doctor in one of those TV shows airing at midday on weekdays”, she told Eric in front of an iced coffee that afternoon, “Is this what I’m supposed to do?”.
At first she had been keeping an eye out for that girl, but none of her colleagues had apparently even heard of her.
“I mean, was it all a dream?.. Maybe she wasn’t pregnant… It was hot that day and I never drink enough water, I could have mistook a baggy jumpsuit for a belly…”.
Except of course that Eric had seen her as well.
“She was there and she was pregnant, you didn’t suffer a heat stroke”, he said “But it could have been just a temporary transfer. It happens, sometimes prisoners stationed at the 4C’s for a couple of days may be deemed at risk of possible retaliation between gang members, and they get transferred somewhere else”.
“That girl part of a gang? I look more like a criminal than her!” Emily blurted out, having a hard time putting the argument at rest. She blew air out of her cheeks and after a quick goodbye she marched back to her office.
She gave a quick look at her schedule for the afternoon.
The Warden hadn’t mentioned the Buddying System once ever since their clash the week before and Emily hadn’t brought it up either. “Good riddance!” she thought, “I can live without that mess!”.
All she had to do that day was writing reports, interviewing a new inmate, a couple of sessions with Gracie… oh gosh Gracie…
With a frown, Emily went through her notes to prep for her upcoming session.
Gracie had been slightly improving since Emily had put her on a new set of meds. The sedatives had been replaced by a light anti-anxiety tablet.
She didn’t want Gracie to spend her whole life in a state of semi-consciousness only because when she was sober she was screaming her head off. The memory of killing her granddaughter a bigger pain that she could handle. She needed to be lucid in order to work through the grief and she was getting there, step by step. The most important thing was to gain her trust.
“Yeah, trust…” she thought, looking around her office, a crumped space where she was supposed to make people feel safe, away from the inherent dangers of living in a prison, wondering how could she ever do that when she felt like a prisoner herself.
Emily frowned, remembering that she’d run out of meds for Gracie and wondered if she still had some of the tablets in her drawer. She always made sure that patients took whatever medication they were on in front of her, rather than during the day at the nurses’ station.
Connor had taught her that trick at the hospital, telling her that it made it more official for the patient, making them feel cared for and guided, not to mention that many patients tended to spit out the tablets as soon as the nurse was turning their back to them. Taking the tablets in front of her before the start of the session prevented them for discarding them… and selling them.
Commitment was also the reason why she insisted on having the sessions in her study, rather than going to the patients herself.
It represented a way for them to assign it the proper importance and point out that her office was a safe space for them to open up, in stark contrast with the ambience in Gen Pop, where every nook and cranny was treacherous and spied upon.
The guards weren’t too happy about that of course, nor was Head Nurse Claire, having to escort the patients in and out of the admin wing where Emily’s office was, but so far no one had complained.
Emily prepped her mobile phone in videocamera mode as usual, hiding it in a grated box on the book shelves behind her desk. All the patients knew she was recording the session, they had to sign a consent form anyway, but she’d found that making the camera less conspicuous helped them relax.
As suspected, she had run out of medications so she took her copy of the key to the medicine cabinet situated in the Infirmary and made her way there hastily, to retrieve a few things before Gracie arrived.
The medicine cabinet was in the Head Nurse’s office at the Infirmary. Emily didn’t like Claire very much and she wasn’t too thrilled at the idea of having to make small chat with her that day. She couldn’t really put a finger on what exactly she disliked about her, but often she found her hunches to be true. Add to that the fact that every time she went there she had to hear Nurse Claire preach about being careful with the key, since Emily was the only employee outside of the Infirmary to have a copy. She winced at recalling a recent conversation when Claire scolded her like a naughty kid.
“If you insist on having your patients see you in your office you have to make sure that they will never know you keep the key in there!”.
“I don’t go about advertising that I have a copy of that key, I know how risky that can be!” she’d exploded, regretting it immediately.
Annoyed as she had been by being treated like a child, Emily knew Nurse Claire had a point.
Many of the inmates would’ve struck gold if they had come into possession of that key, the content of that cabinet was a proverbial candy store for half of them, the addicts, and a goldmine for the other half, the dealers.
“I’ll be careful…” she had added by way of an apology.
Now that she was in front of the Infirmary she stopped, but only for a second, then she took a deep breath and ducked her head, charging in, noticing immediately with relief that only Claire’s assistant was there.
Mary was lovely but young and inexperienced at her job and Emily felt sorry for her, finding similarities between her own situation with a bully for a boss.
“Hi Mary! Just getting some refills” she announced going in.
“Sure Dr Gray, the Head Nurse is going to put in some orders this afternoon so if you’re missing something you can add it up to the list over there” she indicated a piece of paper on Nurse Claire’s desk with some lines already annotated.
Emily had a quick look at what she normally prescribed to see if she was indeed short and noticed the low level of a few heavy pills.
She took the pen and added a few lines to the ones already present. But right before she put the paper back on the desk she noticed something that made her frown.
“Metformin?”, she read, her mind jumping immediately to conclusions she knew she ought not to.
Metformin had been always praised by obstetricians and paediatricians alike for the reduced risk of fetal malformation when assumed by pregnant women with gestational diabetes. Pregnant women.
“That girl!’, she thought, the image of her scared face vivid in her mind.
“Ok Em, don’t raise any alarm just yet… Metformin, metformin…” she racked her brain to find any other explanation for the order in front of her. Metformin was only used in type 2 diabetes, while Insulin could be used for any patient, making it the drug of choice, especially in a prison where the personnel was always budget conscious. If they had ordered Metformin it had to be because the patient was pregnant.
“Calm down Emily, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it was for that girl, there could’ve been someone else expecting a baby in the prison…right?”.
Wrong! She shook her head without a doubt, because thanks to the bloody buddying system Emily knew that that wasn’t the case, at least not until the week before.
As soon as she accepted that possibility, something fell right into place for her.
“It makes sense! I haven’t seen her in Gen Pop because she’s here! At the Infirmary!”, she looked around as if she could just spot her right next to her.
“I’m right! I can feel it!”, she felt fire spreading through her chest, taking away her breath for a moment, before melting the ice wall she had meticulously built around her heart. Aware of Mary’s stare, right behind her, she took a deep breath and pressed her lips together not to betray the state of excitement she was in.
She needed an excuse to take a look in the ward, or failing that, at least to have access to the system where she could find a record of the girl’s admittance.
And Mary’s computer was on, it would’ve been so easy to get in if she had stepped outside…
Emily knew she had to act immediately but she had to be cautious, the Warden’s reaction when she’d mentioned the girl had made it clear that there was something odd about her presence in the prison and this was not the time to lose her job!
“I can’t ask anyone…and I can’t just go wandering, I don’t have any patients here”, Emily could feel her heartbeat accelerating fast.
Darting her eyes left and right for inspiration she spotted Nurse Claire’s mobile on her desk and had an idea.
Forcing a smile she left Mary absorbed in her task and swiftly got out of the nurses’ station, crossed the corridor in the middle of the Infirmary and marched into the Nurse’s bathroom across the hall.
Keeping fingers and toes crossed she checked that it was empty and she took out her own mobile.
Without thinking too much - for she knew it would have stopped her in her tracks - she switched on the Hide Caller ID function and she opened the window to create some background noise.
“No, that’s not going to do it…” she thought, biting her lip. She looked at the bathroom and when she spotted the hand dryer she activated it. When the loud noise blasted out she took a deep breath and called the number for the Head Nurse.
Hearing the free tone rhythmically beeping in her ear she frantically thought about how to further camouflage her voice and, above all, what to say, but she realised that for once she didn’t have to think too much. She was in a prison after all, there could be tons of reasons for calling a nurse, stabbing, shivving, stomping, shredding, slashing, and that was just the “S”, there was a whole alphabet at her disposal…
Her plan was to pretend to be one of the guards calling for help. That way she would’ve been sure to have a few minutes alone in the office where she could’ve searched for the girl’s file.
Even if she knew the ruse would’ve been found she also knew it was unlikely there would’ve been an investigation. Everyone working in a prison was overworked and underpaid and one less thing to worry about would’ve been welcome, rather than being met with suspicion. It would’ve just been put down to a new guard panicking over some small ruse between inmates, and that, Emily knew, happened all the time.
She told herself that that was the last thing she was willing to do for that girl.
“If you don’t find anything you drop it ok?”.
In that precise moment she heard the click of the communication being connected and Mary’s hesitant voice filled her ear: “Nurse Pattinson’s phone?”.
“Yeah! Ah… we’re having a riot on Block D! A few injuries, possible stabbing, we need help right away!”, Emily had switched to a nasal voice and had kept the phone as close to the hand dryer as possible, keeping her fingers crossed Mary wouldn’t have recognised her. Of course the risk was that she wouldn’t have been able to hear her at all…
“I’m sorry I… I can barely hear you! Who’s this?”.
Her courage leaving her at that direct question, Emily panicked and almost chocked on her own words, “Riot! Block D! Help!” and she closed the communication, shaking all over, looking at the phone in terror for a few seconds, as if she half expected to be called back which was, of course, impossible.
Once she was sure her ruse hadn’t been found out, and her heartbeats had gone back to normal, she pricked her ears and slightly parted the doors to the bathroom.
Down the hallway, nothing seemed to happen for a few seconds, then, as soon as she’d started thinking that it was all for nothing, the office door banged open and out flew Mary, holding Nurse Claire’s phone away from her as if it were burning. A feeling of excitement swept over her, “It worked!”.
But that was the easy part…