A Journey

I have a guy, Mr. Inato (previously Mr. I) who was taken off of the unit, probably long after medical should have been involved, to the local hospital. His labs indicated that he was at the edge of death. He was in one of my groups, and two weeks went by without him. I was only able to look at a modicum of information about his physical status, and was completely sure he was dead.

In group, they asked, and I told them to pray to whatever god they held dear. I couldn’t give them additional information as it was confidential. Mr. Stewart, who lives across the hall from him offered up he was completely incapacitated when they took him out and pissing blood.

The next day, he is in a wheel chair in Control. I see him an inelegantly blurt out, “you’re not dead!”

He wasn’t, but was still very weak, and needed a wheelchair to get around. This means he needs to have one of the other guys push him to meals and med line and so forth. And it’s not like this other guy just stands around like a butler waiting on the whim of Mr. Inato to cart him around. I needed to speak with him about his meds and didn’t want to go through the whole production of dragging him. I could leave a massage with custody, but I don’t want them responsible for communicating medication issues. Besides, I could just walk down the hall, into his unit and tell him.

So I waited in my office for somebody in a uniform to walk by so I could snag him as an escort. It didn’t take long, and one of the Sergeants stuck his head in my office. I asked to accompany me, explained what I wanted and we went briskly down the hallway chatting, into the unit, past the unit officer, and to the very end of the second hallway. I was pleased I hadn’t dragged him out as he couldn’t have been further away from me unless he had been in a totally different building.

I knocked, went in, crouched down to the bottom bunk, gave him my message and talked for a moment. All’s well, he understood and wasn’t upset or otherwise put out. I stand up, the Sergeant guarding my back smiles and we turn to leave. And the passage is blocked by the bigwig custody in charge of the building and the unit officer, with about four of my guys lurking not-so-innocently in the background. Her eyes are bugging out of her head and her eyebrows are waggling madly around on her forehead. Apparently she had decided there was some kind of emergency; apparently related to the noise I made as I walked down the hallway with my heals (I am always noisy, so I don’t get it), and the fact that I had unit command with me. Her passage in turn had set the whole unit buzzing, and I had to soothe all my guys as I made my retreat, carefully not laughing at her misplaced excitement.