A LONELY DEATH AT THE PRISON HOSPITAL

I just finish my rounds visiting prisoner/patients at the third floor of the hospital ward and was on my way towards the elevators. On my way out, I used my prison issued key to unlock the ward doors and approached the elevator waiting area. At the elevator waiting area, there stood this wheeled stretcher with a dead body inside a dark plastic bag. I was puzzled not seeing anyone attending to the body. It stood there in this elevator waiting room as if anticipating for someone to wheel it to the elevator too. Again I used my authorized key to get the elevator moving to where I was waiting and still staring at this dead body beside me. Finally I closed the elevator doors and took a last glimpse at the corpse still unattended.

Finally I reached the exit floor area, removed and discarded my rubber protective gloves, turned in my authorized key, made a few stopovers at the offices of prison personnel and headed for the hospital exit doors. On my way out next to the entrance/ exit area I passed through these same elevator doors where I got out from the third floor ward. Low and behold, there was this same corpse on the same wheeled stretcher also waiting to be shipped out! Again this unfortunate dead prisoner was left alone in the hallway with all the hospital activity busily going about and no one paying attention to this body lying in the middle of the hallway.

Let me describe how one gets into the prison hospital. After you enter the hospital lobby, you announce to the receptionist whom you are going to meet inside the hospital. Climbing up the stairs you wait outside the screening room with electrically operated sliding doors both in and out of the screening area. Only one of these sliding doors is opened at one time for people to get into or out of the hospital activity area. The guard motions you to come in or wait for a while to come in. If there are prisoner/patients coming in and out and always accompanied by their prison guards, you wait for the all clear motioned by the guard assigned in the screening area. Finally you get into this screening area where you sign in, go thru metal detectors, and get issued with a passcard by another attending guard, after you give him your driver’s license. If the metal detectors buzz, as is sometimes the case because I use hearing aids, you get searched top down before exiting the screening area. The same routine follows as you leave the hospital except you skip the detector devices.

Going back to my exiting experience, again I had to wait before entering the screening area. On that day, there was a group of daytime only prisoner/patients exiting with their guards. Some prisoners had chain shackles in both their hands and feet and another chain connecting these two shackles. As each prisoner exited, they were required to shout not their names but their prisoner assigned numbers shown on the back of their prison issued uniforms. So I waited staring at the dead body waiting to be transported out with still no one around it. At the same time the last prisoner in this line to exit out also started staring at the body. Finally we looked at each other and I said, ”Looks like this guy did not make it”. So the prisoner answers me, showing no emotion of sorrow or gladness and casually said, “That’s the way it is. Shit happens.”

What is the meaning behind that remark? Let me quote some of the comments I have heard from some of the prisoner/patients in this hospital. “We are the last people society wants to associate with. No one gives a damn what we say concerning our medical needs. No one cares how much physical pain we have in this hospital. This is the last motel we are staying before we die.” To sum it up they perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in an alien world. “Shit happens.”