Within seconds a tattooed man, six foot, over two hundred pounds, came barreling out of the day room with blood down the front of his chin and sweater. Attached to him like leeches were four techs holding on for dear life. He spun like a helicopter tossing one against the wall and another into a row of chairs. They clattered, a couple breaking.
“Get the fuck off me!” the hulking man cried as he drove his shoulder into a tiny nurse who couldn’t have weighed a buck twenty wet. She heaved as he pinned her against the wall, then crumpled as another nurse pulled him back and tried to inject him. He swatted her like a fly, knocking the needle out of her hand. The tech beside Jack rushed to assist his colleagues only to be punched square in the jaw and soar across the heavily waxed linoleum floor like a curling stone. Every attempt to subdue the giant ended with another staff member being pulverized, thrown or threatened with a chair that he was now swinging like a baseball bat. Instincts told Jack to step in, to help, but experience taught him otherwise. That could mean signing his own death sentence. It was one of the unwritten rules of incarceration. You didn’t rat. You didn’t help the man.
Still, it didn’t seem he had much choice.
With staff out of commission, the muscle-bound, wild-eyed freak made a beeline for the door behind Jack with every intention of barreling through him if he didn’t move. Call it a snap decision, self-preservation, but Jack sidestepped at the last second, then slammed the edge of his shoe into the crook of the giant’s knee causing him to buckle. He followed through with a forearm to the neck causing his head to bounce off the cinderblock wall.
That was all it took.
He crashed to the floor wailing in agony. Before he could get his bearings or Jack could finish him, techs pile-dived both of them. Jack hit the wall and was instructed to not resist. He didn’t put up a fight but simply raised his hands while the others handled Goliath. Face red, eyes bulging in anger, as they pinned him to the ground he yelled at Jack. “You are dead. You hear me. Dead!” he thundered. The tattooed freak glared then shed his hard exterior for but a moment as a nurse wrestled to get a needle into his arm.
“The voices. They made me do it. No. NO!”
Cops and more staff from the unit on the floor above arrived a little too late. Three of them burst in, pepper spray at the ready, just as the shrieking alarm went silent. The additional psych techs dealt with the crowd that was gawking at whatever had occurred in the day room, the rest looked at Jack.
“You gonna be a problem?” a nurse asked, a syringe at the ready.
“Nope,” Jack replied as he watched the cops strong-arm the brute down to a seclusion room. He fought them every step of the way, kicking and screaming as they dragged him inside. Then the cops came out and waited.
Shuffled down the hallway, Jack and the others were shoved into rooms as a voice bellowed over the speakers.
“Lockdown.”
“Ohhhh… yoooou’ve… done it now,” a slow voice said from behind him, each word drawn out — not a stutter but some kind of speech disorder. Jack turned to find a small fella with a thin face but a large smile. He had long dark hair on one side, swept behind one ear with gel. “I’m Edgar,” he said extending a hand before turning and pointing to a rat-faced fella laying on a bed on the far side of the room. “That’s Harvey but we all call him Cowboy. Don’t we?”
The guy peered over a magazine, unfazed by the ruckus. The room was very basic. Four beds, two on either side, baby blue blankets covering white sheets, a side table for each bed and open closets for personal belongings. Jack gave a nod and returned to looking through the double-pane window. He could just glimpse a slice of the day room as a nurse and several other staffers gathered around someone on the ground. A pool of blood was visible, and from his vantage point it looked as if whoever was injured was a staff member. A team of paramedics rushed into the room with a gurney.
“And you are?” Edgar asked.
“Jack,” he replied.
“You’re new.”
He gave a nod but didn’t turn. He was too distracted by what was happening. A dozen staff members moved back and forth down the hallway, all with a pained expression.
“What happened out there?” Jack asked.
“Oh the usual. You’ll get used to it. Though you better watch your back from here on out. Tyler Sutton doesn’t make empty threats. Isn’t that right, Cowboy?” Cowboy grunted but didn’t look over. “He shanked Cowboy last year. Came within an inch of a major artery.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yep, Cowboy wouldn’t give up his bread.”
Jack might have been surprised if he hadn’t done a stint in Rikers. Inmates got shanked for as simple as staring too long. He returned to watching the commotion as medics went to work with an IV line. Minutes later they loaded what appeared to be a woman onto a gurney, secured her and then hurried down the hall. Staff slammed unit doors behind them and then it went silent. Inside the day room, a cleaner entered with a mop and steel bucket and began splashing water over the blood-strewn floor.
“Who got injured?”
Edgar slumped on his bed, and tossed a piece of gum into his mouth. “Nurse Harvey.
