Lockdown on Rikers (26 page)

36

With the audit behind me, I breathed a little easier, but not for long. The termination of the limited license doctors was beginning, and our first casualty was a shocked Dr. Christian. As I had suspected, our doctors never knew they were being terminated. Dr. Diaz vowed to start calling in sick. “Let Central Office come over here and handle the Bing!”

I felt terrible for our doctors, but I didn't want them to do anything rash. “Hold on,” I said. “You have every right to be angry, but right now they're looking for reasons to fire people. Let's not give them any. Let's see if we can ride this out.”

Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe by the end of the summer they would all be axed anyway. But there was a little hope. Even though Central Office had procured a cadre of fully licensed doctors, whether they would actually stay on remained to be seen. All over the island, there were growing reports of newly arrived doctors quitting just as soon as they comprehended the bleak reality of their new workplace.

Although Drs. Grant and Ketchum had acclimated surprisingly well, jail had been a disaster for our other new additions, Fernando Dayrit and Vivian Tierney. Tierney didn't last a week. After finishing one of her shifts, she waited outside for the route bus to take her to Control. Although a Gate One pass was part of her hiring package, it was still being processed. After an hour went by, Tierney began the forbidden walk to Control. She actually made it pretty far
along the road before a security detail spotted her and ordered her into their jeep. Whisked into nearby AMKC, she was interrogated by a security captain. She quit the next day.

With similar incidents occurring, the installation of fully licensed doctors was falling apart fast. In my view—contract or not—we would of necessity be falling back on the services of the limited license doctors. In the meantime, my plan was to lie low and keep our remaining limited license doctors out of the firing line until the whole thing blew over.

As if this wasn't enough, the doctor crisis coincided with yet another, more mundane one: a shortage of parking space. Due to an increased allotment of Gate One passes, cars with the privileged pass had exceeded OBCC's parking lot capacity. Spillover vehicles were parking in a fire lane, and DOC's security unit was issuing tickets.

“I'm not paying these!” Dr. Grant yelled. “I don't think it's asking too much to have a place to park my car!”

When the clinic manager told her to tone it down, reminding her of our status as “guests in their house,” Grant only became louder. “I'm sick of this
‘guests in their house'
crap! This isn't
their
house! These jails are owned by the taxpayers! I'm not paying for these, and Central Office needs to do something about it!”

I liked Tarra Grant. And she was a good doctor. When she and Dr. Ketchum had learned of the physician replacement plan, they'd been extremely upset. Grant's patience with Central Office was wearing thin.

I reported the parking problem to Hugh, who sighed heavily.

In protest, the entire clinic staff took to driving around the parking lot each morning in a procession, waiting for spots to open up. Inside, a nervous Captain Ryan was on his radio with the warden. “I've got fifty inmates signed up for sick call, another one having seizures in the Bing—and our doctors are driving around the parking lot.”

After a week of this, a beleaguered Captain Ryan gathered the clinic staff. “Look, folks—I think you need to write a petition to the warden.” Although directly approaching DOC was strictly
taboo, everyone was too disgusted to care, and a petition was circulated. But when word of it got back to Central Office, our superiors were livid. Suzanne Harris informed us that Central Office had been working on a deal with DOC to resolve the parking problem, but because of this “highly inappropriate” action, the deal was off.

Of course, no one believed any deal was in the works to begin with, and our best hope was still the petition. But in the end, it was ignored, and we were simply left to duck out of the jail and try to move our cars in advance of the despised ticket writers.

* * *

By the end of July, I was exhausted. Since Kelly's departure six weeks earlier, I hadn't taken a day off, many evenings were spent in the office, and I was becoming concerned about a stubborn ache in my side that wasn't going away. Weekends brought little relief, as I was contacted about various crises. At night, I barely slept. By now I was chain-smoking. Furtive trips to the bathroom were over: a big ashtray sat right on my desk. But I was determined to make it to Kelly's return. If I had been a conscientious therapist, I was an equally conscientious employee, doing my best on all fronts. But it was the Bing that continued to be my biggest worry. Each day, I entered a cell with our team and faced a human being unhinged by the rigors of solitary. Some babbled incoherently, others cowered in a corner. One man was trying to tear off an ear. We talked to them, evaluated their injuries, examined makeshift nooses, and then stepped out for the huddle, asking ourselves:
Is he malingering? How far will he go? Could he lose the arm? Will he make it to tomorrow? Will he be dead tomorrow?
As we looked into each other's eyes, trying to make the right decision, I had an awareness that I was now a monitor of human suffering, and that all of us were making decisions that no person should ever be asked to make.

Just a couple more weeks, I told myself, just a couple more weeks. Kelly would return, and then I knew not what. But somehow Kelly's return was the finish line.

In the meantime I had to hold it all together, and I was especially concerned about keeping medication for the Bing inmates from expiring, which was a disaster. The meds needed to be renewed in face-to-face encounters every two weeks, and with most of our regular psychiatrists out on vacation, I reluctantly turned to Fernando Dayrit, our newest staff member. Although he was starting to acclimate to the punitive unit, earlier in the week, the timing in a staged suicide was off; although the inmate survived, he'd broken his neck. When Dayrit learned about it, was understandably skittish about going back into the tower, but I was desperate to have the meds renewed. With clipboard in hand and an attached list of notes, I pleaded with him to go back in. I handed the clipboard to him and said, “Listen, it wasn't that bad.”

“The guy broke his neck!” Dayrit replied.

“Yes—but it was just a little bone—not an important bone.”

What I remember most in that moment was the sound of the clipboard clattering to the floor. Then Dayrit stepped back and eyed me as if I was a monster. He turned and walked out. I retreated to my office and broke into sobs. I kept seeing his face and the look that mirrored back to me just how desensitized I'd become.

After I'd composed myself, I dried my eyes and finished out the day as best I could.

That evening, I called my father. He seemed to be the only person who could handle what this job was really about. With friends I was quiet and withdrawn. No longer did I feel the need to educate people about life behind bars, not only because they wouldn't understand or believe it, but because talking about it meant reliving it, and I needed every moment that I was away from Rikers to forget about it so I could go back in.

My father listened quietly as I told him about what happened. “I can't believe those words came out of my mouth,” I said. “I was just trying to do my job.”

“Mary,” he said. “This job is destroying you.”

I couldn't disagree.

“And this could get worse,” he continued. “Much worse. Have you thought about what happens if someone steps into a noose and
really dies? It takes seconds. You have people stepping into nooses every day. You're so immersed in this, you don't even see how perilous this situation is. If someone hangs for real, fingers will be pointed. Guess who'll be blamed?”

The thought of someone actually dying was a dark cloud that accompanied me into the cells and followed me home at night. It was my worst fear. But I hadn't been overly concerned for myself. After all, Central Office was always thanking me for the great job I was doing. Would they really turn on me?

“You bet they will!” my father insisted. “Someone will have to take the rap. Everyone will run for cover, and you'll be the one left standing. Now listen to me. You've done everything you can for these inmates. The person you have to worry about now is yourself. I want to put these people on notice. I'm dictating a memo outlining their failure to provide adequate administrative coverage. If somebody dies in there, they're going to have a tough time pinning it on you. Do you have a pen?”

I hesitated. To send a memo like this would likely seal my fate with St. Barnabas.

“Mary, listen to me . . . you can't change the world!”

Tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I thought I detected a quiver in my father's voice as he said, “But I will say this to you, my dear girl: God bless you for trying.”

We sat in silence for a while, and then he said, “Do you have a pen?”

Somewhere deep within, I knew my father was right. Another silence followed. And then I said yes.

The memo was sent. Needless to say, it was not well received by Central Office, but the following morning another administrator arrived at OBCC to assist me until Kelly's return.

* * *

The memo to Central Office went out not a moment too soon. A couple of days later, my worst fear was almost realized. “Mental
Health!” shouted Pepitone. “Somebody's getting cut down in the Bing!”

I met up with Grant and the two of us headed up. Just outside the Bing's mini-clinic, a CO briefed us. “His name's Luis Morales. He'd just stepped into a noose when an officer was walking by. He was swinging. They were able to get in and cut him down fast. Medical says he's okay, but if the CO hadn't passed by, he'd have been a goner.”

“Did an inmate tip off the CO?” I asked. “Tell him what Morales was up to?”

“No, that's just it. The officer
happened
to be walking by. He didn't tip off anybody. This was for real.”

Inside the mini-clinic, Luis Morales, in an orange jumpsuit and his hair in a ponytail, was slumped over the countertop.

“Mr. Morales,” said Grant.

Luis Morales looked up, his tear-stained face devoid of expression.

“Why did you do this?” she asked.

“I don't give a shit anymore,” he said flatly. “I'm a loser. I've been in and out of jail my whole life. The only good thing I had going for me was my wife. She said she'd always stick by me, but now I'm going upstate for a long stretch and she's had enough. I can't live without her and my kids. Without them, there's nothing.
Nothing.
” With that, he buried his face in his hands and convulsed into sobs.

Even the CO was touched by his despair. “Hey, you don't want to kill yourself—it's not that bad.”

But it was that bad, and Grant and I both knew it. There were no silver linings here. We tried to comfort him as best we could.

I was so engrossed that I didn't hear the phone ring. “Miss Buser,” whispered the officer. “It's for you. Pepitone in the clinic—he says it's important.”

I took the phone and stepped outside. “Yeah, Pep?”

“Listen, Mary, they're getting ready to tow your car. I got a buddy in security and I was able to buy you ten minutes, but you better get down here before they come back.”

They were getting ready to tow my car!
Caught in the crosshairs of the tragic and the absurd, I asked Grant to step out for a moment and explained the situation.

“Un-believable!” she said.

Although torn, we both agreed that Luis Morales was stable for the moment and that she would stay with him while I moved the car.

“I'll be right back,” I told her.

I bolted out of the Bing and ran through the halls, wriggling through gates one after the next just before they slammed shut. Outside the jail, I raced across the sunbaked lot, my sandals sinking into the mushy tar. I jumped into my car and backed out of somebody else's designated spot that I'd grabbed in desperation. Driving up and down the rows, I scanned the cars for an empty spot. Nothing. I drove around again, hoping I'd missed something. I hadn't. At the jail's main entrance, I waited for someone to come out. Nobody did. Finally, I turned onto the perimeter road, drove down a hill and rounded a bend that put me at the water's edge, where there were always a few spots. The problem was that I now had to wait for the route bus to get me back up to the jail. I looked helplessly up at the Bing. It would have been such an easy walk back, but I dared not risk it. Anxiously I waited, willing a route bus to appear. But none came, and I realized that I wouldn't be rejoining my colleague any time soon. Grant would have to handle the situation alone and get Morales to MHAUII or the hospital.

I sat down on a wooden mooring and lit up a cigarette. Across the way in a field of reeds, a rusted-out paddy wagon that looked like a leftover from the Eliot Ness days lay on its side. It was a hazy, sunny morning, and I leaned down to dip my hand in the East River's cold water. In the distance was the bridge, where a parade of buses rumbled across the span, shuttling the detainees to court. And just around the river's bend was the big city. From the glitter of Broadway to the corporate hustle of Midtown, careers were launched and fortunes made. That energy and promise might as well have been on another planet. Shortly, a car came around
the bend, its three occupants studying me. It was Suzanne Harris, Hugh Kemper, and Frank Nelson headed down the road to Central Office. The car slowed, and the three of them looked at me curiously, undoubtedly trying to figure out what OBCC's Mental Health chief was doing sitting at the river's edge. And I would have gladly told them, had they stopped. But they didn't, and I can't say I was surprised. They knew that whatever the problem was, they didn't have an answer. In some ways I actually felt bad for them. The bravado of their early days was long gone. Between the demands of their own superiors, being bullied by DOC and the city, and trying to manage an angry staff, their jobs were unenviable. But while the Central Office team might have been having a tough go of it, St. Barnabas Hospital itself was doing quite nicely. Newspaper reports estimated that profits from the Rikers contract were already well into the millions.