“Well, don’t worry about what’s going on in the exercise yard,” she advised. “You need to focus on putting some weight on those bones of yours.”
Charlie continued as if he hadn’t heard. “If a guard gets attacked, it won’t be no wood blocks, neither. No sir, it’ll be the Mini-14’s. They don’t fu – fool around if one of their own goes down. Don’t matter who gets killed then. Everybody’s a target.”
“Hmm.” Frankie straightened and adjusted the man’s IV bag, ignoring the urge to turn around to see the reaction of her male duty nurses to the noise.
Charlie’s eyes focused intently on her. Saw the strength in her pretty face, glanced at the empty ring finger of her left hand, wondered why some lucky bastard hadn’t already grabbed her up and made her his own. “We’re all disposable, you know.”
How do you respond to the odd truth of that kind of statement? Frankie cleared her throat. “How’s the pain level, Charlie?”
He shook his head and snorted lightly. “Oh, you know, it’s just ... there. Kinda like a bad guest you can’t get rid of after dinner.”
She smiled, patted his hand. “I can increase the pain meds if you need it.”
Charlie attempted to return the smile. “You’re a good woman, doc. If I was thirty – no make that a hunnert – years younger ... ” His words trailed off and ended in a sharp pain which took a minute to recover from.
“Not long now,” he muttered, almost to himself.
Charlie looked at the doctor, let himself drown a little in those soft, dove gray eyes that were both no-nonsense and oddly comforting. Kinda like the mother he’d never had, but always dreamed about.
Today Doc Jones had her chestnut hair down, a rare thing, and it tumbled in wild curls around her shoulders, several strands blowing across her pale cheeks and forehead. He tried to return the pressure on her hand, but suddenly felt overwhelmingly weak ... and sad, like a party that’d ended too soon.
Yeah, Doc deserved better than bein’ surrounded by old scum-bags like him.
“You better go see what the ruckus is,” he advised. “Likely they’ll need your help. Bound to be lots of wounded inmates. Maybe even a dead body or two.” He jutted with his chin toward the double doors at the end of the ward. “Go on, then. I’m fine.”
Fine was something that Charlie Cox would never be, but Frankie gave his shoulder one last gentle squeeze and turned to the next patient. However, before she could even glance at the chart, several burly correctional officers slammed through the doors, dragging a bleeding man between them.
“Hurry, goddammit!”
“Fuck you, Schwartz!” the smaller of the two giants retorted. “Who gives a damn if this mother-fucker bleeds out or not? Animals, all of them!”
Schwartz flashed a warning glance when he caught the eye of Dr. Jones and lowered his voice. “Shut up, Benson.” All the officers knew the doc didn’t approve of rough language, and oddly enough, they respected her wishes and curbed their tongues in her presence.
“Here,” Frankie directed, pointing to the closest open bed, just as two more guards carried in another injured – or dead – inmate.
“How many more?” she asked as she bent over the first inmate, checking vitals. His carotid artery had been jaggedly savaged, and Frankie knew from a cursory examination and the amount of blood loss that the man was already dead.
Nurse Harry Lewis stood next to her, snapping on latex gloves.
“Call it,” Frankie said, “one-twenty-three p.m.,” and moved to the next patient.
This inmate was bleeding, too, a head wound, but she didn’t think it was life-threatening. “Start an IV and apply pressure,” she ordered and looked to another injured inmate.
The wounded and maimed dribbled in after that, most of them with concussions, contusions, and lacerations from the flying block-bullets. The next few hours flew by in a flurry of sutures, bandages, and IV’s.
The ward began to look like a battle-field hospital.
The only dead inmate was the Hispanic man with the severed carotid artery. Frankie had never seen him before. Mid-thirties, short, muscled. Without the ragged neck wound and cuts on his upper torso, she thought he might’ve once been considered handsome.
Chapter 4
Correctional Officer Luca Jimenez wasn’t the only person in Pelican Bay’s SHU who was intimidated by Anson Stark.
Early on, Stark had put word out that he didn't want a roommate in his cell. When the guards ignored his “request,” he'd beaten the first cellie so bad his skull had fractured. The next one he’d strangled with his bare hands.
The Professor was serving life without parole, had avoided the death penalty on a technicality. He had nothing to lose by racking up more dead bodies. Administration decided if he didn't want a cellmate, he didn't get one. Plain as that.