“Everyone against the wall!”
Three officers entered, two with their backs to Marcks, facing the prisoners, while the other attended to him as he writhed feebly on the wet floor, moaning as he attempted to get to his knees.
Alarms sounded in the distance, fading off as he dropped in a heap to the cold, blood-slimy tile.
◆◆◆
“HE NEEDS AN MRI. I can set his broken ulna, but there’s no point. They can do that at the hospital. He needs to get there STAT. I’ll ride with him.”
Marcks kept his eyes shut. But he knew that voice well: Sue Olifante, Potter’s nurse practitioner. The doctor, Lester McQuade, or More-or-Less McQuack, as the inmates called him, was off on Saturdays. Rumor had it that he worked for the Bureau of Prisons because he was not good enough to have his own practice and could not secure a position at a clinic anywhere in the country. Once word of that broke, the prisoners did not hesitate to mock him at every opportunity. McQuade took the abuse—because he had to. And because it was true.
Why any sane person would want to spend his days around dangerous, hardened, violent criminals—the scum of the earth, as he once put it—was clear: because he did not have a choice. Student loans, years in school, mouths to feed at home … Olifante and McQuade were cut from the same grease rag: hacks who could earn a decent salary at Potter, even if it meant spending their days knee deep in the filth.
But Olifante had found a confidante in Roscoe Lee Marcks. Marcks was a good-looking man who knew how to talk to a woman, how to charm her, how to make her do what he wanted. He put such skills to work on Sue Olifante, and to a good end.
“I’ll have the transport van brought around back,” the correctional officer said.
Olifante glanced at the man. “Double time it. He’s hurt real bad and every minute counts. Head trauma’s very serious.”
He ran off. Olifante gathered up a cast-like brace and slipped it over Marcks’s left forearm, then inflated it.
Moments later, three guards appeared with ankle and wrist restraints.
“What do you think you’re doing with that?” Olifante asked, hands on her hips.
“Prisoner’s gotta be secured for transport,” one of the officers said.
“And just how are you going to do that with his fractured ulna? Best I can tell, it’s broken in at least three places.”
The guard moved closer to evaluate the situation.
“I’ve got a compression splint on him,” Olifante said. “The cuffs won’t fit—and even if they did, they’d do permanent damage if they tore the median or ulnar nerves. Just secure his ankles. With this head wound, he probably won’t even regain consciousness.”
“If he escapes,” the young guard said with a shake of his head, “this is gonna come back on me. I got a wife and—”
“You are?”
“Sanders. I’m accompanying the prisoner to the hospital.”
“I’ll be in the van with him, too,” Olifante said. “If he escapes, I’m the first one he’s going to kill. You think I’m suicidal? I’ll be fine. And you’ll be fine, too.” She secured the IV line with tape and checked the drip chamber. “Besides, he’s not going anywhere with this needle in his arm. I’ve got him sedated.”
The door opened and two correctional officers stepped into the medical suite, fastened the ankle restraints, and pushed the gurney out to the sally port.
A moment later, Marcks was loaded into the back of the twenty-foot-long cabover transport vehicle. It doubled as an ambulance during times like these—which had become more frequent in recent years. Potter’s decrepit condition was not limited to the prison blocks and administrative wing, but the medical facilities as well. The surgical suite was rudimentary and borderline functional for simple procedures. The x-ray machine, however, dated back to the 1920s, the early days of its use as a valuable diagnostic tool, and the CT scanner was a first-generation unit purchased secondhand twenty years ago when the local hospital closed its doors.
Olifante watched as the dour-faced Sanders and another guard secured the gurney to a locking mechanism on the interior wall. After the other officer left, Sanders checked that his sidearm was firmly seated in its holster. “You sure you wanna make this trip? It’s twenty-five minutes each way.”
“I’m fine,” Olifante said. “Let’s go. Every minute counts.”
“All right, let’s move it out!”
The doors clanked closed and the truck lurched, pulling out of the sally port and eventually onto I-95.
“He’s a fucking serial killer,” Sanders said. “If he goes, he goes. Know what I mean? Why do you care so much?”
Olifante snorted. “I’m a medical professional. Every life has equal value. That’s all that matters. Right now he’s my patient. What he’s accused of doing doesn’t matter to me. And unless we get him to the hospital quickly, he may not live much longer.”