Page 38 of The River Is Waiting

In an attempt to elude my watchers, I get down on the floor and pull that dirty mattress on top of me. Bang my head against the floor once, twice, three times. Within a few minutes, a female guard comes in and screams that if I don’t stop what I’m doing, I will have to be therapeutically restrained. “You think you’ll enjoy lying spread-eagle on your back and having cuffs around your wrists and ankles? Having a helmet strapped onto your head so that you don’t bash your brains in?” I begin to cry, begging her not to do this, promising her I’ll be good, the way I used to beg and promise my father when he screamed at me for whatever offense I’d committed. “I’m sorry,” I keep saying. “Please. I won’t do it again. I promise.”

I have no idea how many of those seventy-two hours of observation have passed when a clinician arrives to interview me. Accompanied by the same CO who threatened me with five-point restraint, he is carrying a stool in one hand, a clipboard in the other. She’s carrying a stool, too. “You want this off him, right?” the CO asks the shrink. When he nods, she approaches, frees me from the safety smock, and hands me a small towel so I can cover my genitals. “I’ll be right outside the door if there’s a problem,”she promises the doctor. Before she exits, she turns and smiles at me as if sheisn’tthe enemy.

He’s an older man, balding, fat. “Good morning, Mr. Ledbetter. I’m Dr. Blankenship. I’m here to ask you some questions and evaluate your need for further psychiatric treatment or your readiness to return to general population.” The combination of his high-pitched voice and his body like the fat one in Laurel and Hardy, I worry I might break into nervous laughter.

He sits down on his stool and invites me to sit on the other one. After small-talking to me for a moment or two, he gets down to business, reading questions from his clipboard and nodding when I respond. I do my best to offer him whatever lies, truths, and half-truths will get me the hell out of here.

“Are you hearing voices, Mr. Ledbetter?”

“Voices? No.”

“Do you feel like you want to die?”

“No.”

“Have you been contemplating suicide recently?”

“No. I think that was someone’s mistaken assumption.”

“Have you ever contemplated suicide in the past?”

“Never seriously.”

“Seriously or not, have you ever thought about how you might do it?”

“No.”

“Are you aware of the recent inmate suicide in this building?”

“Yes.”

“Has it troubled you?”

“Well, I felt sorry for the guy if he was that desperate.”

“Would you say you became preoccupied with thinking about what he did?”

“Preoccupied? No.”

“On a scale of one to five, how fearful do you feel about your future?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a three?”

“Do you frequently have feelings of despair?”

“Frequently? No. Occasionally maybe. Everyone has bad days, right?”

“And when you do feel despair, one to five, how intense is that emotion?”

“Out of five? I don’t know. Two? Three?”

“Do you miss your family, Mr. Ledbetter?”

“Yes.”

“One to five, what would you say your anxiety level has been here at Yates?”

“I don’t know. Three, I guess. Sometimes four. I have trouble sleeping here and while I’m awake, I start worrying about everything. But that’s normal, right?”

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