Fighting for Freedom and Humanity!

Hi! my name is Mrs. Scarlet.  I would like to share with you real events and facts of prisons and what goes on behind prison walls. All though I have never been in trouble and I have never lived behind the bars I have been there.  I have worked in several prisons and county jails and would like to share with you the truths and facts that you are looking for and probably some that your not. I have a heart for the Inmates and wish more people would get involved to improve their lives. They are not Dogs or second hand citizens. They are people who have made bad choices in life. If our Lord Jesus can forgive we should too. Like I say every day" I am not there to judge I am there to do the best job I can and hopefully shed light in a very dim place.

Let me tell you how and why I got my first job in a prison. I was married to an evangelist he did not preach very often but occasionally was called upon to preach in the mountains, he drove a truck for a living. We had been married for 13 years, our children all had gotten older and moved out of the house. I guess you could say I went threw a deep depression, called the empty nest syndrome that’s when your Children don't need you any more. I have been told I did too good of a job raising them, that when they left they were able to stand on their own, and did not need me any more. Of course your children always need you but at that time I was so lost and depressed that, that place in my life was over, my children were my life.

So I quit my job at a local ADAC unit (which is a drug rehab unit) and started riding with my husband in the big truck. We spent a lot of time together we had never really been together. I was at home raising the children and he had really never been with me for along period of time. You see I had never gotten to know him that well.

After the second year that we were out touring America. We were given an assignment to pick up a new driver in Louisiana. I will never forget that day the rest of my life! We picked him up at a Mobile Exxon station. The small truck stop had a small diner and we entered from the back entrance. We ate and were leaving the diner and were talking to the cook who had just finished his shift, my husband and I were on the side walk, and I was walking backwards talking to the man. My husband told me that if I had to use the bathroom to do so then because it would be a long time before we stopped. I turned to go back in, stepped off the side walk into an open manhole no warning. I fell very hard, so hard that I cracked the roots in my teeth, gotten a herniated disc in my back, dislocated several fingers, and broke my glasses. Yes I was able to stand up and walk back in the mobile station, where I was brushed off they never offered to take me for treatment, so my husband helped me back into the truck I got into the sleeper and there I stayed for three days and nights.

The next morning I could not walk or even stand. When I got home I went to the local Hospital emergency room and this alone started a fire that would dictate the rest of my life. I was never able to go with my husband any more. After six months of pain medication, cortisone and barely being able to walk to the mail box, my husband came in one weekend with a new cell phone. I questioned him about the phone I hadn't even at that time got his new number. We sat down he had brought a pint of liquor in as well, that was something he had never done before either, poured a big glass and began to tell me he was not happy and wanted a divorce. It was that easy, the new cell phone rang his new girlfriend on the other line.

He left and I had to find strength inside my self I had never known before I still could not walk I began therapy, got on my feet, I was not able to work in the position that I had always had because sometimes it required lifting patients, praying fasting every day.

I found a job in the paper it would be the first prison job, it was near the place that I grew up, I had to go back home after almost 40 Plus years I had to start over alone broke and homeless the transition was scary, I actually had to sleep in my car for a week until I got my first pay check. You do almost any thing to survive. I ate crackers, ketchup, and mustard because it was free. I was so broke and so hungry one night I ate out of a garbage can, I had never done anything to deserve this treatment I was so angry with god to think that a year prior to that I had a home ,a ministry, and pride. Life had just dealt me a Dude, and I was forced to see the other side that a once sweet southern bell should have never seen.

I can remember the first day, when I walked into the prison, the long walk was frightening I pressed the button into the razor wire castle I could not stop shaking I could imagine how it would feel if I was never able to leave, I finally reached the door. The sound of a two ton door shutting behind you is something that I had never heard before it was a sound of dead weight and despair, I choked back a tear, I wanted to run, I was silent, and could barely speak, all eyes was on me, and if someone had of sneezed behind me I would have fainted, I had only heard of stories of this place but it was a reality. I could not leave it was food on my table and a place I could get Insurance no matter what state my body was in. I realized that day the choice I had thought I had made was not my choice at all it was God choice I was there! 
I quickly found out that I knew nothing about the Law. By all rights my father would have been considered a child molester if
he had of gotten together with my mom in this day and age. You see my father and mother had married very young.  My
mother was 13 and my Dad was 18 . The year I was born they bought our farm. I was one of three girls. But not your typical farmer's daughters. My Dad was a wonderful man. He was an excellent provider. We were considered poor but we never knew it. We all worked very hard it was just what we had to do.  I was under the impression that all man kind was just like us.

Farming is a good way of life but it keeps you busy and out of trouble. We had a typical Beaver Cleaver family Our mother taught us how to be Ladies, we wore our white gloves and stand out slips to Church every Sunday, she taught us how to cook, wash clothes, and take care of our house before we fed the cows and pigs. My Dad worked two sometimes three jobs to survive. He also drove a big truck this was a pretty good living in the sixty's and seventy's.
 
I remember when we were just getting into junior High we had started looking at the boys and Dad came off the road because he wasn't ready for his girls to grow up yet.  Now your going to think I am lying but I'm not!  I was 15 years old and I had
never seen a penis  The first time I seen one was in a nursing home. I was a candy striper that was a volunteer that wore red stripe dresses and worked for free. The older women in back were playing around and called me to the back, they took me to
a room where a little old man lay covered up in bed.  Dean, one of those ladies uncovered the man he was a double amputee and he had a penis that was longer than his legs.  My first thought was he had a growth!  Then I ask what is that!  Dean proceeded to tell me that was his peter and told me what men do with those peters.  

I was so upset. I left and went home.  I went directly to my Mom and told her what had happen, wanting her to tell me that that was not so. I was devastated to learn not only did men have those ugly things but my Dad did too. My Mom laughed at me and ask me, did I not know that, that was the way I was conceived I didn't have a clue. So you can see just how stupid and nieve I was when I grew up. Little did I know that one day a population of 1800 would show theirs to me not all at the same time but one by one I have seen thousands.

What all this boils down to is!  I had not made much progress in life when I started to work in the prison.  My self esteem lower than the belly of a snake being dumped and abandoned by my husband, made me a good target for Inmates to play games with me.  The first orientation day I had was 95% on how to avoid contact with the inmates and how they "were the scum of the earth" the lieutenant Drilled the thought that one of those Inmates would slit your throat in at any given time. I learned the term shank, bully ,sissy and jacker we were taught self defense, the grand finally that day was the lieutenant took us to a large picture that was at least 20 feet long it contained many pictures of women and men  who had given their lives in the line of prison duty.

I began to read and most of the women that had died were under the category of Food service.  I thought that to be strange. Little did I know that the Inmates were fed only two meals a day, and that the protein source was a meat called  mystery, or (mystery meat). Now I know why they died they starved these men! I have been hungry too, the lunch I had fished out of the garbage was much more appealing than what these men were eating!                                      
You have to know! That my personality is extroverted. I like to laugh cut up and smile. There is a side of me that is very serious, that is my faith. my boss the captain calls me Sybil because I can act crazy and at any given time be the professional that I need to be. I like to think that I can wear one boot and a classic pump all at the same time. This is a learned behavior that I have to practice to do my job. I don't know where and when I stared doing this but it works and I want mess with perfection.  I rarely show the wild side but it is there. I like to get comfortable in my surroundings it takes a lot of pressure off. But in the state prison I never got comfortable, I always had the feeling that I was restrained. I couldn't be my self.

My mind does not work like every body else's. I don't look for the bad I look for the good! But in the prison it was always bad. The first day I was there, I worked what they called pill call, Oh my God! that is where the Inmate will come and get certain
drugs like maybe for Hepatitis, Aides, and mental Health medications. Let me tell you that is one more chore, and if you are thinking about this, no! these inmates are not separated they live all together. The bigger the prison the more work you do. the state prison that I was at, had four sections. #1 Boot camp, #2 medium security, #3 General population and #4 Lock down or another term SMU, all total about 1800 inmates.  I had two large carts filled with Drugs. We usually gave them out at 0800 am and 1700 PM a nurses job consisted of standing in one place for four hours while a steady stream of men one by one
section by section received their medication. I never looked up! It was like a card table and I was the dealer.

Many times the prisoner would share that this drug or that drug was giving them certain side effect. The officers working the pill call would push them out of the window and not allow them to speak. It was if they had no rights at all. The language was unmentionable. If one ever talked back, The Cert team arrived and the one that had spoke up would have been dragged to the lock down unit. When I say bad language I mean the most fowl words you ever heard, not only the words many of the prisoners were shackled and one of the cert team would stand directly over that person screaming at him what a dog he was, and how that if he moved one little finger he would be beat down. Can you envision your child, your grandson, Husband, brother, etc. being so broken so humiliated to the point they throw up. I was known as the big pussy!  I would be so tore up that I my
self would cry!  I had never even watch stuff like this in the movies much less to see it first hand. I am crying while I write this! I watched a mentally Ill person refuse to get on his knees one time. He was hit in the back of his knees with an officers Billy club or what ever you call a big metal bar. Shackled, his knees bloody, elbows bruised and dragged to the SMU building and his cry was so loud that the whole prison could hear him, the man was praying, "God in heaven Help me!" while the officer's laughed at him and made fun of him. He was locked down with the cuffs still on his ankles and wrist.

I had to pull a double that night when all my "chores" were finished I went down to see what had happened to him, I didn't at first think the guards would let me in but I lied and told them I had left some papers in the nurses office. There he was rolled up in a ball in the corner of the cell he  would lash out every time someone came near, I had to think fast about what I could tell the guard to let me in there, so I got the medication that he had missed and told the guard a big story that if he missed a dose of that medication he might have to be transported out to a mental facility, and I wasn't going to take the blame if there was an investigation. So it worked I was let in.

Now I'm in and praying God let me get threw, with a soft voice I said his name, are you alright! he was rolled up under the metal bunk. He began to Sob, He called me Momma! that was something I had not heard in a while. I ask again this time I said, "son are you alright! he unfolded and came out from under the bunk and said where is Momma! I called the guard and demanded him to take the cuffs off this man! Yes I threatened! The officer knew I could cause a lot of problems. It was the Law that no inmate could put his hand on a member of the staff, but I let him cry on my shoulder and I cried too. Thank You Jimmy Carter for closing down the mental institutions, I can see this treatment is so much better for them can't you. 
 
My first encounter with Trieauge! (Tree-au-ge) (That is screening a patient before the Doctor comes in) in an emergency room setting. I had this elderly black gentleman come to the door holding his chest.  My supervisors all sat in the office ignoring his problem. Well I hop up ran to the door and allowed him back in the treatment room. One of the nurses yelled from her office. "Oh, he does that all the time."  This mans blood pressure was out the roof! cold and sweaty I continued protocol which was do a 10 lead EKG !thank God the Doctor was still on the  premises. I had to ask for help three different times no one would budge from their office. I finally got to the doctor and showed him the strip, he then hops up and starts rattling off orders, we are on the phone to the transport, to get him down to the cardiac unit in a local Hospital. When the Doctor starts yelling orders, they all start piling out of the offices. 

The man was diagnosed with 100% blockages in two main arteries and bypass surgery was necessary. Now my question is! If he did this all of the time how is it no one ever found this problem before? A blockage never just appears! A blood clot maybe but not a blockage! Guess that was his lucky day!

I began to wonder how many men were in that prison that were not treated! Money is a cherished item! The money that family sends to put on books are few and far between.  It cost an inmate 5.00 dollars to go to sick call.  If a family member hears of their love one not treated get ON THE PHONE CALL WHO EVER YOU CAN to get help!  You can push buttons! Untreated complaints are usually investigated and if you call often enough a federal investigation is done! Do It!  It works!
 
My orientation was a stressful time.  It was near Christmas and every one was busy doing their own thing. The nurses were fighting each other over who would get off that Christmas. I was not asked, I knew I was the new person and I would be chosen to work. No one knew any thing about me only that I was very quiet, and took abuse well. If I opened up it would expose me as the broken person that I was and put me the category of UNSTABLE.  I had been a nurse for a long time but in different areas. I kept my mouth closed and they seemed to like me.

I was given the job (sick Call) I was trained in two days, I had never been in a prison and two days, does not give you a fair chance to learn. I was given charts and it was explained on how to fill out the paper work and that was all. I would leave the main post and drive to the medium security area, gather my stuff up and go to a tiny office called the NUR HOLE.  I think that was short for nurse room. I was new meat, I smelled good and wore makeup.

One by one the prisoners filed by my office and would make comments! I had never been so sought after in my life, my self esteem went from the belly of a snake to a Queen in one day! I must say being on the other side was sooo fine. No one told me that passing notes was wrong! I had 20 notes the first day! I hid them all and did not say a word, I put them in my glove box and took them to my new Government apartment! That was the only thing I had under a small tree that I had stolen on the side of the road.

Notes from Inmates that shared thoughts, invitations and love!  I begin to read the notes daily I couldn't wait till I got home to hear the stores.  I began to get paranoid that the GBI might come to my house and find out that I took notes home. My evenings were filled with laughter, and thoughts no matter what condition I was in at the time it was no where near what these poor men were going through. I was always asked by one or more. What did you have to eat today or when you get off what are you going to wear.  These things are visions of the past for these men. The questions of how big is your bed, was not a come on, it was a dream that one day they to could return to a soft big bed. I never let it go no further than a note. I never put in a grievance on an inmate and the word got around I was no snitch! The men would tell me stuff that was "going down".

It was good but I could tell no one only pray for them. They trusted me and I trusted them,  more than I did my employers. At least I was not scum to them. I was a light! A vision of home! A friend! Many came to the Lord by my council, many put their live to good rehabilitation in the core of there soul, that is where real reform stems from, one's heart and the greatest miracle was in the process this was healing mine.
 
Christmas time in the prison is sad. But it is no big thing for me any more when your family moves on and you have no one at home it really is no big deal, maybe in the future but for right now it is just to depressing and besides I find ways to ignore the holidays. I am a wonderful cook but I end up throwing it all away, cause there is no one here. Detached! That's the word I am
looking for.  When you absolutely will not allow yourself to to feel anything. This is what I have observed in the prison ,the men that have families who care get packages sent to them.

The ones who don't have family get nothing mostly Lifers. They are completely indigent no money and no body. They are hard and cold they feel nothing its like they have no soul. The system has forced men to this. They are treated like animals, so they have no other out let but to become stone. The ones that get packages sometime share but not often, its all for one and one for all.

The young boys usually fall in a trap that's what they call breaking weak! They have no money and no way to get it and they end up doing favors for honey buns, or other temporary items.  A.I.D.S. is running rampant in the prison.

I have often wondered why the prison system does not have work programs that would give the prisoners money, teach them how to work and give them a trade where they can enter back in to society, but it is called dead time. When I was raising my children, when they got in to trouble they didn't get time out, they got more work put on them. Now I'm not talking about prisoners busting rocks, or something less productive but this could really be prosperous threw the state system, it could be a win, win situation. The taxpayers would benefit, the families of the prisoners would benefit and the prisoners would benefit. What is wrong with that idea. We could have mini factories, that could be operated threw the system its an idea.  Oh I hope someone is listening to this, I hope some one in high authority can hear me.

We all are going to face the Lord one day there are no exceptions. The people who have had the opportunity to change lives and have not done so. YOU ARE IN TROUBLE. Heaven for you may be utter darkness!
 
When you don't have someone to love you, and you are all alone you detach your self from life, you want allow any one to get close. Divorce is a spiritual thing when marriage is severed. You go threw a feeling that one can't explain, it is worse than the death of a spouse, it truly takes along time to get your head together. I wasn't divorced but my ex husband had not even contacted me since he left the past summer and it was now January. You could not have told me my Paul would have ever done this to me! I was a good wife, a good mother and I all ways helped make a living, a good woman, I never ran around on him, I prayed for him, and lifted him up, we shared a ministry together, we brought many to the Lord, the last time we ministered 64 people came to Jesus.

I guess when you fall from grace you try to drag others down with you. I was determined I was not going down but, I was
injured. My heart at that point was of no return, The other three Children I helped raise for thirteen years never contacted me either, and for the first four months I cried my self to sleep ever night.  

I had lost my life my health and my pride. The men I gave pills to every day were not as bad as him, and they were in prison, they would console me. I told my story and they would tell me theirs. Buddy's  Big Brothers and many hit on me, but I always knew that it was not good Odds this game was not fair only few females and 1800 men lets say, 1000 men and 800 sissy's  competing with my perfume, they didn't have a chinaman's chance! If you are homosexual reading this I'm just messing
with you, I'm not a bigot! A little competition don't hurt no girl! That just ain't my thang!

I began to see how bad it was on them, some of the men were jilted while they were locked up. How hard it must be, not to be allowed to cry. If you showed your emotions in prison you were weak and you would get hurt. The only emotion they were allowed to have was anger, or lust so when they came to sick call alone they could pour out their heart. I would never tell, a real woman wants her man to show his emotions. But none of them were mine.

You women out there! And you are reading this! If you have dumped your man while he is down, shame on you! He's going through enough, without you adding more pain and suffering. In my book sister your not much of a woman! You can wait! It maybe a long time but this too will pass (that's my most favorite scripture in the bible.)            
 
I had to stop feeling sorry for my self, I had to get back in this life with boxing gloves.  I wanted to return to society. I began to date again this waiting to for Paul to come back was not working, it was making me to depressed, to the point that I finally went to a doctor and he gave me a new drug called Wellbutrin. I needed that to help me. It makes you numb to your feelings, it keeps you from crying. My real personality was coming back, I began to see humor in tuff situations.

I was thrown from post to post. I could work any where in the prison no matter where they stuck me. SMU was the worse place, that was lock down, most women would not work because of the jackers. That's where you go from room to room opening up the tiny slide windows and make sure these men have not hung their self. When you open the windows there is no telling what you see. I made no comment, I only continued to proceed to the next window. I seen (peters)! Big ones, little ones, and real BIG ones. Most times when I entered the gates they had them out doing the nasty on the sallyport, some times one, the other times a group of them. I called that group sex. You got to the point it was just something they did. Masturbating looking at a woman was normal. Oh my God! You know I needed to eat to work in a place like this. If you said any thing, it made it worse.

You remember earlier when I told you when I first seen a Penis. When you say I have seen it all, I have! I literally have seen them all. No! It don't excite me! I feel nothing I just use my Wellbutrin. I hated Paul and I hated the people who left that open manhole in Baton Rouge they were the reason   I was here!  My own children lived miles away. They did not know what their Mom was going through.

The men in lock down began to yell my name when I entered the gates. OH NUR! they would Yell! If I looked up you know what I would see. They would ask me what my name was! I would tell them Jody Brewbaker. That was my director of Nurses name. I told them I was the boss. She was a heavy set blond too. I got away with it for a while. I got really chewed out one day from my director, she called me in the office and had a pile of grievances on her desk with her name on them and she had not been at the facility the day of the incident in question.  Oh well my record was clean up until then!!!!  I have no comment about this problem. It is just one of those things that happens in a prison. I didn't say that all these men were innocent and sweet. this was a prison.

I found out that Jackers were no worse than the officers. I seen an officer one day coming out of one of the cells in lock down pulling up and zipping his pants.  I had rang the buzzer at least 5 moments to get in one of the lock down buildings to give medications.  I found a mattress in intake where they had obviously been used as a love nest.  I sat and listen to what the officers did on their days off.  I watched some of the female and male officers have sex right there on the premises. We had one female officer who would bring nude pictures of herself and give them out. While the mail room officers went threw the mail and pick out what they wanted and take it home.  

It seems as if you were mean and tuff, you could get a head of the game you see you can rank up just like the army.  Seemed if you were a bigot, a bully and treat an inmate bad you could get a raise. Its easy to be mean to a mental health person it wasn't hard for them to mess with their brains when they were provoked to violence the officer could beat them down. Many of the Inmate used these people too, they often became punching bags, or sex targets out here in free world it would be called rape. In prison they call that an incident. Why do we have to put up with this? Why do we not have facilities to help these people anymore, this is a shame, on America, mental heath people are not treated any different than harden criminals but they truly did not understand why they did a crime to begin with. I have actually seen retarded people in the system, what kind of a judge would put a retarded person in prison! I want answers can some one give them to me!!
  
Walking was something I had to do to recover from my injury.  I have this good friend she and I have been friends since Grammar school we would walk and walk some times in the north part of town and some times in the south part. Places that had not been since I was a child. It was spring and my divorce was on the table, Paul was hard to find.  I didn't care what he was going threw it did not matter to me any more nothing he could of said would have made any difference to me now he was history he was a bad dream I had to get him out of my mind.

While we were walking one day in a once familiar part of town I heard a wolf whistle I looked on the porch of a little house and there sat Danny, my first boy friend!  He was slim and feeble he had a beer in his hand. He still looked good to me but it appeared that he was sick! I began to visit and we shared stores of the past. He knew everybody and he could tell you what had happened to any or all of the people that we had graduated with from High School. He had a liver disease from the alcohol but I didn't judge him we all have things we are not proud of in Life. This was the his devil not mine.

The thing that was going on at the prison was! We had two Nurses on second shift who were caught fraternizing with Inmates! I had mention in an earlier article that it is against the Law to mess with the Inmates! Both of the Nurses that were caught, lived together, they were roomies. They had been bringing in food and jewelry and sending the two orderlies that worked in
medical money, apparently having sex or something in one of the exam rooms. Oh well! It wasn't good but it still wasn't what the officers were doing! In life I found out there are two type's of people the caught and the uncaught! The one's in the prison are the caught and the ones out side the gates were the uncaught. By then the prisoners knew me by name and they began to play games.

The game that they played and I had no control over was the state had a regulation that when an Inmate would complain of chest pain no matter what age we had to transport them to medical in a little golf cart with a gurney strapped to the back that's what we called the ambulance. We then took them to the trauma room and did EKG's, they liked for you to open their shirts and let you put on the sticky leads on their chest. This was a game that took a lot of time but I tried not to let it piss me off. I called it ("Chet Pain")  

We had a new orderly in Medical his name was Rotenio, I loved to scare him!  I would watch him put razors in his pocket, he had a bald head, I would get right behind him and yell just as loud as I could "ROTENIO" he would drop all the razors and grab his chest. I did that quiet frequent, he always looked around before he lifted razors. Yes, by now you see I am a little deviant but this action led to an incident that happened to me that I never mentioned. I was in the back setting up the exam room for sick call this was in the main building. I had my back to the door when all of a sudden Rotenio rush into the door then he shut it, at first I said, "Well you got me back didn't you" and I held my chest. Then he forced his body on me, pinning me up to the wall and tried to kiss me. I was so scared but I tried not to let that get to me! I pushed him back and told him that if he didn't want to be locked down forever not to ever do that again.  Thank God! he took the warning, he didn't do that again and I didn't scare him any more, we had a professional relationship there after. I didn't ever kid around any more.
 
Well I finally hooked up with Paul. He called me one night at midnight, his proposal, was that He would give me the divorce if I would file taxes with him.  At that point I would have done almost any thing to get his Cursed name off my drivers license every time I cash a check, I seen his name. Every time I signed my name there was his name. I hated it. I hated him and his wicked
children.  In all the absenteeism I found out his son had molested my son when he was nine, I found out that Paul had ran around on me from day one. Why is it that no one bothers to tell you these things when your married.  I made monthly trips to the health department being tested for STD,s and A.I.D.S I was clean.

Every day when I walked, I stopped in to see Danny, I cleaned his house took him to the doctor, the dentist, go get his groceries just some one to talk to besides he was sick and I needed to be needed.  When the taxes were filed then so was the divorce.  Paul didn't even show up. No fare well kiss my ass, no nothing.  I guess thirteen years meant nothing to that jerk. Here I am 43 years old I gave that man the best years of my life and I'm am treated like an old shoe pitched into a closet. The only good thing I could feel toward him was I know what comes around will go around, what he just did to me and had done all those years would come back on him.

My old car was just about ready to bite the dust. She had been a good one, I had put 200 thousand on her since I had her. I was once a home health nurse. I taught my children how to drive and being a teenager she had been in most the ditches in the
county.  But she was mine and paid for. I knew it would soon be time to give her up. I explored the thought that I could get a car at a buy here pay here dealerships but I got a better offer.  

Danny had a plan, he wanted to marry me.  We had fun together, he had a house, he couldn't drive, we made a deal.  Yes
soon I was married again.  I had a new Truck and I had a home.  I loved him but not like he loved me. My children were upset! I had not told anybody, Danny was very good to me. He indeed treated me like a Queen. He got me any thing I wanted.

The first week we were married he went into the Hospital with an esophageal Varies, he threw up more blood than I had in my body.  He half way got better then he came home. We never had sex, he was too sick.  Two months later he died. Now! I am a widow, I refuse to go crazy. I refuse to let this get to me. The prison did have good insurance and I buried him with it. His family was going to cremate him, he use to beg me not to let them do that.  I was glad I didn't let them. We lived six miles from the crematory that piled all the bodies up. You must of heard about it. It is the Marsh case and is not settled yet. No one in the prison even talked about it all they said is sorry only one came to the funeral.

Back to square one the house was willed to the children, I was stuck with hospital bills, his family even dunned me for the
flowers they contributed to nothing, the day after I was told to move, I was not given any thing, so I took my furniture put it in the storage and begged my Mom to let me live in one of her apartments.  My mental state was bad.  Depression hovered over me like a glove.

I had been giving T.B. test at the prison every month since I had arrived over a year ago by that time. I was called into Jody Brewbakers office we were going to be visited by the state that month and all the higher ups were locked in there offices going through the inmates charts. I have never been talked to like I was that day I was being yelled at like an inmate, Humiliated, I was told I was the worse nurse they had ever had.  I was incompetent. I was a Dog. I was told that my 25 years experience was shit. I was told I was never to give another T.B. Test at that prison. Oh man!  What in the Hell had I done. Apparently I read some T.B. Test positive and no one followed up on it. Now they were tracking all the T.B. test all over the state, because no one bothered to read the T.B. log and it was my fault! I don't think so! I was told to drop it but I couldn't cause I was just assaulted by words that has never been told to me before. I am a good nurse! No I am an excellent nurse!  

Instead of looking for those men that tested positive they went back and illegally changed the records I know what a positive test looks like I have a positive T.B. test myself but I have been treated.  The 20 plus people that had positive test have never been treated!  They will never be unless someone retest them and finds they are positive.  Hush don't tell any one, that will be our secret. RIGHT! Blow your horn it happened and that's what they were doing all shut up in their offices changing records and shredding some.  Mistakes happen but they should never covered up.
 
I have had this Vision in the back of my mind. I seen my self drive one of those Big Trucks, I have wanted to do that since I was young and my Dad drove one. I kind of liked the idea, being in love with some one being in a different place every day I enjoyed it when I went with Paul. I didn't know he hated me.

When all this went down in the prison I had to leave, these people are wicked and didn't want to work there any more. I thought I could sit as well as I could walk. So I enrolled in a Trucking school, worked a notice and left. I had worked there one year, enough for me. Yes I got my licenses and begin to drive I didn't make enough money to be on the road I got to come home every 2 months. By then my son and his wife had a baby every two months was not enough time to spend with him, before I left back out.

My back hurt me all the time I spent all my time alone.  I liked it that way.  I didn't have to pretend I liked any body.  I just drove and I was getting pretty good at it. One evening coming out of Tampa, I was talking to another driver in my company on the C.B. She was a woman too, only her husband was with her.  A voice came over the radio he ask me if I was a lesbian or a whore.  I politely told him neither and got off the radio.  I don't know how he figured  out what I was driving but when I pulled into a rest station he was climbing in the cab on my side. I kicked him right in the face just before he stabbed my right leg.  I came home.  More Wellbutrin!  I swear by it!

I started working at an agency.  I choose my jobs I still cant lift patients guess where they sent me but now I worked for twice the pay. The same prison that I had swore I would never go back to. All the higher ups in the office were on vacation. This time
I worked directly with the Doctor. It had gotten no better. It had gotten worse. One day I was called to the SMU lock down unit. No one bothered to tell me what for. On the far side of the building lay a young boy in the knee, chest position. He was blue his O2 sat was 75, that means that he was on his way out fast.  I called for back up. None of the officers were any where around him, they were at the other end smoking. I turned him over. There appeared a red strip around his neck his neck swelling and the boy was crowing when he breathed. He had tried to hang him self. I asked one of the officers to call a head of time and get the transport in route that he would need to be sent to the Hospital. The officers just stood there, one made a comment there are 100 more just like him waiting to come here from the county jail.  Help arrived and the 02 in place his neck still swelling. I went over the officer's head and told the lieutenant to call for a transport unit, who proceeded to tell me that he didn't think that would be necessary, OH MY GOD! I have never pitched a fit like I did that day! There were words coming out of my mouth
like a Demon from Hell. Not only did I call transport myself I called the Warden and I told him if he didn't allow transport.  I would be on the phone to the Governor.

I had, had all that I could take I didn't intend for this Boy to die.  He was only 30 years old and his wife had just written him a Dear John letter.  She let him know that his little girl would never know her daddy, because she had met someone else. I read the letter and began to cry!  I broke all the things that had been built up in me came out that day. I was so upset I couldn't finish my shift. I couldn't leave either for some reason I stayed.

I stayed in the chart room my knees to my chest crying so hard. I heard a noise looked up, there stood one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen. He was huge and he was so sweet his name, well it's Dewayne, but I want write any thing else about him. He is a book not written yet he is my friend. I told you from the beginning there was a reason that God sent me there.
 
My short assignment was ending at the prison. I was offered my job back although I would have been near Dewayne. I had gotten a better offer closer to to home and allot less stress. This was a full time job at the county jail, I could always see him later and if it worked out between us like I hoped it would. He would have been the reason that I had to go back. It would have
been the very reason that I was sent there in the first place.

The county jail that I went to was very old and not very sanitary. The county had just built a state of the art, brand new million dollar Plus Detention center. I was hired as the second Nurse, the number of inmates would increase two and one half
times the normal capacity.  It would have a large medical unit and many rooms compared to the one room that the medical had at the present.  

I was still alone living in the small apartment that my Mom has graciously has allowed me to live in. She has made a sacrifice just to allow me to be here.  I am 45 years old and am relying on my Mom, this is sad but there is nothing I can do to change the mess I am in.  I owe bills that my two month marriage has left me and  a Truck payment that takes one whole check out of two checks I make a month. I miss my life I had not so long ago, when my kids were young, Friday night foot ball, where my children were the stars and I was always there sick or not in the stands backing my babies all the way. My six foot very handsome son was the captain of the team and my little ,short, red headed Daughter was in the flag core and in the band. Yes she is beautiful. I cant look back at that time. It has ended but I can have the memories that it has left and those memories are cherished no one can take them. They are all mine.
 
We have worked hard all week, making the transition from the old jail to the new one. I actually moved medical my self in the back of my pickup truck. I didn't lift anything we had trustees to do that. They were glad to do it the nasty jail that we were leaving smelled bad, was dark and in the middle of  town. The new jail was in the country, big and roomy, it smelled clean and
medical had their own bathroom.  

Before we left the old jail we had several colorful inmates, while the new staff were being trained we got an Inmate in that had once been in the prison system. He was angry, mean and knew all the tricks. Some people are just Demon possessed. I think he was. You will have to see the other side of the coin. Our young little officer just right out of school, never really been aggressive a day in his life, walks by this inmates cell. The inmate states that he is packing some dope and he is going to take it and kill his self. When the officers gets near the door, he is slammed by human feces all in the face. Then the inmate announces that he has the A.I.D.S. virus. Being the new nurse it was my job to do the cavity check. It made me sick to get near him.  He was not mentally Ill, just mean.

When I did the search he would yell "deeper, deeper honey, you are just tickling me". That was a time I wanted to really hurt him I could imagine he was my ex husband, he appeared to be as cold as he was. I remained professional and ignored his  gestures. Our Captain I think was surprised at how professional  I was and made the comment that I was a very cool calm person. I smiled and told him I take that as a compliment Sir. I went to the bathroom and threw up!

Women and men both, are housed in the county jail.  I never knew how difficult women could be.  I had never treated a women inmate. Its harder for me to treat a woman that has abused her children but I cant judge them that is not my job. We were sent a video tape of a baby being treated for Meth burns, his little cry was haunting. We were ask to view the tape to decide if the mother was stable enough to watch the tape because the tape would be played in the courtroom as evidence.

I keep telling myself that Methamphedimine must be a devil of some kind. I have seen so many come in our jail for manufacturing and possession. I see that they would do any thing to get this drug. It is poison! It really is. Some of it is cut with draino, comet cleaner, baby powder or any thing else of that nature.

She was stable!  But after seeing her baby burned to a crisp and being put down in a debreedment tank and its little flesh actually peeling off his body.  She has never been too stable after that and if you are wondering! God had mercy and took the baby  home.  He died and now she is looking at life and a 20 years. She has wrote her own fiat.  She is going to be in the system for a while.
 

If you want to contact Scarlet you can e-mail The Injustice System and put "Fighting for Freedom and Humanity" in the subject section and I will forward it to her.  

This page is updated as Scarlet writes about her experiences.  Come back often to see the additions.

© Copyright 2003 Scarlet

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