"You’re not goin’ anywhere"

The following is an excerpt from part one:

Sid does not eat the food because he knows they are spitting in it. He asks for pain meds repeatedly but the C/Os just laugh. When he asks for toilet paper, they laugh. The brown lunch bags that “meals” are delivered in, or the waxed cereal pouches, are his toilet tissue. Before the bags start coming he needs to clean up with fingers, there being no other choice. He has to splash water from inside the toilet. There is no soap. There is no towel. There is no warm water. There is nothing but degradation and mistreatment. That is the way of suicide watch. Its purpose is to inflict more punishment than even solitary confinement has to offer. This is the big opportunity to Hate! Punish! Destroy! The C/Os relish it. They ridicule, chuckle, and savor the harassment. Theirs is the sort of job that typifies “if you could do anything without being concerned whether or not you were paid, what would it be?”

After twenty-four hours, the equivalent of twenty-four millennia, Sid is dragged out for an evaluation with another prison psychiatrist, an elderly man who listens and responds compassionately. The C/Os stand by, joking and mocking. The doctor is not authorized to prescribe medication. He plans to recommend that Sid be removed from suicide watch and from seg altogether. He tells the C/Os that Sid does not belong there and that he has not been allowed to take a shower in nearly a week. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, you old fuckin’ fuck.”

They tow Sid back to his suicide watch trench and provide him with a navy blue suit, garb of the general population. He sits on the floor all day, in meditation position. He is retrieved by Rosie, the ISC slut. She demands that he change into the orange jumpsuit because he is “not goin’ anywhere.” She leads him down the hall toward his assigned cell in the seg unit. They pass the elderly psychiatrist who is now in conversation with another inmate. The man spots Sid approaching and looks down at the floor, avoiding eye contact. Sid pauses for a moment, assuring him, “Don’t worry about it, I understand.”