SURGERY: FUN WITH HANDCUFFS in Adventures From Prison

They came for my cellmate first, waking him up from a dead sleep and leading him out of the cell in handcuffs in about two minutes.
“You’ve got about an hour,” they tell me, leaving me alone.
I climb down from my bunk to use the in-cell toilet. I may have spent the last five years in prison but I have yet to be forced to poop in the same room on an open toilet as another person. Thank God for small favors.
Business done, I sit at the desk and wait. I hear the breakfast trays being delivered to the cells around me, the heavy metal bangs of the food slots being opened and shut echoing down the silent concrete hallway. They haven’t put the lights on yet, so my cell is dim lit only by the 20 watt nightlight in the ceiling and the dusky morning light through frosted glass.
I wonder again how I survived 28 days in this environment when I first arrived. It sucks the life from you. I understand now why kennel-kept shelter dogs end up having so many issues. When your life is reduced to four walls and food given to you through a slot, the mind gets mushy. I resolve once more to never, ever do anything that would merit a long disciplinary stay in the SHU. How guys can do 6 to 12 month stints in here floors me.
When the escorts arrive 20 minutes later, a feeling of relief surges through me; even knowing the stay is temporary, any time in the SHU stresses me out and I’m ecstatic to leave. I’m handcuffed, led back to the dog cage, uncuffed, put in my own clothes, handcuffed again, walked outside, uncuffed, walked to the Receiving & Departure office, strip searched, put in R&D clothing, scanned in a metal detector, cuffed and leg ironed, then led outside the prison for the first time in five years. We stand on the curb and wait for the van to be pulled up. The sky is heavy with clouds, hanging like gray cotton balls over rolling hills. As far as I can see is nothing but farmland and forest. It’s beautiful. We are lucky to be in one of the more scenic prisons, most being in the middle of flatlands or on the outskirts of a metro area.
The van arrives and I awkwardly climb in. The escort has left me a decent amount of slack in my leg irons, so it’s not too hard. I ask how long of a drive and they tell me it’s about 30 minutes.
“Great,” I said and settled back into the most comfortable seat I’ve been in since I self-surrendered. It’s amazing how nice a cushioned back rest feels after nothing but benches and plastic chairs.
The ride is great, though I do feel kind of car sick by the time I reach the hospital. My body is so used to solid ground and slow speeds, every slight adjustment in speed or direction is noticeable to me.
The hospital is much smaller than those in Chicago, but it’s clean and modern. The C.O. escorts lead me through the E.R. entrance and to the reception area. It’s just after 9 a.m. so the place is quiet. An extremely overweight woman in a flower pattern top is watching the news on a huge TV. It’s been years since seeing an HDTV and the crispness of the picture is dizzying. I gawk at it before being nudged gently forward to the intake desk. I sit down.
Behind the counter is a chubby redhead with pale white skin and a cute face. She’s maybe 5 years older than me. She smiles and it is kind and genuine.
“I’ve got some forms for you to initial and sign.”
I chuckle and hold up my cuffed wrists. “That might be an issue.”
“Oh!” She laughs. “I’ll help you.”
She disappears, and then emerges from a door to my left. She bends down and puts a pen in my hand then positions her clipboard and forms beneath it. Her loose scrub top has fallen open giving me a clear view of her lime green bra. It’s the only thing she is wearing beneath her scrubs so her large soft breasts are just dangling there in front of me.
“Boobies! My Id screams in excitement, ordering my eyes to immediately focus on these large icons of womanhood.
“Stop it,” my ex-wife’s voice echoes from my morality closet. “You’re a gentleman.”
“But…boobies! My Id argues quite persuasively.
“August Raines,” my mother scolds, also from the morality closet. “Behave.”
I pause, wondering for a moment how the two of them can occupy the same small place without killing each other. I chalk it up as one of the mysteries of the Quantum Brain.
“Boobies, boobies, boobies,” sings my Id happily.
“Sign here, then initial here, here and here,” the cute lady tells me.
I wrestle my focus back to the page, awkwardly scrawling the required notations.
I’m not normally such a sleaze, but after five years of celibacy and over-clothed female staff members, the briefest hint of sexy clothing is like downing two pots of coffee back to back. Your mind goes primal and the manners drilled into you get pushed aside. Your eyes are on autopilot.
To my relief and disappointment she stands up, puts a patient bracelet on my wrist and returns to her place behind the desk…Where she bends over even further to sort and file the papers on her desk. At this point even the escort notices the clear view of the woman’s chest and snickers behind me before turning away.
I avert my eyes.
My Id screams at me.
“I will be a gentleman,” I tell it. “I will not give her a reason to think all prisoners are creeps.”
She finishes up, smiles at me and wishes me good luck.
I stand and shuffle away. The fat lady eyes me suspiciously. I really, really, really want to jump at her and go “Boo,” but I don’t.
The looks I get from the men and women moving through the hospital are hilarious to me. They see me and they suddenly tense up, walking slower and closer to the walls, like I’m Hannibal Lecter. Instead of being embarrassed or humiliated, the sheer ridiculousness of the situation strikes me and I laugh softly. If those people knew how kind and easy-going and pacifistic I was they would be amazed. I’d bet money that most of them have done far worse things to others than I ever have or ever will. My wife and friends often said I was the epitome of a Boy Scout, even though I never was one.
The escorts know and they laugh with me. They tell me about being in an elevator with another guy from our LOW-SECURITY Prison and having a nurse literally throw herself in front of a couple trying to get on the same elevator when it stopped on another floor to pick up passengers.
“All they see are the handcuffs,” the escort tells me. “As far as I’m concerned, you only are wearing them to make the community happy. We both know you aren’t going to do anything to anyone.”
I realize that before coming to prison I always assumed that a man in cuffs and irons was dangerous. The truth is they cuff everyone – the frail 72 year old investment banker who embezzled a few million from their company and the dangerous serial rapist. To them it’s just a policy to be followed, regardless of the crime. Once you understand that, being handcuffed really isn’t humiliating at all. But it is eye-opening when you watch the reactions of those who see you.
While we stop to get me a wheelchair for the rest of the journey, I remember the stories I’ve heard from another prisoner about the people you encounter on a medical trip.
“Some people and nurses will basically spit on your feet with their rudeness,” he said. “But others will be awesome. Especially the young female ones, they’ll be all touchy-feely and it’ll feel like they are just showing off their bodies to you.”
I realize, after having an experience with the latter type, that I have no idea if she was acting like that on purpose, or if, in my deprived state, I am misinterpreting normal female behavior as something it’s not. I think perceptional mistranslation is the most likely in this case.
I have a hard time believing a woman would find a prisoner sexy enough to alter her behavior into something flirtatious, no matter how many other prisoners insist that that is exactly what happens. Am I wrong?
I am pondering this as I’m rolled into the elevator and the escort pushes for out-patient surgery.