Not me. I’m not talking about suicide for me.

An inmate tried to kill himself tonight.

_______________________

At around 10:45 I passed out the last of the phone cards to some inmates. I had them in my pocket from earlier in the night, but had forgotten about them since I wasn’t working an area.

I was looking at a nice night. When I got to work at 4, I was stopped by one of my Captains and asked if I could update some of the information in the jail website. We are changing visitation times, so she wanted to update the site to reflect that.

I started the website stuff around 6 and finished around 10:30. When I came out to booking, I realized that I still had the phone cards in my pocket, so I went around to the areas and passed them out.

I finished passing out the phone cards by about 11:05, and just as I was coming out of the C-unit there was a call on the radio for officers to respond to the F-unit.

The F-unit is the lockdown tank. The non-social types, the problem children, and the “just in from prison” inmates all get put into F-unit.

As I got inside the unit, I saw an officer standing by a door. He was calling an inmates name. (We’ll call the imate “Bob”)

“Bob, can you hear me?”, he yells, “Bob, are you alright?”.

Something in the sound of his voice and the absence of noise coming from the cell made my brain dump all of it’s adrenaline. Time slowed down.

Usually, in a fight, or when inmates need to be seperated, there is A LOT of yelling. Lot’s of, “F*^& you, motherf*&^er”, and maybe some “You had better get me out of here, or I’m gonna beat his A$$”, etc, etc. There was nothing coming from this cell. Nothing.

I ran to the door, and officer (let’s call him Cal) opened it. On the floor was a pool of thick dark blood. It was on the walls. It was on the floor. It was on the bed. It was in the sink. It was in the toilet. It was on Bob. It was everywhere.

Bob was laying on the bunk. I could see his chest raise and fall, so I knew he wasn’t dead yet, but I didn’t want to rush in, in case he was also planning on similar violence coming our way too.

I looked for something in his hands, and when I didn’t see anything, I came up to the bunk and looked him over. I immediately saw the gash in his neck. It wasn’t squirting, which could be a good or a bad sign. If he had severed the artery, it meant there wasn’t any blood left to pump out, and if he hadn’t severed the artery, it meant he was most likely going to live. I applied pressure.

You might be wondering about HOW he cut himself. Easy. We pass out disposable razors twice a week to shave with. A 12 year old could remove the blade if he really wanted to, and Bob was no 12 year old.

Other officers started arriving, and I yelled for someone to have control call an ambulance. Blood was everywhere. I was so glad I had kept my gloves on after passing out the phone cards.

Bob seemed to go in and out of consciousness. When he would come to, he would smile and tell us we couldn’t same him; that he was too far gone to do anything; that it was fate, and to just leave him alone.

At some point, my Sergeant grabbed a towel and put it on Bob’s neck. Since he was applying pressure, I started looking for a second wound. It was possible that the neck was only the first we saw, but after checking, I found nothing. The blood fully soaked into his pants had only come from his neck.

With all of the blood on the floor, the Sergeant got the other officers to lay blankets down. We were probably going to have to take him to the floor at some point, and sloshing around in all that blood wasn’t exactly something any of us wanted to do.

After finding a pulse, Bob started to groan and gasp. He was looking like he was having trouble breathing, so we pulled him onto the floor. I had Cal lift his legs to try and supply his brain with more blood. Bob came to again, and started praying in spanish.

The EMT’s and Fire-Fighters arrived. They tried getting an IV started, but veins were scarce. Bob came to again, and told us to stop sticking him. He started thrashing a bit and we had to restrain him to allow them to find a vein. It took a couple of tries.

With Bob stable enough to go to the hospital, we rolled him onto his side in order to get the “tarp” under him so we could carry him downstairs onto the gurney. I buckled him into the gurney and away they all went, with two other officers in tow.

By the time I left  work at 12:30, the officers with Bob at the hospital were saying he would be alright.

____________________________

I don’t really know what to say. It’s one of the worst parts of my job.

Here’s what I find interesting. At the door to Bob’s cell, I wasn’t freaking out. I wasn’t thinking about what a waste of potential. I wasn’t thinking how horrible it all was. I wasn’t thinking about the blood. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that this grown man was hopeless enough to, minutes ago, try and take his own life. I wasn’t thinking anything, except “What do I need to do right now to respond to this situation?”.

I suppose I should have been freaked out, and certainly there was a voice inside me screaming to me about all of the things I mentioned above, but it was like the screaming voice was coming another room. The screaming voice wasn’t the important thing at that moment. It could wait.

I suppose that’s one of the reasons I write; to let that screaming voice know that I know it was/is there, and that it’s all going to be OK.

This last week was fairly nice, save for my Friday when I didn’t sleep at all, otherwise it was good.

An interesting thing happened though.

At some forgotten point in the night, officers were called to the F-unit (the lockdown unit) where an inmate had taken a portable bed (aka: a boat) and slid down the stairs in it. It happens. Inmates get bored.

The interesting bit was that after we locked him in his cell, we found a shiv on the ground under the stairs.

Now, for those not in the know, a shiv is a crude instrument made out of jail materials to stick or slash a fellow human. The shiv we found was no different. It was made of a stray piece of welding wire left behind by the workers who recently upgraded our screens. It was wrapped in papers to form a handle, and was actually very scary looking.

The tip of the wire was filed to a point; no doubt done by rubbing in against the concrete floor. The wire used wasn’t like normal wire. It was welding wire, so it was fairly solid, and didn’t bend easily, so sticking it through a roll of paper towels was done easily. I can’t imagine how easily it couldgo through someone’s throat, or eye, or spleen.

We brought the inmates out of the area, and strip searched the inmates who were on their out-time when we found the shiv. After the area was clear of inmates, we searched the cells for about an hour, and found absolutely nothing incriminating.

I’m not surprised we came away with naught, but it was a bit scary, the odds we were playing against; which was the possibility of an officer or inmate getting stabbed. I mean, I know in my brain that my job is potentially dangerous, but seeing a weapon of this sort actually turn up in my jail, hits home the reality of my situation.

And see, that’s not even the really scary thing. I mean, all of that is scary, don’t get me wrong, but the even scarier thing is when you find a second shiv in the same area the very next day… which we did.::”:

I always forget. I always remember swing-shift as being more about my sleep habits, than about work. I always forget that inmates seem to rise to a different level of annoyance on swing-shift. I can’t believe I keep forgetting about that.

I switched over to swings last week, and it all came back in a flash. The yelling, the fighting, the badgering, the throwing of the feces. It’s like a bad dream that you only wake up from after 3 months. (In 3 months I’ll switch to graveyard.)

I could complain about swings, but I must admit that there are some good things also.

Like the fact that I have an excellent crew to work with. Most of the time, we all get along great. We are able to commiserate on our luck, or lack thereof, and we are able to laugh at the sickest of situations.

For instance, this last week, we have been dealing with a seriously mentally disurbed man. He’s not ok. He’s not even really in reality. He screams all day, unless he’s sleeping, and sleep doesn’t come often. He crapped on his wall. YES, he actually put his butt cheeks up the the wall and took a hefty dump. Most of it fell to the ground, but a good portion stuck like glue; like a horribly smelling brown glue.

He also doesn’t like to be told what to do. (Huh, really Joel, a crazy man won’t follow orders???) When he was told to go back to his cell after his out-time was finished, he hurled a chair across the room in defiance.

Interestingly, he has a fantastic memory. When he was picked up by the police, he was threatening to stab the officer with a pen, so the officer pulled out his taser and gave him a 50,000 volt jolt to get him to drop the pen. Subsequently, any time he is offered the taser as an option to not celling in, he opts to cell in. Pain memory must be VERY effective, even if you think you are invincible.

Two days ago, a woman was brought into jail that had heroin stuffed into her hoo-hoo. (Hoo-hoo is slang for VAGINA, for those NOT in the know). She also had needles hidden in her panties. I’m so glad I don’t have to strip search women. Looking at dirty men is bad enough, that I can’t, and don’t want to, imagine what the women must be like. Most nights, we only have one female officer working, so if there are 10 ladies that come in needing a strip search, that ONE FEMALE OFFICER gets to do them all. At least the male officers can evenly distribute the male strip searches.

There’s another man who swears he was told by the judge he could leave jail. He’s also schizophrenic, and very well could have been told he could leave by Judge Judy, but he swears it up and down that he’s being held unlawfully.

Jail is always interesting, and sometimes exciting. There are streches of boredom puncutated by moments of pure adrenaline. The job isn’t for everyone, and sometimes feels like it really isn’t for me.

I remember seeing my first (and only) suicide.

I had spoken to the man the night prior, and he seemed hopeful for the future. He talked about seeing his kids and wife. It was all future-oriented talk. Not something you typically hear from a suicidal indivudual, at least not from what I was aware of.

The next night, at around 11pm, he tied a sheet around his neck and hung himself off his bunk. He was roomed alone for no other reason than it had just worked out that way.

When he was found, we all responded. He was gone. No amount of CPR was bringing him back. It was sad. I still feel sad about that.

I took a good look at myself that night and wondered if I could even DO this job. Was I cut out to deal with this kind of stress; with these kinds of situations? I suppose nobody is “Cut Out” do deal with this stuff, but we all make do.

The way we cope is to laugh about the stupid stuff, to sluff off the crap of the day and band together as friends, and officers. We make do by propping each other up, and by knowing that we are all experiencing the same thing, singularly and as a group.

It’s not a GREAT job, but it’s my job for now, and I’m good at it.

Swing-shift always gives me the opportunity to work on my skills. I get the chance to deal with all kinds of people in all walks of life. From the 1 day commitment for a DUI, to the unknown outcome of a murder charge, the approach is always different.

I suppose I have a love/hate relationship with swing-shift. It’s probably more hate than love, but there’s some love in there for sure. I’ll let you know just how much in about 3 months.