Michael Fischer - The Best Medicine

 

 

About one week into my sentence, the guards put the whole prison on lockdown. I was in, what's called, reception, waiting to be classified and then sent to a different prison to serve my two years. The rumor was that an inmate had convinced a civilian worker to smuggle in drugs and they'd shut everything down to look for the contraband. I still don't know if that's true, but we were on lockdown for weeks over something in our cells all day, every day. No mess hall. No showers. No yard. Just guys yelling back and forth day and night. 

 

I was in this big cell block, four tiers high on both sides that held 400 other men, but I was alone. Every time the porter came by to drop a bag meal on the little shelf of my cell gate, I wanted to go for a handshake or a fist bump, anything just to make contact with another person. But I was afraid the porter would just see some strange guy trying to grab him through the bars. 

 

About 10 days into lockdown, my cell buzzed open after morning count and the tier officer sent me to medical. I was born with a heart problem. I've been having surgeries for it since I was a kid. So, apparently, I had to see a cardiologist before the state could decide which prison to send me to next. That meant leaving the lockdown behind for a day and going to a hospital in the free world. 

 

To see a doctor on the outside, I had to be strip searched and have my wrists and my ankles shackled. The handcuffs were connected to a chain around my waist, so I could only lift my hands a couple inches. Think of it like the choke collars some people use on dogs. I wasn't used to ankle cuffs that early in my bid, and this was January in New York. So, I waddled through snow to the transport van with an officer on either side of me, and then threw myself into the backseat, because I couldn't use my hands. 

 

How boring you think the waiting room at your doctor's office is? It depends a lot on where you're arriving from. [audience laughter] I was so excited to sit on a real chair instead of a steel bench, to be in a quiet room that didn't smell like sweat, or urine or disinfectant. But when I shuffled through the front door of the doctor's office, one of the COs with me said, “Come on, we're not stopping.” He led me down a hallway and I stood against the wall while the other officer checked me in. 

 

Pretty naive to think I'd be allowed to sit and wait with the other patients. They would be afraid of me. It occurred to me that this trip might not be the break I'd hoped for. I thought being in the free world for a day would be great. See mailboxes and billboards again, look at people in their cars and wonder about their lives, pretend I was just on my way to work like everybody else. I thought I would feel almost normal, not like some animal escaped from the zoo. 

 

The staff clearly wanted me out the door as fast as possible. So, pretty quickly, the officers and I were shown into an exam room. The cardiologist walked in with a nurse right behind him, and he looked at me and said, “Michael?” Used my first name as if I were any other patient on his schedule. And I said, “Yeah, I'm Michael.” The cardiologist started a physical exam. And just the feeling of his stethoscope against my chest, I might as well have been at a spa. 

 

I started reciting my medical history using all the technical terms I've learned from dealing with heart disease my whole life. And when I'd finished, the nurse tapped my ankle cuffs twice with a finger and said, “You're too smart for these,” which was supposed to be a compliment. I wanted to tell her that's not how it works. The guys on my cell block weren't locked up for being stupid. But to be honest, a part of me felt flattered. This nurse and this doctor were treating me like I was a real person. They thought I was smart, and they weren't afraid to look me in the eyes and lay their hands on me. 

 

After weeks of no human touch and no dignity to suddenly have people do things as simple as speak to me kindly or listen to my heartbeat or feel swelling in my legs, I decided I would pay any price for that, just to feel the touch of another person for a minute and to know that person's here to help me and to hope that meant I still deserved help. From the moment the officers put me back in the van, I had a new plan for my time in prison. Take as many medical trips as possible. [audience laughter]

 

Even though it would mean waking up at 04:00 in the morning, and the cuffs and chains for 12 hours straight, and the looks from every person along the way, I needed that reward at the end. I needed contact with people who treated me as if I was still fully human, because I wasn't sure I even believed that anymore. So, I started lying. I was transferred from maximum security reception to a different prison. And almost as soon as I got there, I started complaining to the medical staff about symptoms I didn't actually have. But because my heart problem really is serious, everything I said was believable. So, they started sending me out on more medical trips. 

 

Sometimes more than once a month, I'd get to take these awesome long drives through the countryside into the city. Two officers and I would enter through a back door that was only used to take out the hospital's trash and bring inmates to appointments. It always took a while to reach the cardiology clinic, because every time someone came walking towards me, the officers would have me turn to the wall and stare at my feet until the person passed. But I still caught sight of faces. I saw people pull their children close, or dart down random hallways or pretend to forget something and just turn around. Still, it was easier to mark time by my hospital trips than by what I was missing back home. 

 

My sister got engaged and then married, but I had things to do too. I had an appointment to get a CT scan. My grandma's dementia got worse until she forgot who I was, and it became hard for me to sleep through the night without having a panic attack. But at least my grandma couldn't remember to be ashamed of me anymore. At one time, the doctors gave me what they called twilight drugs, so they could put a scope down my throat, and that was almost as good as real sleep. 

 

My aunt died of pancreatic cancer. And because her funeral was out of state, I wasn't allowed to attend. But what I could do was stare out the windows of the transport van and pretend I was someone else. I knew I was wasting people's time, and the state's money and scaring everyone I saw each time I left the prison, but I didn't care. I needed the connection and I needed the escape. 

 

I remember lying fully conscious on an operating table, handcuffed to the side rails during yet another procedure that I had talked my way into, but didn't really need, where the doctors were threading a scope up through an incision in my groin. And I remember thinking, this is so worth it. [audience laughter] By the time, my sentence was almost over, I'd taken more than a dozen medical trips. I should have been focused on my release, but I didn't want to think about life as a convict. I definitely wanted to get out, but there's a difference between getting out and truly going home. 

 

I was afraid home had changed so much for me that it wouldn't feel like I belonged anymore. On my hospital trips, I could catch sight of freedom without having to really deal with freedom. But as my release date approached, I started to wonder what good the trips were doing me. The van would be driving me to some appointment, and I would think, what if from now on, I only know how to navigate the free world as a tourist, like I am now? What's going to happen when I actually live there? 

 

On one trip, towards the end of my bid, the CO was parked the van by some dumpsters in the back, like always. But this particular doctor's office was special, because here, I was allowed to sit in the waiting room, off in a corner behind this big pillar. I didn't look at the other patients, even though I really wanted to. That seemed like the one nice thing I could do in public, try not to bother people too much with the fact that I exist. 

 

The nurse who called my name was around my age at the time, early 20s. Once we were in the exam room, she asked the officers to take off my handcuffs, so I could remove my shirt. They took off the cuffs and I took off my shirt. And the nurse explained that she was going to stick some leads to my chest, so that she could run a test. So, I lay back and closed my eyes. When her hands touched me, I had to grit my teeth to keep myself from crying. In a different life, she could have been a friend of mine, but there in that room, I kept wondering, if she was afraid of me. She tried to run the test, but she wasn't getting a clean signal. So, she started pulling off the sticky lead pads to rearrange them. And each one was pulling out a little patch of my chest hair.

 

I remember she winced as she pulled off the last lead, and she said, “I'm sorry about this.” She apologized to me, and that, that broke the spell. Suddenly, I felt so embarrassed that I brought myself and these two big officers into this nurse's space just so I could, what, deny reality, feel better about myself for 10 minutes? She was just trying to do her job. And it was not her job to somehow make me fully human again. It was my job to know that I'd never stop being fully human, that I still deserve connection and compassion, whether anyone in any courtroom or waiting room agreed or not. Because the alternative was to keep feeling ashamed and to keep thinking of myself as a loser and to go through life begging other people, like this nurse, to prove me wrong, to give me some small sign that maybe I'm not so bad after all. 

 

That was my last medical trip. I told the prison doctor I was feeling just fine after that. And then, a few months later, I packed my stuff, signed my release papers and they let me go. Living in the free world again has been about as hard as I expected. But despite that, I have to find my way as a citizen of the free world, not just as a tourist. Because if I can't, I'll never belong anywhere. Thank you.