This is some text inside of a div block.Even hypochondriacs get sick and die. You’d think some corollary of Murphy’s Law would assure eternal good health for anyone who actually wants to get sick, but it doesn’t work that way. I mean, after a hundred consecutive rare and fatal illnesses have come and gone, each having faded quietly into the shadow of its more promising successor, what are the chances that the very next one is going to be the real thing? Pretty good, as it turns out. In fact, it's more than possible. It’s inevitable. Because the imagined has a knack for finding unlikely ways of becoming real. So if your bad trip of a life is leading you through a gallery of nightmares, don’t take comfort in the knowledge that they’re only hallucinations.
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And when that first real cough, lump, or tinge of pink in the toilet water shows itself, then, surprisingly enough, most hypochondriacs don’t go running off once again to the same doctors who have grown so tired of them over the years. Because they can feel the difference. They know, and this time they want nothing more than to pretend they can ignore it away.
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What makes me such an expert on hypochondriacs? Where I live, for one. You see, prisons are chock full of hypochondriacs. Every morning, a whole new set of peculiar symptoms materialize spontaneously from inside the concrete walls of this maximum-security prison and find their way into an assortment of unwitting hosts. A weakness in the right leg for Jimmy in cell 465B; an unexplained spell of dizziness for Jose in cell 655A; a slightly enlarged lymph node for Rubio in lock-down; each symptom bringing with it just the smallest promise of deliverance. Because, for at least half the men in here, there’s only one real way out. Can you blame them for passing the hours squinting hopefully at these shiny mirages?
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Yeah, I’ve seen my share of hypochondriacs in this place, and for some reason a lot of them come running to me with each and every new development. I suppose my nearly endless patience has them believing I’m some kind of doctor or shrink or something. So, while they’re explaining all the gory details they found on Google or in the beat-up copy of a Merck Manual that miraculously has yet to disappear from the prison library, I always make it a point to listen quietly and give each of them my full attention. I nod at every symptom and tilt my head with concern to let them know I have complete sympathy for their plight and don’t for one minute question the authenticity of the ailments they spread before me like the chalk drawings of a street artist. I don’t challenge. I show no skepticism. I listen. Maybe that’s why, over the years, I’ve become such a popular person to unload on. But better that kind of unloading than the other kind, which I’ve generally been able to avoid.
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So now it must be my turn because I’m pretty sure I’ve finally joined their ranks. I’ve been ignoring the numbness in my fingers for three days now, confident that it’s all in my mind, and for two of those days I’ve been hit with a series of uncommonly painful headaches. But these things always go away, right? Except that on the fourth day, today, the symptoms manage to circumvent my will altogether and announce themselves loud and clear to just about everyone in cell block six. That’s when my story truly begins.
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The day starts much like any of the previous ten thousand I’ve spent in this place. My late six thirty wake-up is the result of a temporary reprieve from suicide watch duty. It’s now been two full months since my last stint, and I suspect my luck is about to run out. Before long, I’ll once again be spending my midnight hours chatting up some poor guy in even worse shape than the rest of us. In the meantime, I’m doing my best to sleep as late as humanly possible inside this cell block, which is to say, not very late at all. You see, six thirty may not be your idea of sleeping in, but that’s only because you’re not on prison time. On Prison Standard Time, dinner is brought around at five thirty in the afternoon, after which there’s absolutely nothing to do until the next morning (it’s called personal time, but unless you can cough up the money for something to read, it very quickly becomes stare endlessly at the ceiling time). So we’re usually asleep by eight or nine at the latest, which means that by five thirty the next morning, most everyone’s wide awake and the noise machine is already dialed up to a nine. On this particular morning, though, I manage to sleep through the growing racket until my cellmate, Bennie, takes advantage of my stupor by grabbing my left arm and dragging me out of my bunk and onto the floor.
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“Mornin' time,” he says, with a smile borrowed from his favorite horror movie clown. It’s a deliberate look that’s been practiced into permanence over the years and usually doesn’t mean anything. Most folks in here quickly put together a mean face soon after arriving, thinking it’ll serve as some kind of protection. They’re wrong about that, but by the time they learn that lesson, their faces have already frozen into a perpetual and usually unintentional sneer.
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“Umph…OK, OK, I’m here,” I mumble as I slowly regain consciousness. Everyone in this place has the same first thought of the day, every day, and this morning is no exception. It rushes in before anything else has a chance: that very first reminder of where I am and what’s become of my life. It’s the universal but never-discussed curse thrown down on all of us. For me, twenty years have taken the edge off, but for new arrivals, that first light of day can be truly shattering. Sometimes, the suicide-risks I babysit will try to stay up all night just to escape that moment, but they never succeed. All you can do is try to stay alive long enough for time to dull the blade a bit.
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I lift myself from the cold concrete and take a quick stock of things. Bennie has once again littered the floor with a thousand tiny scraps of newspaper, the result of his annoying habit of whiling away the hours tearing paper into increasingly thin strips. Otherwise, the cell is unchanged from the night before, or the year before for that matter: a ten-by-ten cube of gray concrete, with two metal sleeping cots secured by chains to opposite sides. Each cot is fitted with a thin mattress and a single blanket (a second blanket will cost you twelve cartons of cigarettes or three grams of black tar). There’s an open toilet along the back wall, also made of concrete, and a desk and chair set placed in one corner, small and flimsy and giving every appearance of having been picked up in a garage sale from a couple whose kids have recently left home. The chair is useless for my large frame. Still, I’m grateful for the desk, and I occasionally sit on the floor and use it to make rather poor drawings whenever I can get hold of a pencil and some paper that has yet to be meticulously shredded by my cellie.
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Now that I’ve got my feet underneath me, I notice the headache is much better than last night, and the numbness in my hands isn’t quite as bad either. Just as I suspected. Give these kinds of things a few days and they’re bound to go away. Bennie and I ran out of interesting things to talk about three years ago, so we stand silently for a good twenty minutes or so, contributing nothing to the chaos of noise that continues to grow, until the cell door shakes abruptly and swings open. We step into the corridor and join a growing parade of cell block six cons making our morning trek to the shower room for daily wash-up. Not for showers, which are allowed but once a week, but to brush our teeth and splash a bit of water on our hair and faces. Having recently transferred from a more secure block, I’m not used to getting this perk every day. The big attraction, of course, is half an hour of face time with other cons. Bennie may be a decent enough cellie, but after five minutes he’s about as interesting as white bread. Wash-up is one of the few chances I get to engage in any real conversation, and even this activity is severely challenged by the painful noise levels.
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I make my way over to Erik, who was up for parole yesterday. “How’s the headache?” he yells at me. He’s the one person I mentioned it to yesterday when it was at its worst.
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“Better,” I say, before quickly changing the subject. “Hear anything about your parole?”
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“Naw, not a thing. I must be screwed. They’d have told me by now if I got it. Good news comes quick and bad news never comes at all.”
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“You never know,” I say to encourage him, even though I suspect he really is screwed. You practically have to be Jesus Christ to even get a hearing these days. Politics.
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“Yeah, right. You never No, as in N.O. That’s the thing.”
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Just then, crazy Eddie pushes his way between us and starts to tell me, once again, about his advancing leukemia. Eddie is one bad hypochondriac.
“Man, I’m weak today. Red cell counts must be down. I know because…”
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Usually, I'd let him drone on, but I’ve heard so much of his shit recently that I cut him off. “I don’t want to hear any more about the leukemia right now, Eddie. It depresses me.”
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“Yeah, leave the guy alone, will ya?” says Jack-O, who is one place ahead of Eddie in line and barely within hearing distance. “Everyone’s tired of all your cancer bullshit.”
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“Fuck you, Jack-O,” yells Eddie, flipping him the bird. “What, you got better bullshit? You think we want to hear any more about your great ideas for busting out?”
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“Shut the fuck up,” says Jack-O. Everyone knows you don’t say a single word about any escape with a guard nearby, even if you’re not serious. Kind of like saying the word bomb in an airport security line—you just don’t do it. But Jack-O’s been peddling his plans for so long that even the guards no longer take him seriously. In two years of trying, he has yet to find a willing partner, and he insists his plan takes two to carry out. So even if the guards do happen to overhear Eddie, there’s little chance they’ll take him seriously. It’s become a bit of a running joke around the block.
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“Hey, all’s chill,” I say, extending my right arm with my hand up and fingers spread. “Just settle, man. It’s too early for this kind of shit.”
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“Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it from you a million times. Just chill. Easy for you to say, huh?” says Eddie, turning away from me and catching up to the line ahead. He thinks my size and race give me an advantage in here. Eddie is Hispanic, and the Chules can’t protect him like the Reds protect the brothers. Mainly because there are more of us, and we stick together, no matter what. So the White Brotherhood and the Chules do their best to avoid fights with the Reds. But my size advantage—I'm six-three, two-forty—matters less than you might think.
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In here, you learn to be afraid of everyone, no matter their size or strength. Physical intimidation means very little when you’ve seen with your own eyes what even the smallest and scrawniest-looking guy can do. The kind of brutality that’s most respected comes from deep inside, so you can’t size someone up by looks alone.
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After inching along for forty minutes, we finally reach the entrance to the shower room, where we’re frisked one more time. The line ahead is still maddeningly long, but we keep shuffling slowly forward and eventually reach the sink area, where a guard directs each of us to one of fifteen different shorter lines, one per sink. There’s some pushing and shoving and jostling for position since we all want to get to that sink as soon as possible. Some inmates take their sweet time washing up, if for no other reason than to piss off the guy behind him. It’s surprisingly effective. Instinct and human nature hurry us along at every step of our incarcerated lives, even though the only thing we’re hurrying to is endless hours of more waiting. People have killed to get just one place ahead in the shower line. Most of the fights in here make no sense at all and break out only because we can’t stop acting the way we used to on the outside, even when the reasons for those actions have been removed entirely. Knowing there’s nowhere to go isn’t enough to stop the maddening impatience. Like vestigial organs, old behaviors stay with us long after they've lost whatever purpose they originally had. That's why we go to war over an open sink.
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But not today. Today, all is orderly and peaceful, and before long I’m walking through the central corridor on my way back to the cellblock, exaggerating the natural swing of my head to shake a few more cold drops of water down the back of my neck. Sometimes a quick splash of water is all it takes to make everything right again, if only for a moment. When our group rounds the far corner of the hallway, I see that Manny, one of the more senior guards, is waving me over. So, like a car stopped for speeding, I pull to the side and watch the others pass by.
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“You got a visitor,” says Manny.
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“A visitor?” I don’t get visitors. Haven’t had one in three years.
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“Yeah. Some lawyer guy in tennis shoes.”
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"I don't have a lawyer."
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He lifts his eyebrows as if to question my memory. “You sure about that?”
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A lawyer guy in tennis shoes? I close my eyes and try to think of who it could be. It’s true I don’t have a lawyer anymore, but then again, what's the name of that place that used to send me letters every month? Justice something? “Well, I’m not expecting anybody, so tell whoever it is to fuck off.”
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Manny just laughs, turns around, and starts down the hall in the opposite direction. “You know it don’t work that way,” he mutters, and yes, I do know it doesn’t work that way, so I wait just a moment before reluctantly following a few paces behind.


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