Kerri
The guard looks frantic. His hair is disheveled and he is acting panicked. His shirt is has come partially untucked. I wonder if it's a true emergency, or if he's overreacting… he's new here. How long has it been, maybe a couple of weeks? In any case, he hasn't seen it all yet. He's as green as they come, so that wouldn't surprise me.
"Kerri, we need you! There's a lot of blood!" he says.
"I'll be right there," I say, and then I look over at Lucien Stone. My mind is flopping between the current emergency and this man sitting in front of me. His soft, brown hair and his broad shoulders are just begging me to touch them. Did we almost just share a moment? He was leaning into me—and I was leaning into him, but I'm not sure where we were going. And to top it off, he's an inmate. What am I even thinking? I can't believe I'm having these thoughts. What are you doing? I ask myself. You'll get in serious trouble. Now is not the time to compromise your career. Do you really want to go and mess everything up now? My pep talk seems to help, but looking at Lucien—his strong arms, and his soft, full lips, and—I-I don't know. He stirs feelings in me that I thought I no longer had, at least not since Jonathan. But my mind snaps back to the present and what I do know is that I have to leave him right now, and follow the guard.
"I'm sorry, I need to go. Just uh—t-take it easy, OK? Don't overextend that arm and I promise you'll be fine. Give it time, and stay off the weights. Bones don't heal overnight." I watch as he just looks at me, unable to find anything else to say, and I have no choice but to turn away and leave him.
I follow the guard into the next room and I see a man sitting in one of the plastic chairs. He's pudgy, with a haircut that looks as if it were cut with a bowl—perfectly round and reaching to the tips of his thick eyebrows in the front, and the tips of his ears around the sides. I don't actually see the back of his hair right way, but it all looks symmetrical. I look at his nose and see that it is swollen and an angry purple color at the bridge. It's leaking a steady stream of blood down his lips and chin, and it's pooling onto the floor.
"What happened?" I ask.
The inmate doesn't look at me, and keeps his eyes on the floor. I prod him a second time and then he mutters, "It was a dare… My cellmate had five packets of Ramen noodles and a honey bun. I've been lookin' at those damn things for weeks. He probably wasn't even gonna do nothin' with 'em, but I wanted 'em so damn bad. I would've done damn near anythin' for 'em. What was I supposed to do? I don't have any commissary money. I thought it was my lucky day."
"So, what did you do?" I ask, trying to get to the bottom of things.
"Well, my cellmate dared me to snort two fat lines of table salt. He said if I could pull that off, I could have 'em all. On account of my stomach growling and my mouth practically drooling all over the place, I took him up on it."
"And that's why your nose is bleeding and swollen?" I ask.
"No, not exactly. So, this dude sets the lines up, and cuts them perfectly straight—made them extra big—that bastard—and I snorted it all up. And let me tell you, it burned somethin' awful! I'm not lying. I swear, it was like someone had lit a match up there, and I was dancin' around our cell in a panic, and I'm not even one to dance. But then I had a sick feeling in my stomach—like I had swallowed a bunch of water from the ocean, but I figured I'd get rid of that feeling with the honey bun—sweeten up those taste buds. But then as soon as I go to grab it, that son of a bitch says he was just kiddin'. Can you fuckin' believe that? Who kids about somethin' like that? He says he just wanted to see how stupid I could be, and that was it. That's when we got into it. I think he broke my nose."
I step closer and inspect his face. "I agree," I say. "It definitely looks broken to me. I see some bruising starting to form just under your eyes as well, which is also a sign of a beak. If the fracture is bad, you could need surgery, but right now, I think it'll heal on its own. Despite all this blood, it doesn't look too bad."
I grab an ice pack and bring it back. "Here, use this and keep your head tilted back. I'm going to pack a bit of gauze into your nostrils—it may hurt a bit, but that should help stop the bleeding. But do me a favor please. Quit putting things up your nose, OK?"
The inmate chuckles a bit. "Sorry, I can't promise you that ma'am. I got the honey bun and the Ramen after all, and you know what? I'd do it all again for those damn things. Little packages of heaven if you ask me."
I shake my head but decide to not prod him any further. And then after I stop the bleeding, I turn to the guard. "Jesus, Gerry. With the way you ran in here, you'd think someone lost their head!" I say, laughing. "Next time, hold the drama, OK?"
"I know—sorry 'bout that. It was just a lot of blood to see all of a sudden, I guess."
"I’m just giving you a hard time. I suppose it's always better to err on the side of caution," I reply. "You can go ahead and take this inmate back now. He should be just fine."
I watch as they both get up to the leave. The inmate walks with his head still tilted back and his mouth slightly ajar for breathing. I keep watching as his feet do a delicate shuffle out of the room and then I walk back to my desk. I sit in my chair and look over at the spot where Lucien sat just moments before, and I exhale deeply. I swivel around in a few lazy circles and look at the calendar hanging on the wall. The image is a tropical beach scene with palm trees, an impossibly blue ocean, and white sand. I picture myself lying on that beach, my skin moist with a mixture of warm, salty air and coconut-scented tanning oil. I can also picture Lucien there with me too—a thin film of sweat across his rugged abs and his hands on the small of my back. In my mind, I feel protected in his embrace.
Then I hear footsteps just outside the door and the noise causes my mind to bounce back to reality. Why is this happening again? Why am I falling for someone who is completely outside the realm of possibility? Why am I allowing myself to have these thoughts? My mind is reeling with a million questions and no answers. I know what I need to do… I need to stay focused. My career is important, and nothing is going to get in the way of my goals. And right now, that goal is to go to nursing school. As a medical assistant, I don't have many options, but if I'm an RN, the opportunities are limitless. With that, I could take care of myself, and maybe even my mother.
Now that I've got my head on straight, I reach for my purse and a pen. I'm keeping a running to-do list in a small journal. Call me old fashioned, but no matter how many 'productivity' apps there are currently available in the app store, nothing comes close to a good old journal and pen. I keep everything straight that way, and it works. I keep digging my hand through my bad. In moments like these, when my bag feels like a frustrating abyss, I vow to dump everything and get organized, but it never seems to happen. I still can't find it and after a few more minutes, I decide to just dump my bag out on top of my desk. Everything rolls out, and I push it into a single pile—crumpled receipts, lip gloss, keys, pens, gum, hair bands—everything I would expect except my journal. My heart starts to race—I keep everything in that journal. I'd be lost without it—notes, phone numbers, personal thoughts, and even passwords, which I know is a bad move. Where can it be? I am 100% positive that I packed it. I always pack it.
And then my heart freezes in my chest. It's missing.