THAT WHITE BOY CALLED MARK
The medical cage, which was nothing more than an inmate holding pen, was located one floor below the basement in the New Orleans Charity Hospital before the hospital was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. It would accommodate about two dozen shackled inmates who had been transported to the medical facility from prisons across the state. They had to sit for hours manacled in the cage waiting to “see the doctor.”
The medical cage was filthy, which personified the entire hospital. The sub-basement area reeked from odors of filth, infection, and disease. The floor of the medical cage was seldom, if ever, mopped. Dirt and grime were etched both into the floor and walls – a common characteristic of inmate holding pens. A urinal was located in the common area of the cage while a toilet was encased in a screened cage. Inmates needing to use the toilet were locked in the screened cage before their restraints were removed. The smell of human defecation often filled the medical cage, overwhelming all the other odors including human body odors.
The inmates in the medical cage were the most sick in the state’s prison system. They were infested with cancers that needed chemotherapy and radiation; weakened and debilitated by heart disease; or handicapped with paralysis, severed limbs, or physical deformities. As their vital organs failed, they were assigned to “go to Charity for treatment.” By that time most had become “dead men walking.”
Diseased inmates were handled and processed like hazardous waste. Each inmate had a medical horror story that generally began in the prison health care delivery system and was perpetuated by the Charity Hospital system.
The following essay is one of those stories I recorded following a medical trip Charity Hospital and a day in the medical cage.
Did you hear about that white boy called Mark?
I was sitting, handcuffed and shackled, in the inmate medical cage at Charity Hospital in New Orleans – six months before the Katrina destroyed the facility.
The “cage” was a filthy, foul-smelling holding pen for state prisoners waiting to see “Charity” doctors. Most were seriously ill which is why they were sent to Charity. Many had their illnesses made worse by medical negligence in an incompetent prison health care system. Some were damaged beyond repair, emaciated by a too-late diagnosed cancer or wheel chair bound by paralysis caused by a reaction to a wrongfully prescribed medication.
It was February 2005. I was waiting for an EMT – a test ordered to determine the strength of my muscles. I suffered from a severe case of ptosis – a condition so acute that I was legally blind. I had to tape my eyes open each day so I could see. Preliminary diagnosis at Charity had led doctors to believe I suffered from either myasthenia gravis or Kearns Sayre Syndrome. I hoped not. I did not want to die old, weak, and crippled in prison. I would have preferred a knife in the back. There was no dignity dying old and wretched in a prison infirmary.
Sitting a few feet from me was the skeletal of what was once a man – forever bound to a wheel chair. His skinny body, nothing more than flesh over bone, was balled up into a grotesque knot in the chair. He was the mirror-image of an emaciated face of a Dachau prisoner peering at the outside world from under a soiled prison jacket that covered his entire body. His eyes were sunken into darkened holes, but amazingly his brain still functioned with clarity.
“They don’t know what I have,” he said. “I’ve begged them to cut off my right leg. It hurts so bad – the pain never stops, always throbbing, just throbbing pain. The leg’s useless now. Cut it off – stop the pain. I’ve begged them. Instead, they put me in diapers and strapped a bag on me for my urine. Just cut off the leg – give me some relief. I asked them what’s wrong with me. They say, ‘you tell us.’ They don’t even know what’s happening to me. At least they could cut the leg off.”
I was a prison reporter, much like the old “crime beat” reporters. My brain was my recorder. It was always ready to click on; to record and preserve some prison moment that would otherwise go unnoticed.
“A Buick Roadmaster was the finest car ever made,” the pained voice said. “My father owned one, a 1955 Roadmaster. That’s when a car really was a car – made of steel and heavy metal. The cars today are fiber glass junk – nothing but fiber glass. You can wreck one with a foot. They are as useless as my legs. But a Roadmaster – that was one fine automobile. It would take you anywhere in this country, without complaint.”
The man’s brain was still alive. It processed information and recalled memories. Now it was trapped in the shell of a body. I could only imagine the fear, dread, and pain it must have endured watching the physical body shrivel up, life gradually wasting away from its limb. Many times that brain must have recoiled in utter disbelief, horror, and, finally, hopelessness.
“You know that crazy white boy called Mark at WCI,” the voice said. “You know what he did? He castrated himself! Cut his nuts out with a razor blade. He’s a crazy motherfucker. He tried to hang himself, but it didn’t work. He was in the ‘block.’ He kept asking the freeman for a razor blade. Freeman said, ‘bitch, you ain’t gonna do shit, you just fakin’ yoah ass off.’ So the free man finally gave him a razor blade – and, you know, that crazy motherfucker cut his balls out. I mean he cut the whole sack off. Then he cut his throat and then he cut himself all over. There was blood everywhere in that cellblock – it took them hours to clean it all up.”
What would make a man sever his own testicles?
Prison cellblocks are bastions of human madness. They are designed to punish misbehavior and confine mental health problems. The worst prison guards are assigned to supervise these cellblocks, known in the Louisiana prison system as “extended lockdown.” The guards that supervised that state’s lockdown system were brutal, ignorant, mean-spirited, sadistic, and quite often homosexual predators. They relished their positions of absolute power that allowed them to torment, harass, and agitate the inmates held captive in those man-made cages.
Extended lockdown inmates overwhelmingly suffer from a litany of mental health disorders, including violent psychoses. The “block” is a place where they can get lost in the noise, disease, and deprivation imposed by this punitive system. Throwing feces and urine on each other is a natural dispute resolution mechanism. Every aspect of life in extended lockdown is restricted – hygiene, sleep, food, reading, writing, and faith. Something as simple as a roll of toilet tissue or a sharpened pencil is a precious commodity.
The mind and body deteriorates in the prison lockdown world is consumed by cell monotony and inactivity. Most lockdown inmates do not have the love of family to keep them alive with hope. They slowly suffocate from human neglect. Madness becomes preferable to reality; suicide a natural choice over life. The brutal realities of daily life in a cell can so depletes one of hope, meaning, and purpose that silent rage can force the mind to accept the hand severing one’s own testicles.
“His balls were as useless as my legs,” the pained voice said. “God, I wish I could cut off my leg. My right leg hurts so bad – and these white-coat motherfuckers don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”
Silence stilled the holding pen. Each man quietly assessed his own life situation. A prayer formed on my lips: “God, please do not let me die such a death, not after the life I’ve lived.” The prayer was consumed by the nothingness of the moment.
“What did they do to the free man who gave Mark that razor blade?” another voice asked.
“Nothing. The bitch is still working the ‘block. You know they gonna protect their own. Everybody knows he gave Mark that razor blade. I mean, who really cares?”
The mixture of anger, sorrow, and mostly defeat in that voice explained the kind of hopelessness that provoked Mark’s self-mutilation. Life in a cellblock is hopeless; despair etched into its very existence. Sorrow permeates the individual’s soul while anger cripples the heart. Self-mutilation is a reaction to this wretched, deprived existence.
I could only assume that the nature of this cell existence forced Mark to sever his testicles. They were, in fact, as useless as the pained voice’s right legs.