Nearly had charges placed on me for murder

A couple months ago I was at work enjoying a rare quiet night. My shift commander came to me & asked if I'd go on an emergency medical transport. I know better than to volunteer for anything. I've especially learned to avoid volunteering for anything with the term "emergency" in it. My commander begged & pleaded for awhile. I work a non-pull post, which means I can go if I want to, but by union contract he can't make me leave my post for another one without my consent. Eventually my shift supervisor told me if I'd do this for him he'd consider it a personal favor & he'd owe me one. A person can never be owed to many favors in a dangerous place like a super max prison.



So I agreed, but made sure my shift supervisor knew he owed me BIG TIME. About that time the inmate was loaded into the ambulance, I got in also & we headed to the hospital. The inmate was bleeding profusely from his nose. I'm not talking a normal nose bleed here. There was so much blood gushing out of his nose that there was blood pouring off each side of the gurney & was creating small streams of it that was flowing to one side of the ambulance or the other as the vehicle went around turns. A few minutes from the hospital the inmate flat lined & the EMT's had to resuscitate him.



As soon as we got to the hospital we were rushed into a room, a doctor came in & cut the inmate from the back of his neck to the front of his forehead with a scalpel. Then quick as can be he picked up an industrial saw looking tool & sawed the inmates skull open. He then jams a miniature jaws of life looking instrument into the freshly sawed skull & splits this guys head wide open! This whole process of cracking his head open & exposing his brains to me took no longer than 10 seconds. Needless to say I was not expecting that for the treatment of a bloody nose. I have learned to handle blood & gore relatively well, the good Lord knows I've seen enough of it working at a prison for almost a decade & a half. But the sound the saw made on his head, & the wet sucking- crunching sound of his head getting pulled apart wasn't something I was prepared for. A little warning of what the Doctors were going to do would of been appreciated. When the top of his head was split open & his brains were exposed there was an orange sized tumor found that had split open. That was where the massive bleeding was coming from. The Dr saw the tumor that had split apart & said, "there's nothing I can do for him". He then stood there for a bit & stared at his watch as the inmates vitals dropped rather quickly. Once the inmate flat lined a 2nd time in less than 10 minutes the Dr proclaimed the time of death & he & the nurses turned & exited the room calmly as if everything was hunky dorey. Nothing felt hunkey dorey to me! & things sure as heck wasn't hunkey dorey for the inmate!



So there I am in a private emergency room staring at a fellows head gaping open & a cracked tumor hanging out of his brains. The room was utterly quiet, but I could still hear the saw & cracking noise of his head echoing over & over again. I decided to call my Shift Commander partly because that's prison policy, & partly so that I could hear something other than the gruesome noises replaying in my mind. When I got my Captain on the phone I advised him "the inmate died, may I come back to the facility? I don't think the inmate is an escape risk any more." There was no response from my Captain, & then my Captain started to giggle, the giggle turned to a chuckle, which quickly escalated to full blown side splitting laughter. I then started to laugh too. I laughed so hard tears were streaming from my eyes. While I was laughing a lady came into the room & looked at the inmates medical file thingy, looked at the inmate, then looked back at me while I was still laughing & gawked at me in obvious shock & horror. As she was watching me in undisguised disgust my shift Commander told me I had to stay with the inmate until the morgue collected the body. I then hung up the phone & the lady who had entered the room ran out & yelled at the nearest nurse "has the state police been called yet? This is a cover up!" I thought, "this should be interesting. There must have been a serious screw up if she's wanting to call the sate Police on her own staff. & that's when I put her nasty stare at me & her statement together.... She thought I was the one who had done this to the inmate! I threw my hands in the air & told her " I assure you, his head fully in tact when we got here. The Doctor did that" "BullS$!t" she replied. "There's nothing in his file but a time of death!" At that point she picked up a phone & called the state police. While she was making her phone call I was trying to describe the Doctor to the nurses so they could find him & clear this mess up. Problem was I only saw his back side & even then I was mostly watching the inmates head getting cracked open. So much for my training to take in all our surroundings & all details & to remember the description of everyone in any situations we encounter eh? The only description I could give was he had dark blond hair with a clean cut, he was short, & had on blue scrubs. That description was about as worthless as tits on a boar & did nothing to convince any of the large group of medical staff that was forming & watching the corrections officer who killed the inmate that I was not a ruthless murderer. I was even looking for either of the 2 nurses who was there at the time of surgery. It seemed to me like every nurse in the hospital had come to stare at me except those 2! Great, just great.



After what felt like a decade, but was probably only about 5 minutes the Dr who had performed the skull cracking walked into the room that the inmate was in & started to fill out the medical file for the inmate. I ran over to him & explained in as calm of a voice as I could muster what had transpired. He cleared up the situation. But not until he had a hard long laugh at my expense. I believe his long hard laugh at me was as inappropriate as mine was in regards to the dead inmates escape risk. Funny how some things come full circle & bite ya in the butt when ya least expect it.

Anyhow, on to family affairs.....

My wife & I had to trade in our car now that baby #3 is on the way. We can't fit 3 car seats into the one we have now. We were trying to just sell it outright so we could be a one vehicle family, but we were almost $5000 upside down on it. Consequently we had to trade our car in for a minivan. We were able to find a used minivan in great shape for a great deal, lowing our payment-even though we had to add the $5000 we were upside down onto the price of the new van.

This new minivan has a key less key. May not seem that big of a deal to others, but to me it's better than great! I work in a super maximum prison. In my 13.5 years of service I've had 2 of my fellow officers stabbed by inmates using a set of keys. Not much chance of getting stabbed with this new type of key. I'm really looking foreword to all cars having key less keys soon. Any way at all to increase the safety level of the prison I get excited about.

My weight this morning was 217. I have 17 more pounds to lose & 14 weeks to do it until my A race. The Halfmax national triathlon championships held September 19th