Remember when I had the incredibly busy day last week Friday?  There was a point in the day when I went outside to talk to one of the correctional officers on the yard, and I heard an inmate calling, “Dr. C!  Dr. C!”  I knew he was trying to get my attention, and I knew that he thought I was Dr. C.  She and I work in the same building, we both have long dark hair, and we’re about the same height.  I suppose that from a distance, a person could mistake one of us for the other.

It’s one thing when a patient speaks to me in a socially acceptable manner when I encounter him outside of the office; it’s a different story when it comes to inmates yelling at me from across the yard.  My policy is this:  I don’t acknowledge it—and more so when that individual isn’t even yelling the right name.  You have to have good boundaries when you work in a prison, and if you turn your head and look every time an inmate calls out to you on the yard, you are going to develop a certain kind of reputation among all of the inmates who live there.

So I ignored the inmate and went back inside the building and forgot all about it, until I returned to work today and ran into Dr. C this morning.  I told her about the incident and how the inmate was calling her name at me.

“What did you say to him?” Dr. C asked.

“I didn’t see who it was,” I said.  “I just heard the voice calling your name, and I ignored it.  He was probably thinking, That bitch.”

We both laughed.

“I guess I’ll find out soon enough,” Dr. C said.  “I’m sure I’ll get an earful the next time he comes in to see me.”