As I described in a previous post, every Wednesday morning my colleagues and I meet for Interdisciplinary Treatment Team (IDTT).  Five patients from my caseload were due to attend today’s team.  We were scheduled to start at 9:30 AM.  It was 8:45 AM, and I was still trying to complete my paperwork for the fourth patient.  I hadn’t even gotten to the fifth patient’s treatment plan yet.  I was trying to suppress my panic, but the anxiety was there.

About half an hour later, I stood up to stretch and take a break from my desk.  I wandered over to the break room to chat with my colleague Dr. R, who was standing in front of the copy machine, reading some papers that he’d just retrieved from his mailbox.

“Take a look at this,” he said, handing me an inmate request.  “Looks like I’m going to have to pass it along to custody.”

I quickly scanned the block writing on the page and caught the important words.  “Inmate planning to escape,” “weapons in the cell,” “you need to investigate.”

“Oh, boy,” I said.  We both knew what was coming, once he turned in that note.  “Here we go.”

Dr. R left the office and I could have started a countdown, knowing exactly what would happen next.  Within minutes, the announcement was made on the facility-wide paging system:  “All inmates, recall and lock up.  All inmates, recall and lock up.”  The lieutenant came into our offices to make sure there were no inmates and informed us that an emergency count of the entire facility was being conducted.  I knew from experience that the rest of the morning– and maybe even the rest of the day– was a wash.  We wouldn’t be able to see our patients or have IDTT that morning, but we certainly now had the time to catch up on our paperwork.

I stood at the door to the mental health services building and watched the inmates on the yard heading back to their housing.  It was 9:30 AM.  The universe had just smiled down on me.

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.”

I don’t drink because I’m allergic to alcohol, and I don’t smoke because I never liked the smell of it.  After the day I had at work, though, I’d be drinking and smoking right now if I could.  Today was a record-breaking day for me.  On top of my regular line of patients to see, I received four different urgent referrals from various staff telling me that I needed to see the inmate today.  Even worse, none of those four inmates lived on the yard where I worked, so I had to call different tier officers on the other yards to arrange for the inmate to come to my office.

In the middle of all this madness, our yard was suddenly recalled because custody received an anonymous note threatening to kill three of our correctional officers.  If the note had specifically mentioned “mental health staff,” I might have been a little more concerned, but what with all the work that suddenly got dumped in my lap, I was more worried about getting everything done by the end of the day so that I wouldn’t be working beyond ten hours.

I would tell you all about those urgent referrals, except I’m tired, it’s finally the start of my weekend, and I have no alcohol or smokes around the house.  I do, however, have a Cadbury Crème Egg and an afghan that I started last night, so I think I am going to get comfortable on the deck and watch the sunset.