I did everything wrong the day the guy got raped on D4. I was working D3, a third-level tier, which adjoins D4, a trustee-level tier where no officer is assigned. The trustees are supposed to look after themselves. My only responsibility for the trustees was to mark 'em in and out and count 'em up at the beginning and end of my shift.
The setup is a big U shape: adjoining dayrooms with a door-sized grill between them forming the base, and corridors with 16 cells on each side forming the sides. At the corners, separated by wall-sized grills from the cells on one side and the dayrooms on another, are the cages where the officers sit in their little high school deskchairs. A rotary dial phone hangs on one of the cinder block walls that form the other two sides of the cage. On the trustee tier the doors in the grills of the officer's cage are left open.
It was after evening feed up. I was in the D3 cage. At some point I noticed, or one of the inmates in the D3 dayroom alerted me, that there was a guy hanging onto the D4 side of the locked grill separating the dayrooms. He appeared to be close to death.
I was a bad correctional officer. I jeopardized the security of half the prison. What I should have done was dial the deuces, 222 on the rotary phone, and wait for the goon squad. Instead I whipped the big bunch of heavy brass keys off my sagging belt, unlocked the grill and ran across the D3 dayroom. The inmates sat silent at big solid picnic tables playing cards and watching TV. I unlocked the grill to D4 dayroom and grabbed the guy before he fell. I half-carried him back across the dayroom to D3 officer cage and locked us in. It was clear he had been sexually assaulted. I propped him up facing the grill leading to the cells, and put his arms through the bars so he wouldn't fall. Then I jumped across the cage and sat in the chair where the phone is, on the opposite wall, to dial the deuces.
It was a mistake. I should have sat him in the chair and leaned over him to make the call.
I only turned away for a few seconds. When I turned back it was too late. Passed out cold, he was toppling backwards straight as a tree. When his head bounced off the bare concrete floor it made a sound that I still remember.
