I'm Down
Chapter One
"Is there some reason they decided to stick all of us girls on the late shift?" Ameka complained loudly as she reached up to spread her hand over a crease on her guard uniform. She and her three compatriots had two hours left in their overnight shift at Princeton Prison, and none of them would say that their shift ended a moment too soon. All four were African-American women in their early 20's, with black hair tied back in buns (so the inmates couldn't grab a hold if they were breaking up a fight), but beyond that the four were very different.
"Because whatever guys can do, girls can do better?" Ashley chimed in response. At twenty-four, she was the oldest of the group, and had soft curly hair and gentle features, which had led more than one inmate to declare that she ought to have been a model instead of a prison guard. Why she had opted for the latter job was still anyone's guess, but her bubbly personality tended to be an asset on long, irritating nights.
Ameka was a year younger than Ashley, a night student at Princeton University and smart as a whip, tall and beautiful with pronounced brown eyes that never met her smile. She had a three-year-old son at home, she'd mentioned, and if it weren't for him she would have quit this job long ago. She had the shortest fuse of any of them and had gone for the guard job after getting fired from more than one customer service gig for mouthing off to the customers.
Next was Victoria, or Vicki as she was usually known, twenty-two and a performing arts major who was working as a guard because it paid well and it was something to get her by until she made her big break in either the acting or the music scene. In short, it was an attempt to get her parents – who were very wealthy but had also with very high expectations – off her back.
The youngest was Leona, at twenty-one. Of them all, she was the only one who actually wanted this as a career. A Criminal Justice major at Princeton, she was light-skinned with dark brown eyes and a somewhat uneasy smile. She was the quietest of all the girls, and no one had really successfully managed to figure out exactly what made her tick.
"I hear we got a new 'guest' in here tonight," Ameka continued, ignoring Ashley's comment. "Some doctor."
"Oh, what'd he do?" Leona chimed in. "Prescribing too many drugs?"
"Nah…" Ameka replied. "Get this – he drove his car into his girlfriend's house after she broke up with him."
"Reminds me of Left-Eye Lopes!" Ashley said with a grin. "She lit her whole boyfriend's house on fire."
"That was on accident, though," Vicki cut in, taking a step forward to begin patrolling the aisle between the cells. "She was only trying to burn his shoes."
"That does not count as 'on accident'!" Ameka argued. "That's still burning a house down, whether you didn't mean to burn the whole damn house or not."
"Who try to burn her boyfriend's shoes, anyway?" a voice came out of the cell they were standing in front of, and a moment later a tall, bronze-skinned man with glasses appeared at the bars. "See, you women… Tsk." Ameka rolled her eyes.
"Raul, first of all it's 'tries' – you need to try and spruce up your grammar," she began, and the inmate scoffed. "Second of all, you're in here for trying to steal a BED out of Sears. You have no rights to call anyone else stupid. Get back in there." They continued past Raul's cell and past a few more, all of which contained men who were either sleeping or, in one or two cases, reading. It looked like it was set to be a pretty quiet night.
"So," Leona spoke up. "Tell me about this new doctor."
"You wanna know if he's fine?" Ameka teased. "Well, I don't know. I haven't seen him. He's probably old… and angry."
"Well, we know he no longer has a nice car," Ashley chimed in with a giggle. "I'd be SO angry if my boyfriend did that!"
"Yeah, me too," Ameka agreed. "I'd be in jail with him."
"No, you'd be in jail, he'd be in the morgue!" corrected Ashley with a chuckle. "Don't act like we don't know you by now!" The four continued gossiping quietly as they made their way to the end of the hall and then turned, walking up the next row. This tended to be a good amount of what they did, apart from leading prisoners to lunch and dinner on those days that they were switch to the day-shift. Night shift, on the other hand, tended to be glorified baby-sitting, as Ashley had stated more than once.
They were interrupted by the annoyingly loud sound of one of the prison's phones ringing, which more than one person had mistaken for a fire alarm, leading to a few nearly evacuations that had caused a lot more trouble than they were worth.
Ashley got to the phone first.
"Hello? Fisher here. Okay… Yeah, sounds great, I'll be right there." She hung up the phone and turned to the others. "They're bringing in the doctor guy, apparently." They walked up to the front entrance doors, where the prisoners were brought in at various points in the day – or, in this case, of the night.
"Why are they bringing him in the middle of the night?" Ameka asked. "Don't they usually bring them in after court." Leona shrugged.
"Could have been a long transport… Or maybe he had to detox at the hospital first? They do that a lot for people who come in on drug addictions, don't they?" she pointed out.
"Oh, you just want to convince yourself this doctor's a druggie," Ashley teased. "You don't think any sober person would drive a car into his girlfriend's house."
The door opened, and three guards entered, leading a cuffed prisoner who was hobbling along with great difficulty and was close to being carried more than led. Leona looked him over, her mouth forming a gasp as she looked at the stubbled face, blue eyes and tell-tale limp.
"Dr. Gregory House… for processing," said one of the guards, a broad-shoulder man with dirty blonde hair.
Leona felt her heart begin to beat out of her chest.
"Shit." She turned and looked at the others. "I need a break… I need to call somebody."