Summary: "Those next six months? You don't want to know about what happened then…" A look at explaining what did happen, a year after Charlie's first substantial solitary confinement began. Starts at the first six months and ends with his return to Gen. Pop.
Disclaimer: Not mine. I just play with the characters.
Rating: T
A/N: This is chapter one, and will sum up the first three months of his stay in the SHU.
The first six months were difficult. No, they were nearly impossible. He did push ups every day, following his meagre meals. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon, once at night. Sleep never came easily, as the sounds from the surrounding cells always managed to make their way through the walls. Sometimes the other inmates would scream, other times they would yell obscenities at the guards, but Charlie never participated, he would just do more push ups. His first week in solitary passed uneventfully: his meals would come on time, and he would return them on time. He never took anything off the tray that he wasn't supposed to – the meal came with a soft plastic spoon that couldn't be moulded into a weapon (but obviously prison guards had forgotten how cunning the inmates were – they made weapons out of anything), and had to be returned with the lunch tray. By the third day, he was able to keep track of the time based upon the meals he was being served, and he never stopped doing push ups.
His chest still hurt from the latest injury inflicted upon it during the riot, where a rough inmate had most likely hit him hard enough to break ribs. They never gave him anything medical in solitary; it was yet another way for the prison guards to show him that as a convicted dirty cop he was worth nothing in prison. He was less than nothing to them and the other inmates - less than the perverts and the rapists and even the child molesters. Every time he breathed in, sharp pain over his ribs accompanied the oxygen that was flowing into his lungs. He sat on the ground hugging his chest before standing up and looking through the tiny gap between the door and its frame to see if anyone was walking past. All he wanted was a glimpse that there was still humanity in the building, and it wasn't just the prisoners in the pods alone. Seeing no one, he walked back towards his bed. His chest still hurt, but he knelt down and started doing push ups again, because the pain distracted him from thinking about what he didn't want to think about.
How long will it be before I start talking to myself as well? How long before I start yelling out at the guards, and refusing to eat my food?
He gritted his teeth through the pain as he pushed his body up time and time again, sweat dripped off his face and his arms grew weak over the minutes he continued to battle against his mind. The plain white walls started to feel like they were closing in on him, but he kept going.
LIFELIFELIFELIFELIFE
By a month in the SHU, Charlie was used to the screams and yells that came out of the cells next to him. He was used to the scrape of the food tray as it came in the door, and would return the tray on time as usual. He was used to the endless and sometimes deafening silences that fell when the other, rowdier inmates were quietened down, and used to the routine of coming out of the cell once per day for his exercise.
The exercise, in his opinion was the worst part of solitary. He was put into a cage where he couldn't see outside. All he could see were the other inmates who were taken out as the same time as him in their own cages, and no one ever looked to be in a good mood. Just a glimpse of the sun would have made all the difference in the world, but that was part of the deal with being in the SHU. Any freedom that you used to have in the general population was removed, and a person was literally treated like an animal. The guards looked at him with distain and thinly veiled hatred, knowing that he was a nuisance (though not always through his own actions), and not even trying to hide their feelings from him. They constantly jostled him on the walk to the exercise yard, and he knew from past experience there was a minute long window of a lack of video recording where the guards often took advantage of the inmates and would teach them a lesson for past infractions. Charlie knew it was just a matter of time until they decided it was his turn for yet another beating.
This walk to the yard had been particularly uneventful, with even the inmates in the cells next to his being suspiciously quiet. An eerie feeling settled over Charlie, and he knew that when even the inmates went quiet he was usually in for some kind of rough time. No one in the prison was there to look out for him, not just because he was a cop, and not just because he was a dirty cop. They all hated him because he was a dirty cop that had butchered an entire family in cold blood. Shuffling along the plastic floor with guards on either side of him, Charlie felt his defences start to rise, but he knew there was nothing he would be able to do. He was double shackled – once at the wrists, and once at the ankles. Whatever they were going to do to him, he was just going to have to take it. They rounded the corner and suddenly Charlie felt himself get pulled to the side, into a narrow corridor that led nowhere.
"Put him on the ground," the voice of the guard closest to him said, and Charlie was pushed down so that he was resting on his knees.
"Do you know why you're here, cop?" the guard said as he laid his nightstick on Charlie's shoulder, putting an extra bit of pressure on in order to frighten him.
"Yes sir."
"Yes sir, he says. Yes, sir," the guard who was doing all the talking gestured at the second guard with a curt nod.
The second guard stood behind Charlie and held him down. "We don't like insolence in this place," he said before the guard in front pulled his arm back and plunged it into Charlie's stomach. As the blow landed, Charlie felt his mending ribs crack again under the pressure, and he yelled out in pain.
"We don't like cops in this place. Especially not filthy murdering cops."
Another punch to his stomach and Charlie wasn't kneeling anymore, he was being held up by the guard behind him.
"We don't like you in this place."
Charlie felt himself get pushed to the ground and held there so the guards could continue their tirade. The first guard crouched down in front of him before opening his mouth to speak.
"We've all got bets on you, you know that? How long will Charlie Crews last in prison? Well, this time it's how long will Charlie Crews last in our Unit, and trust me, when we want someone broken, we break them."
As he said this, he grabbed Charlie and started pulling him up, before slamming his head back down onto the ground. Charlie yelled as blood began running from his nose, and slumped forward as he was pulled up.
"Get him back to his cell."
LIFELIFELIFELIFELIFE
Two months in and he still thought exercise was the worst part of the day. What he thought was only a one minute window the guards could abuse had turned into a 'however long we feel like torturing Crews' long window. The reason? Not even people on the outside cared how he was treated in the SHU. No one would care if they saw the video footage of him getting his ribs and his nose broken. No one would care if they saw the footage of him being held down and beaten. No one would care if they saw footage of him being broken.
But he didn't break.
As soon as he could, he was doing push ups again during all times of the day. He would do sets of one hundred, rest and then do it again because there was nothing else to do. He knew if he just sat and stared at the walls he would start talking to himself, like his friendly cellmate next door who was on the shortlist for a quick trip to the psychiatric unit in the near future. He knew that if he say and waited for the time to go by he would quickly lose his mind. Already he could feel the darkness creeping in through the gaps in his fluorescent prison. How ironic that the prison, his cell was constantly alight and it was the outside world that brought the darkness.
It was the morning before he was due to start his next month straight in solitary, and even though this was not the longest he had been in the unit for, it was definitely starting to feel that way. Getting out of the cell for exercise and showers was becoming a chore, even with his constant push ups to take his mind away from its endless cycle of thoughts. Tomorrow would mark three months straight of his indefinite sentence, and the longest period of time he had stayed consecutively out of the prison hospital.
"Crews! Get to the door!"
Charlie jumped off the ground, and stuck his hands through the port in the door. Today was the first shower day of the week, and he felt he needed it with the sweat and the dried blood on his body from the guards' latest attack on him. They pulled the door open and he walked out, standing against the wall so that they could cuff his ankles together before starting the walk towards the shower block. If there was one thing Charlie could say that he tolerated about the SHU it was the fact that the showers were also solitary, meaning that he didn't have to worry about all the other prisoners dealing out their personal vendetta against every police force that had ever existed.
"Stand still." The guard on his right stated, and Charlie complied. He was to enter alone, undress, shower, redress in fresh clothing and be brought back to his cell in ten minutes. No more. They undid the cuffs on his ankles and he stepped through the door.
"Face front." The guard said, and Charlie put his hands through the port in the door, waiting for his handcuffs to be removed so that he could walk to the shower. It never happened. Instead, there was a guard waiting inside the undressing room who brought his nightstick down over Charlie's head and shoulders before swinging it up underneath his right arm. As the baton connected with his arm, which had its wrist through the door, a resounding crack was heard and Charlie cried out with pain, leaning against the door.
"Please, don't. Please, I'll do anything at all. Please stop," he gasped as his arms hung from the hole in the door, held in place by the guard on the other side who taunted him by pulling on his now broken arm.
"What can you possibly do for us, Crews?"
Another tug on his broken arm elicited a groan of pain, and a hit with the baton on his ribs, which were again broken by the blow. Charlie yelled out, before tears of pain came unbidden to his eyes.
Don't let them see you crying Charlie. He said to himself. "I don't know, I don't know. I can't do anything, just please don't hit me again!"
"You can't ask us to do anything, killer."
The next ten minutes Charlie endured he would remember for the rest of his life. The guard hit him over and over, taunting him with his low status in the prison, and the lack of medical attention he would receive in the prison, because this sort of thing just didn't happen in the SHU. His arms were still being held through the cuff port in the door, and his right one was in agony, as was his chest. He had now had his broken ribs for over two and a half months, having them rebroken on a regular basis by the guards. They knew his weaknesses and were loath to not exploit them. As the ten minute mark approached, the guard took Charlie by the throat and squeezed hard.
"You don't deserve to be alive, you murdering piece of shit," the guard said, and knocked on the door. "Let him out!"
The door opened, and Charlie was pulled to his feet. Just as he reached his full height, the guard got one more punch in to his ribs, and Charlie felt himself falling into blackness.
TWENTYFOURHOURSLATER
"Four broken ribs, broken arm, concussion, sprained wrist, broken nose and ruptured spleen…"
Charlie woke up to blinding white walls, a soft bed and blankets, and a warm covering of pain medication.
"How did this happen in the Secure Housing Unit?"
There was a doctor and two guards standing at the foot of his bed, the guards looking angry and the doctor looking extremely concerned. Even though Charlie was at the bottom of the pile in prison, doctors had sworn oaths to heal, and no matter how much he might dislike him, he had to help.
"We're working that out right at this moment," the guard on the right said. That was the one who had held him through the doors. Charlie knew that the guards would not get in any trouble for their actions over the past months, because the higher-ups didn't care. His condition would not get any further than the four walls of the room he currently resided in. Through his clouded thinking he managed to register that it had been three months since he moved to solitary, and he still managed to end up in the hospital. The blackness started creeping back into his vision and Charlie let it envelope himself, falling into a heavy, medicated sleep.
LIFELIFELIFELIFELIFE
It took two weeks for Charlie to be let out of the prison hospital and allowed back into his room in the SHU and he was now in his third month of solitary. His stomach was heavily bandaged still, and his arm in a sling over a soft prison issue case. They chained him back up, and led him into his cell slowly. He knew in his heart that his visit to the hospital had done nothing, as any healing that had happened in there would be undone in a matter of days. The bandages on his ribs would remain for the foreseeable future, and he would have to deal with it. As he was let back into his cell, the guard pushed him into the wall.
"One word, and it gets worse," he said, holding his baton against Charlie's throat. "One word."
"I know."
Charlie was let into the cell and the handcuffs removed. He was back. He was back to his own private paradise (or Hell, depending on how one saw it). Everything in the room was exactly the same, except for a book lying on the floor. He walked over to it and picked it up, reading the cover: 'The Path to Zen.' Charlie laughed and tossed it aside, not even bothering to open it. He didn't need Zen in his life, he needed his life back, but that wasn't going to happen any more than he was going to get out of solitary unharmed. Looking at his arm, he thought more about doing push ups, knowing that it would be difficult. He settled for sit ups and leg raises instead while his arm mended in order to take his mind off things, and no more than 5 minutes back in his cell he began his regime again.
As the day passed, his ribs became more and more painful, and he knew that while he had been prescribed medication, there was no way he was actually going to receive it. The guards had a nasty habit of making him as uncomfortable as possible and that would most likely include his medication not being a part of his meal. Sure enough, when the tray slid through the door, there was no medication included in the set. Glumly, Charlie sat down, ate his meal and set the tray back at the door. It was stupid to even have hoped that he would get some relief. For the first time, he didn't do his sit ups after his meal and instead sat and stared at the wall. The jeers from his neighbouring prisoners were loud and intruding after his stay in the hospital and he longed for the quiet atmosphere that he had experienced there.
The only way he would get back though, was to have another experience such like the one he just had, and there was no way he wanted to live through that again even though he had not much choice in the matter. The day passed by, and he was taken out of his cell for exercise later in the day. For the first time in a month, he was allowed to and from the yard unmolested, and took solace in that fact as he went to sleep. Maybe the guards did learn something after all.
