The Prison Doctor. Dr Amanda Brown

wearing blue trousers and a long blue tunic top. A biro was peeping out of the top of her breast pocket.

      She may have been five foot nothing, but I could tell I wouldn’t want to get on her wrong side. Nobody would. She had an authoritative air about her.

      Dawn introduced her.

      ‘Amanda, this is Wendy – or Matron, as the boys like to call her.’

      Wendy stared up at me through her thick dark fringe. She had a blunt bob cut which was striped with grey hairs. Her face was stern, but she had kind eyes.

      ‘Wendy must be one of our longest-serving staff. Thirty years now.’

      ‘Thirty-two next May,’ Wendy corrected her, as she busied about doing her things, darting in and out of the room.

      ‘If you have any questions, she’ll be able to help you.’

      Just as Dawn was leaving, she spun around and looked me straight in the eye. Her voice was hard now.

      ‘One last thing. Make sure you do not reveal anything personal about yourself to the boys. Keep where you live, any details of your family, private.’

      The words were chilling.

      I nodded obediently.

      ‘It’s not permitted for any prison or medical staff to have any sort of communication with inmates after their release.’

      I nodded again. Things suddenly seemed to get a lot more serious. I’d been so used to being entwined in my patients’ lives at the surgery. I had followed their journeys over the years, visited them at their homes, watched their lives evolve. This was a completely different way of approaching medicine. I would be seeing prisoners in my clinic who I might never see again.

      Dawn softened as she saw my flash of concern. ‘You’ll be fine. It’ll be a challenge.’

      With that, she disappeared along the corridor.

      *

      My thoughts were interrupted by a thud on my desk. I looked up to see Wendy had given me a large plastic box of files. Inside were orange A4 folders, of varying thickness, each marked with a number – the prison number of the boys I would be seeing that morning. It was wrong to make the assumption that the thicker files would be the more demanding patients, but from everything I’d heard that morning, I couldn’t help but jump to that conclusion.

      ‘Doesn’t make for light reading,’ Wendy grimaced. ‘And here’s the list of boys you will be seeing.’ She placed a sheet of paper on the desk.

      ‘Thank you,’ I smiled, grateful for her help. I knew I could do with having Wendy on my side.

      She carried on whizzing back and forth between rooms, making the final preparations. I glanced at my watch.

      ‘What happens now?’ I asked, as she reappeared.

      Wendy explained that the officers from the various wings were collecting the boys, who had either put in a request to see me, or who one of the nurses had decided needed to be seen.

      ‘They then wait in the communal area until I call them in,’ she explained.

      I peered out of the door to look at the waiting area, which had approximately twenty plastic chairs set out in neat rows.

      ‘Everything is plastic here,’ Wendy explained. ‘From the chairs to the cutlery.’

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘To try to prevent them from self-harming,’ she said.

      And again, I was forced to face the reality that some of these young people felt so desperate that harming themselves seemed the only escape.

      ‘You’d better get set up, they’ll be arriving any minute.’ Wendy nodded, and left the office again.

      I returned to my desk and glanced over the names of the boys I was about to see. What had they done? I couldn’t know about their crimes, that was a detail not recorded on their medical notes. Besides, I would have hoped that knowing about the severity of their crimes wouldn’t have affected my ability to help them. Yes, I would hope that … but it was a relief not to have to prove as much. Who were they? What were they coming to see me for? Of course, it was no different to any new patient, not really …

      By the time I’d read to the end of the list, the noise from the waiting room had swelled into loud chatter and raucous laughter.

      An authoritative voice bellowed, ‘Oi, keep it down in here!’ That must have been the prison officer in the waiting room.

      Which only led to more sniggers.

      And to the prison officer becoming even more irate.

      ‘Keep it down in here, I said!’ he shouted, banging his fist on the door.

      ‘Ah, you can fuck off an’ all!’ came the reply.

      Then, in a flash, chairs were screeching across the floor, more shouting, more swearing, scuffling, threats, then silence.

      I nearly jumped out of my skin when Wendy knocked on my door.

      ‘That’s what happens if you put a bunch of rowdy teenagers in a small room together,’ she said, poking her head inside and rolling her eyes. ‘I’ve got Jerome Scott here.’

      I pulled Jerome’s file from the plastic box. It was as thick as a book.

      ‘Come in!’ I called out.

      I prepared myself to meet my first patient in prison.