‘Come on in, take a seat.’ I welcomed the teenager in the usual friendly manner I’d always greeted my patients with, in my old surgery.
Jerome swaggered across the room and slumped into the chair opposite. He automatically slipped into a slouch with his left leg outstretched and his right elbow hooked over the top of the chair.
‘How can I help you?’ I asked, leafing through his most recent medical notes to familiarise myself. Antidepressants, medication for anxiety. Bruising to ribs and left cheek and cuts to forehead, following a fight with his cellmate. I looked up to check how well the wounds on his face had healed.
‘It’s my feet, Miss.’
I was taken aback a little. After such a build-up, and a complex history, I wasn’t expecting such a seemingly minor complaint.
‘Oh dear. What’s wrong with your feet?’
‘They hurt when I walk. It’s these shoes, innit.’
Jerome lifted one of his black trainers into the air, which I assumed must be part of the prison uniform. He then returned to his slouch and started biting his nails, or the little bits of nail he had left. I noticed a tattoo of a snake wrapped around a sword on his left wrist, the tip of the blade peeping out from under the cuff of his jumper.
‘What sort of pain are you feeling, and whereabouts on your feet?’ I could believe those shoes weren’t the most comfortable.
‘I’ve got blisters everywhere, Miss. I can barely walk, it’s so painful. I can’t be doing with these trainers.’
It was strange to be called Miss, but I suppose Jerome saw me as an authoritative figure, like a teacher – unlike my previous patients who, on the whole, had viewed me as a friend. Did I want that responsibility? Could I take it?
I moved around to the other side of the desk to take a closer look, asking Jerome to remove his socks and shoes. He waved his slightly smelly bare foot in the air to reveal the tiniest of blisters on his right heel.
His eyes looked sheepishly to the ground.
‘It’s killing me. I can barely walk!’
He didn’t seem to have any problems swaggering into my office a moment ago, I thought. I started to wonder if there was a bit more to his complaint.
‘Why don’t you pop next door, and the nurse can give you some plasters for your blisters.’
The words had barely left my mouth when Jerome fired back with his own diagnosis and cure.
‘Can you just write me a note saying I can wear my own trainers? That way I won’t get blisters no more.’
I suddenly cottoned on to what was going on. There must be some sort of loophole whereby the prisoners could wear their own shoes on medical grounds. Whether the trainers would be sent in by his family, I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure that’s what Jerome was after.
It was my first day on the job and I needed to be careful not to break any rules.
Turning a little firmer with my tone, I suggested, ‘Let’s try out the plasters first and see how that goes.’
Jerome huffed loudly.
‘But Miss,’ he whined.
He sat there for a moment, sulking, waiting for me to come around to his way of thinking. Nibbling on his nails.
I thought about what I would say to my boys if they were trying to get their way.
I smiled and explained it was my first day in the prison and that he needed to use the plasters first, but I promised I would find out the rules and regulations surrounding the boys wearing their own trainers instead of prison-issue shoes.
After more huffing and puffing Jerome reluctantly agreed to try the plasters, and as he walked off to see Wendy in the next room he turned back and flashed me a mischievous grin.
‘See you next week then, Miss.’
*
The rest of my morning surgery was a succession of minor ailments, with at least three more trainer requests, all with similarly feeble excuses.
Two of the boys complained of achy feet, the other of painful toenails. It seemed ludicrous that a doctor’s time was taken up by dealing with kids wanting their own footwear. It was something I would have to take up with Dawn, but first I needed to tell Wendy about the massive faux pas I’d made with one of the other boys.
‘I told him I liked the orange jumpsuit he was wearing. That it was a bit more bright and colourful than the grey tracksuit. He said “Thanks, Miss, I get to wear orange because I tried to escape!”’
Wendy howled with laughter.
‘I suppose he won’t be making a run for it again in that jumpsuit. He’ll stick out like a sore thumb!’ I laughed along with her.
For a moment I looked at the severe Wendy, and she looked at me, and I felt reassured. Yes, we were going to get along just fine.
It was funny, but it was also strange to think that someone I was treating for something as routine as a minor ear infection had tried to break out of a high-security prison, maybe hours earlier. I was dealing with the ordinary in what was otherwise an extraordinary foreign world.
I turned to Wendy and asked, ‘So what’s with these boys wanting trainers?’
If anyone would know what tricks the boys were up to, Wendy would.
She chuckled. ‘It’s not “cool” to wear prison shoes, and they’ll do anything to try and wear their own trainers. It allows them to maintain some sort of identity in here.’
Wendy looked me in the eye. ‘You’ve just got to be firm with them, or they’ll run rings around you.’
I’d worked that out pretty quickly. If I gave into one, they would all be queuing up – kids demanding trainers all week long.
‘These boys are crafty. If they see you’re a soft touch, they’ll immediately take advantage,’ she warned me. ‘They’re constantly testing you, pushing you to the limit. Like most teenagers. But don’t forget some of them are very experienced at lying and manipulating. It’s easy to forget they’re in here because they’ve committed a crime.’
Wendy was right. It was easy to blot out the fact that the boys were criminals, when I was treating them for very run-of-the-mill medical problems. Apart from their bad language, on the whole, they seemed quite well-behaved.
After three weeks in Huntercombe, apart from getting thoroughly irritated by the trainer requests, I realised I was having an invigorating time in my new world. It was different and challenging and I felt like I’d been given a new lease of life. The cloud that had hung over me when I left my practice was rapidly lifting. I was beginning to feel accepted and to enjoy feeling worthwhile again. Might I even be making a difference?
I was living in a bit of a bubble in the Healthcare department. I knew little about the other areas of the prison, what went on in the wings, even what the cells looked like. I knew nothing about the boys outside the fifteen-minute consultations they had with me. I’d only run into the governor once or twice. I was in and out, twice a week, now with my own set of keys, treating seemingly ordinary spotty teenagers, with ordinary medical complaints. I was even liking my new name: Miss.
But as with every bubble, it had to burst at some point. And Wendy’s words of warning came true sooner than expected.
I blamed the waiting-room system. There was a high likelihood that putting a lot of teenage boys together in a confined space could lead to trouble.
My Wednesday-morning surgery had started like all the others so far. A big pile of files on my desk,