Category: Nonfiction

The people operating the sally port were not vigilant. They opened the first door and permitted us to walk in. Before the first door, now behind us, completely closed, the second door, in front of us, opened. We could not see the officers who were monitoring the doors. They were located above us and hidden behind a darkened window. We only heard them knock on the glass and saw one shady hand point at the black light on the wall. They wanted us to put our hands there so they could see the stamp that was placed on them earlier.

Two officers greeted us on the other side.

“Who are you here to see?”

“The Person,” we said.

“Go to Table 14, over there in the corner,” an officer instructed, pointing over a group of inmates seated near them. They were in grey jumpsuits, wearing flip-flops on their bare feet, and examining us.

The top of each table was about knee-height. Three grey chairs were on one side of the table. One red chair was on the other side of the table. All the red chairs faced the single point of entry to the room.

The Person strolled in and sat in a chair, looking around.

“The Person?” the officers called. “The Person? Go to Table 14! Over there!”

Fellow inmates laughed as The Person jumped up and looked at Table 14. The Person had no idea who we were. I hadn’t seen The Person in over six months and didn’t recognize The Person, either.

Our conversation was short. The Person didn’t have much to say to us and it was noisy room. Many of the tables in the room were occupied, some by couples who were holding hands (above the table), others by family and friends, everyone leaning in over the table. People laughed, chatted, and murmured.

No one in the room was white.

My companion and I got up to leave. We had only spent about fifteen minutes in the room.

“SIT DOWN!” the officers shouted at us. “The Person needs to leave first.”

We immediately sat back down. The Person nonchalantly got up and walked back into the jail block. Rooted in our chairs, we looked at the officers, waiting our turn to go.

“Okay, now you can leave,” they said. They handed us back the notecards that documented our times of entry at the various checkpoints in our trip.

Back out the sally port we went—they were more vigilant about our exit—and we rejoined the crowd of over 20 people in the waiting area. The officer who opened my locker said out loud to no one in particular, “Why did people spend so little time in there?”

Buses reportedly only came around once an hour. This meant that the officers had to monitor us until a bus arrived to take us back to the main gate.

Everyone had put their earrings back into their earlobes, rings back onto their fingers, necklaces around their necks, and belts through the loops. Overall, everyone seemed more relaxed; people talked to each other and were leaning casually against the wall. One woman, though, appeared sad and on the verge of tears. She stared blankly out the far window.

Buses rumbled past and people expectedly crowded near the exit, hoping to get out of the jail first. They sighed audibly with disappointment and irritation when the buses didn’t stop.

Ah, New York, I thought.

A bus finally pulled up about fifteen minutes later and the driver honked the horn. The police officer was still big and burly, but no longer bilious: He smiled broadly at us as he collected our notecards. His teeth were straight and white.

The bus was completely full. People stood in the middle aisle and gripped the vinyl seats for stability. I was the last person to get on the bus and balanced myself on the steps leading into the vehicle.

“Lean back,” he barked at me when he began to turn a tight corner. “I can’t see the mirror.”

I bit my tongue and leaned back. Don’t complain, don’t explain.

After stopping at another cell block to let people off and other people on, we finally arrived at the main gate. People pushed their way off of the bus and walked quickly through the gated chain fence. A city bus, the Q100, was at the stop and people were boarding.

“Wait wait wait,” people breathlessly said as they raced up to the Q100.

“Hey, there’s the bus,” I said to my companion, bracing my bag as I picked up my legs to run.

“Wait—we still have to get our stuff from the locker,” he called out to me. I immediately halted, starting to smile at myself.

“Right,” I said. “Right. I am so ready to get out of here that I completely forgot about all of my stuff.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I almost did, too.”

I think he was just being nice. We hastily walked back to the lockers as a steady stream of people walked in the opposite direction, many of them picking up speed as they noticed the city bus.

There wasn’t a single white person in the crowd.

(Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.)

We were seated over a rear wheel. The bus was probably older than me and any shock absorption it may have had in the past was now completely gone.

The bus pulled away from the building and lurched onto the main road on the expansive grounds of the jail. We passed open fields surrounded by tall chain-linked fences that were wrapped in concertina wire. Canadian geese sat on the grass, their necks tucked into their bodies. There were structures that looked like mobile homes on the outer perimeter; some of them had signs that suggested that they were legal centers. Most of the cars in the parking lots were neither fancy nor wrecks: trucks, vans, sedans, and coupes. An identical bus, half filled with people, roared past us in the opposite direction.

There was the view of Laguardia again, and then a view of the island of Manhattan. The skyscrapers looked like dollhouse structures from that distance.

The bus halted in front of a cement building and some people began to get up. We glanced at the stamped initials on our notecards, then at the name of the building. They matched.

A police officer, big, burly, and bilious, opened the door of the structure as we walked up. An automated voice—that of a young woman—filled the small foyer. She repeated instructions about what items were permitted in the jail and what were not. The police officer then began to talk over the automated voice, barking instructions to remove your shoes, no jewelry is allowed, take our your ID, put everything in a bin, put your items in a locker, the other officer will write the number on the back….

In the window were Polaroid photographs. Several were of men whose hands were handcuffed together, dark rectangular bars over their eyes. “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU TRY TO BRING ILLEGAL ITEMS INTO THE JAIL.” In other photographs were men seated on examining tables, their torsos, arms, and legs severed open and oozing blood. “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU GIVE RAZOR BLADES TO INMATES.”

Most of us quietly took a plastic bin and began to remove our jewelry. A man—tall, older, with dark skin—began to vent his frustration: “We pay taxes, you know. They can’t treat us like this. We’re citizens. We’re not under arrest. We have rights.”

“Put your stuff in a bin,” the police officer sternly said to him.

The man sighed irritably, pulled off his belt, and tried to shove it quickly into the bin. He began to walk through the metal detector with shoes still on his feet.

“TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF,” the police officer shouted. “I said that before. You need to listen.”

The man walked backwards, pulled off his sneakers, put them on the conveyor belt, and walked through the metal detector. Another officer, a woman with her hair tightly pulled back away from her face, looked at the screen attached to the conveyor belt. She nodded once.

The man retrieved his shoes and began to put them on.

“Take the bin off of the machine,” the police officer ordered. The man stifled a comment and grabbed the bin.

The metal detector beeped when I walked through. The disgruntled police officer took a wand. We stood, arms at our sides, facing each other.

“Move your—” he said, clearly annoyed, moving his arms apart. Realizing what I was supposed to do, I lifted my arms. He floated the wand over my chest and abdomen.

“Turn around,” he muttered. After finishing the task, he mumbled, “You’re fine. Take your bin.”

I slid my feet back into my shoes and then put my bag inside a locker. My companion and I had our IDs in our hands. The female officer saw us clutching our IDs and sighed impatiently. “You gotta put your IDs in the lockers. None of y’all are listening today.”

My companion blurted, “I thought that’s what he said—” I shook my head. Don’t complain, don’t explain.

We had only our clothes and shoes on after we stowed our IDs. The female officer scanned the group and then began pointing at several women.

“You, you, you, and you,” she said, pointing at me last. “Come with me, ladies.”

---

We were directed behind a curtain. I was probably the oldest person there. The youngest looked like she was in her late teens. She was flicking the rod in her tongue piercing over her teeth.

The cops allow that…?

“Sit down,” the officer ordered. We immediately settled down into the hard plastic chairs.

“Take off your shoes and socks.”

Standing with her arms crossed in front of her chest, she scanned our bare feet. She and I were about the same height, though I had no doubt that she could throw me into a wall. Maybe I could run faster than her. Maybe.

“Put them back on.”

“Stand up.”

“Put your hands in your pockets and then turn them inside out.”

Her eyes looked at our pockets. One woman had something glistening in her fingers.

“What is that?”

“Candy wrapper.”

“Throw that away.”

The officer nodded, tacitly instructing us to put our pockets back into our pants.

“Put your thumbs inside the waist of your pants and run them around your entire waist.”

A woman in the group clearly had gone through this routine before. Unsure of what the officer wanted, I sneaked a glance at this woman before following the instructions. She pulled the waistband away from her skin. If anything was lodged there, it would have fallen to the floor.

We all pulled our pants away from our waists.

“Turn around.”

The officer walked to the other side of the spontaneous circle we had formed.

“Lift up your shirts, lean forward, and shake.”

What?

I again sneaked a glance at the returning visitor. Through her shirt, she had hooked her fingers underneath her bra, leaned forward, and shimmied. This was meant to dislodge anything we might have hidden in our bras.

“Mouth.”

We all opened our mouths. The officer looked.

“Why do you have that in there?” the officer asked the young woman with the tongue piercing. “You can’t have that here. You either go out and remove it or give it up.”

The young woman frowned, indecision on her face.

“You either go out or give it up. Ladies, the rest of you can go.”

We were directed to a second waiting room outside of the sally port. I waited for my companion to undergo his inspection. He and I exchanged wordless glances of relief when he joined me.

Over two hours had passed since we had first arrived at the jail. We now looked at the sally port, wondering when it would open.

(Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.)

Clear partitions divided the building into small waiting rooms, each decorated with dark plastic chairs bolted to the ground. The cinder block walls were painted a dull shade of yellow. Posters advertising social services and drug rehabilitation were plastered in each waiting room. Vending machines, selling chips, candy, and sugary drinks, were near the bathrooms. In the middle of the building was a small enclosed cubicle that resembled a movie ticket booth.

“Who you want to see?” the woman behind the plastic partition asked. She was one of the few people working at the jail who was not wearing a police uniform.

“The Person,” he answered.

“Lemme see your IDs,” she said.

Into the DOS computer she entered our names, our addresses, and our birthdates. After stamping two large white cards, she handed them, along with a half sheet of paper, back to us.

“Fill those out completely and go to area B.”

Area B was facing the back of the building. Windows looked out at the parking spaces in the back. Several buses, empty, sat in the lot. These buses resemble school buses in shape and size, except they are white in color and the words “DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS” are plastered in blue across the sides. There was a queue in Area B leading to a police officer standing behind a counter. She looked annoyed. There were close to ten people ahead of us.

“Why she so slow?” someone behind us mumbled. “A bus gonna come and we won’t get it.”

Several single men sat in chairs in the corners. A baby, maybe eight months old, kicked his legs in his stroller and cooed. An older woman pushed her way through the crowd and demanded, “Is this the line?”

“Yeah,” a young woman with large hoop earrings said. “We’re all in line. All of us.” She pointed at the group of people who had tired of standing and had taken seats.

“Okay,” the older woman said. “This is my spot.”

The group in the chairs glanced at each other and stifled giggles.

Twenty minutes passed. My companion and I each took a free copy of the 2010 Rikers Island Visitors Guide, which included information like:

• “… on an average day, about 13,500 City residents are detained in our facilities…”
• “… we also host as many as 1,500 visitors daily.”
• “Sentenced inmates may receive visits two (2) times per week.”
• “THERE ARE NO VISITS ON MONDAYS AND TUESDAYS.”
• “Provocative attire is NOT acceptable.”
• “There are several ‘amnesty boxes’ in which you may deposit any illegal substances or items you may have in your possession, no questions asked.”

Ah, I thought.

I reviewed the rules for visits:

During visits:

• You must remain seated with hands above the table.
• You are permitted to kiss and hold hands with the person you are visiting.
• You are not permitted to exchange any items with the person you are visiting or anyone else.
• The person you are visiting may hold children who are visiting throughout the visit.
• At the completion of the visit, you must remain seated until the person you are visiting has departed the area.

I also skimmed the acceptable jewelry restrictions:

Although we discourage inmates from receiving and possessing jewelry, inmates may receive the following items of jewelry.

• One (1) watch (date and time functions only — maximum value $50)
• One (1) wedding band (no stones or protrusions — maximum value $150)
• One (1) religious medal (no stones, pins, or protrusions) if worn around neck, a thin chain no longer than 26 inches may be worn (maximum value $50)

Another fifteen minutes passed.

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” I told my companion.

In my experience working in a variety of city, county, and state hospitals, the conditions of the bathrooms can serve as a measure of money, pride, and care that the institution has for the people it serves. The jail thus far looked like any other aging institution.

Two of the five toilets in the bathroom were clogged with toilet paper and excrement. Most of the doors lacked working locks. There was toilet paper in the stall I used, though no trash contraption within the stall. Generic, thin, pink soap was present in the dispensers and the sinks drained well. There were no paper towels, but hot air hand dryers were mounted on the walls.

I felt sad that I wasn’t surprised with the conditions of the bathroom.

After another five to ten minutes of waiting, a bus roared up to the lot and stopped in front of Area B.

“YAY!” one of the younger women squealed. “About time!”

“Show your white cards as you exit,” the police officer shouted at us as we fell into an orderly line at the door. By now, I had grown accustomed to police officers shouting. The driver pulled the bus door open and motioned us to go inside.

My companion and I were one of the last people to board the bus and we found seats in the back. No one on the bus was white.

(Read Part I here.)

As my days in New York are ending, the details of terminating with patients, saying good-bye to dear friends, and relocating to the other side of the continent are consuming my time and energy. As a result, I will repost some earlier writings.

Following is the multi-part story of my visit to the jail of New York City. Everything in the account (except for some names and labels) is true.

---

Across the street was a large sign advertising the entrance to Rikers Island, the jail for the City of New York. On our side of the street were several check cashing and bail bond storefronts. There was also a jewelry store. A hot dog truck was parked near the intersection.

No buses were approaching. A small crowd of people was gathered on the corner, patiently waiting. They, however, were not at the bus stop.

“The bus does stop over there to go to Rikers, right?” he asked the woman standing at the periphery of the crowd.

“Yes, that’s where the Q100 stops. There’s a van that goes there, too. It’s coming.”

“A van?”

“Yeah. Two bucks to get across.”

“Oh, thanks,” he said. “We’ve never been here before.”

---

The empty van, painted blue with E-Z Travel splashed in yellow on the sides, pulled up to the curb. The driver, short and mustached, turned the car engine off and came around to the passenger side. He wordlessly slid the door back and pulled out a thick stack of bills. He looked up.

We were in the back of the line and people silently handed over money to him to enter the van. His thin fingers smoothly sorted through the stack of bills to provide correct change. He did not look at me as he took the two dollar bills from my hand.

We crawled inside and sat down. Every single person in the van belonged to a racial minority group.

---

The van rumbled across the two-lane, sidewalk-less bridge. Planes sat in clusters at Laguardia Airport to the right. The waters of the East River below were choppy. A dark, long-necked bird passed overhead.

Not even five minutes later, the van came to a halt outside of an old building painted an institutional shade of dull white. We all crawled out of the van and looked at the chain-linked fences surrounding the cement campus.

“That’s a great way to make money,” I commented. “A mile for two bucks? Nice.”

My companion agreed as we made our way around the building that looked like a terminal for a small airport. Metal barriers guided us to the entrance, which had both a ramp and a set of stairs. A wall of lockers lined one side of the building. A police officer—hair tightly pulled back out of her face, hands on her hips, firearm at her side—shouted: “C33 and C34 are not open today. If you are visiting someone in these wards, you cannot come in today. Everyone else, take a white bin.”

We pulled our bags from our shoulders and walked inside.

---

I had purposely removed the small Swiss Army Knife that usually resides on my keychain. The blades on the contraption could do no serious harm, though civil servants often thought otherwise.

“No hoodies, no jackets, no cosmetics, no food items, no electronics,” another police officer shouted. “Put your bags in a bin and then step through.”

My bag and my jacket were already in a bin and rolling along the conveyor belt when I heard this. As I stepped through the metal detector, it beeped.

“Put your arms out,” the police officer on the other side of the metal detector said. He guided the metal detector wand across my chest. “Turn around.” He repeated the motions.

Meanwhile, yet another police officer was digging through my bag and listing all the violating items. “No lip balm, no cell phones, no water, no food, no scissors.”

Still another police officer was also pulling offending items from my companion’s bag.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll be right back.”

“Where can we get keys for the lockers?” I asked. “We’ve never been here before.”

“You pay with quarters,” the police officer said. “Fifty cents.”

As we turned around to leave the building, I noticed the “Amnesty Box”. The box was about waist high and had a thin slot on top. The words “Amnesty Box” were in faded red and blue hues and the letters were shaped to suggest beauty or hope or joy. The box looked like a tithing box.

Later I would learn that boxes weren’t meant to hold money.

---

Only a few locker doors hung open like baby birds crying for food. Quarters were jammed in their slots. There were smaller lockers on another wall, but they were too small to hold all the prohibited items we had brought with us.

“Next time, we’ll just leave all this stuff at the office,” he said as he scanned the wall for functional lockers. His efforts paid off and we soon put our offending items inside: A tangerine, two cell phones, hand sanitizer, lip balm, scissors, water bottles, gum, and keys.

We re-entered the building and heard one of the police officers loudly commenting for all to hear: “What does he think he’s doing? Everyone else is taking off their jackets and sweaters and he walks in here, doesn’t take off anything, thinks he can just walk in like that….”

The young man in question turned around so another police officer could wand him.

The police officers dug through our bags again, running their hands deep into each pocket. Since the metal detector beeped again, I was wanded again.

“Where can we find out where The Person is?” my companion asked an officer. The Person didn’t know of our visit, as he said that he hadn’t been able to speak to The Person directly.

“Go to the information window,” an officer replied, pointing deeper into the building. We followed the queue inside.

When I was a medical student in California, many of my classmates expressed relief that we weren’t in a medical school on the East Coast.

“Everyone is so serious over there,” they said.

The stories we heard about medicine back East!

• “The medical students have to give all of their patient presentations from memory during rounds!”
• “You have to wear a coat and jacket all the time! It doesn’t matter if you are on call! You change into scrubs after 9:00pm and then, before rounds in the morning, you clean up and put your suit back on! The attendings never see medical students or residents in scrubs!”
• “If attendings ask you a question you can’t answer, they throw you out of (rounds, the operating room, the cafeteria)! They scream things like, ‘DON’T COME BACK UNTIL YOU KNOW THE ANSWER!!!’”
• “They have to keep their white coats buttoned all the time! ALL THE TIME!”

These stories must have trickled down from the interns and residents who attended medical schools on the East Coast. Funny, though: I did not hear these tales directly from them.

During my surgery rotation, one of my residents attended a medical school in New York City. This surgery resident had olive skin, dark brown hair, and manicured fingernails. He smiled only once during the month-long rotation.

“Medical students don’t have any respect for the attendings here,” he once complained to the chief resident. The chief was a young man who was almost bald, had grey-purple bags under his eyes, and always carried a travel mug full of coffee.

“Back where I went to medical school,” the resident continued, “everyone called the attending surgeon ‘sir’. We all stood up when an attending walked into the room. If the attending asked us a question, we always finished our sentences with ‘sir’. You only spoke when you were spoken to. And our white coats were always buttoned.”

My classmates and I shot knowing glances at each other.

We then shoved our presentation notes for rounds into the pockets of our short white coats that were hanging open over our green scrubs.

During my time in New York City, I rotated through three different hospitals as a fellow. I visited many wards as the roving consult psychiatrist: I noticed the internists rounding in the hallway, saw the obstetricians rushing to labor and delivery, observed the surgeons dashing down the stairs, peeked at the radiologists staring at films on computer screens, spotted the pediatricians cooing at toddlers, and glanced at the internists still rounding two hours later.

From my observations at these three hospitals in New York City, I can say the following with confidence:

• The medical students do not give presentations from memory. They read from their notes. Their voices are infused with anxiety and self-doubt. They are just as nervous as medical students out West.
• I never saw any medical student, intern, or resident wearing a suit. If they were post-call, they were wandering around in their wrinkled scrubs and sneakers. If they were not on call, many men did not wear neckties! The occasional attending would wear a suit to work, but that was an uncommon sight.
• Though I saw many floundering medical students, I never witnessed an attending throw a student out of rounds or the cafeteria. (I can’t comment about the operating room.)
• Many physicians, regardless of their position in the hierarchy, did not button their white coats.

Nonetheless, I do believe medical training and medicine is more formal on the East Coast. More to follow.