2010 Ouachita River Prison

The riot gate clangs behind me as I stride down the wide concrete hallway, nodding to passing officers and inmates. At a little over six feet tall and still carrying my fighting weight of 230 pounds, I know the inmates and even some of the newer officers find my size and demeanor intimidating. I try to soften my serious demeanor—bolstered by my icy-blue eyes and square jaw—by wearing my Yogi Bear tie with my usual black slacks and white dress shirt. My “uniform,” as my wife, Trula, calls it.

Trula says I’m as reliable as the sunrise and as smart as any Nobel Prize winner. As handsome as a movie star and as tough as a strip of old shoe leather. Let’s just say that she is my greatest admirer, although not very objective.

“Mornin’, Doc,” the officer herding inmates into the chow hall calls out.

“Hey, Lieutenant. How’s that new baby?”

“Cryin’ all night. Guess I’ll never sleep again.”

“Hey, Doc. I’m comin’ to see you today. Still got some pain in my knee.” The inmate injures himself regularly on the basketball court where the guys let off steam after work, tired from working in the fields or on construction projects all day.

“Sure thing, Bailey. See you in a bit.”

I’ve devoted forty years of my life to the inmates housed by the Arkansas Department of Correction. Folks who, for the most part, have never had any medical treatment, never had anyone to care about their well-being, never had a doctor like me who actually listens to their needs, to their complaints, to their heartaches.

“Infirmary gate!” My booming baritone echoes off the cement walls. Why can’t they install a call button or a camera or a dadgum intercom? “INFIRMARY GATE!” I bellow a second time. The electronic buzz of the metal gate opening the prison infirmary signals the start of my workday.

“Mornin’, Doc.” The officer assigned to the medical department smiles as I clock in for my shift. “Got your work cut out for you today, my man. Just called for the guys on your lay-in list to get down here and get this party started.”

Nothing like an overly cheerful officer to greet you at 6 a.m.

“Guess I need to find some of your muddy coffee first.”

I wink then head to the breakroom at the back. Past the locked door to the pharmacy and the records room. Past the administrator’s office. Past the infirmary where twenty inmates occupy twenty beds that never sit empty. Past the examination room where my nurse is already talking with Inmate Ulmer Stanton, one of our frequent flyers.

“Mornin’, Ms. Wilma, Mr. Stanton. Be with y’all in a minute.” With over fifteen staff members on the morning shift, the clinic already hums with activity. Inmates line up in front of the pharmacy window for their morning meds. Several sit in the small room next to the officer’s desk waiting to see a nurse. A few more linger outside the dental clinic, the whirr of the dentist’s drill adding to the ambient din.

In the break room, I fill a Styrofoam cup with the dark brew, stirring in a spoonful of creamer to tame the bitter taste. I toss my lunch sack into the fridge—Trula’s chicken salad left over from last night’s dinner.

My wife of over forty years, Trula has kept me tethered to this earth since I got home from Vietnam in 1968. A writer of children’s books, she works from our home where she raised our four children and supported my life’s mission to provide health care to the inmates. She keeps my white shirts starched and buys me the signature cartoon ties that the inmates and nurses love—Flintstones on Monday, Popeye on Tuesday, and close to twenty others hanging in my closet. She provides the glue for our little neighborhood on the prison property just outside the gates at Grimes, the men’s prison in Newport, Arkansas. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better companion or a better mate than Trula.

Each week, I travel around the state to several ADC prisons. Today, I’m working at the Ouachita River prison in Malvern, Arkansas. This unit houses the sickest of the sick. We provide medical care for inmates who are too sick to live in barracks with the general population. Some have terminal cancer, liver failure, AIDS. Some have life sentences and suffer from the same maladies as any aging person in the free world: dementia, incontinence, Parkinson’s, heart failure. My patient load at Ouachita River exceeds all my other prisons combined.

After a sip of the murky coffee, I return to the exam room where Nurse Wilma and Inmate Ulmer Stanton wait. It looks like any typical exam room: raised padded table, boxes of cotton swabs and bandages, stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs.

“What’s going on with you today, Mr. Stanton?” Ulmer Stanton—a scrinty, dark-skinned inmate—has diabetes and a long history of drug abuse. Typical. At age fifty, Ulmer has been in prison for twenty years. He looks more like seventy. Again, typical. Most inmates have a physical age of around twenty years older than their chronological age in years.

I don’t know why Ulmer is in prison. It doesn’t matter. The inmates are my patients, regardless of their crimes. I provide the best care I can—the best the state defines as "medically necessary." In Stanton's case, that means he comes to the infirmary every day for insulin injections and monthly finger sticks. I know him well.

“Man, I hadden peed for two days and hadden slept at all. And look at my arms, Doc. They itchin’ like a sum-bitch.”

“Okay. Let’s have a look.” I examine the rash and turn to review the vital signs recorded by Nurse Wilma. Blood pressure slightly high. Respiration elevated. “Let’s get urine and blood samples. The lab'll have the results back to us tomorrow afternoon. We’ll call you down then. Where do you work these days?”

“Kitchen in the mawnin’. Porter in the warden’s office all afternoon.”

“Miss Wilma will track you down. Let the officer know we’ll call you back after lunch.”

Wilma escorts Stanton to the officer’s desk to sign out. I enter my notes on the computer before starting my rounds in the infirmary and tackling the list of inmates to see for their various complaints. I treat work-related injuries, all sorts of pain, heart conditions, colds and flu, skin rashes—a whole spectrum of health problems stemming from poor diet, lack of preventive medical care throughout childhood, drug abuse, stress, and a lifetime of violence. I take a few more sips of the coffee and allow myself a few moments to reflect on how I got to this place in my life, and why I fill my days with patients like Mr. Stanton.

1965 Vietnam

After a short career as a pitcher for the Arkansas Razorbacks in the late 1950s, I attended medical school and joined the Marines shortly after finishing my final internship. It was 1965 and Vietnam was just revving up for American troops. President Johnson had approved the start of Operation Rolling Thunder, and the constant bombing brought record numbers of wounded into the field hospitals of South Vietnam. Nearly a thousand American boys were entering the service daily—the draft in full swing. I shipped out to Vietnam in the spring. At age twenty-four, I was already several years older than most of the draftees—boys barely out of high school, some barely shaving.

New helicopters, called Hueys, brought a constant stream of wounded men into the hospital where I was stationed in Saigon. So quickly did the medics stabilize the boys before they arrived at the surgical suite that I could save many who would have died in earlier wars. Twenty-four-hour shifts split between me, two other doctors, and a full staff of nurses allowed many soldiers to recover, albeit with permanent scars, lost limbs, and hidden mental trauma that didn’t always show up until years later.

Blood and plasma stayed in short supply, but new methods of keeping both in dry ice and Styrofoam containers meant we could store enough blood to save many patients. Malaria, hepatitis, skin infections, and diarrhea were constant complications for the patients also suffering from burns, gunshots, and a myriad of traumatic injuries. I thrived on the constant action, on the immediate satisfaction of one life saved, then another, and another. The losses, however, burdened me more than I wanted to admit. Sleep, when it came, was haunting and gory.

By June of 1966, I had worked in the field hospital for just over a year. Midafternoon of a hot, mosquito-infested day, casualties began to arrive from fighting near Quang Nam—later known as the Battle of Hill 488. Among the casualties lay a young Marine named Leo Richardson.

When the medics rolled Corporal Richardson into surgery, he was unconscious, still wearing his camouflage, his bloody boonie hat tucked into the neck of his shirt. The burns on his face extended deep into the flesh. I knew those would never fully heal. The medic cut off Leo’s pants below his knee to expose the shrapnel embedded from a land mine he’d tripped during the platoon’s advance across the swampy rice paddy.

My team and I went to work. Luckily, Leo had O-positive blood, and we had plenty on hand. After getting Leo stabilized, the team cleaned and dressed the burns while I removed as much of the shrapnel as I could and sutured the tissue around the knee. I hoped this Marine would walk again someday.

Later I stopped by Leo’s bed in the recovery area.

“How d’you feel, Corporal?” White gauze bandages covered Leo’s face, some blood seeping near his right ear, his leg in a cast.

“Well, hell, Doc. How do you think I feel? Y’know, I could use some painkillers if Uncle Sam’s giving any out.” Despite his slurred speech, I clearly caught Leo’s Arkansas drawl.

“I’ll see what I can do, Richardson. May I ask where you’re from?”

“Lonoke, Arkansas. And please, call me Leo. How ’bout you, Doc?”

“Born and raised in Little Rock. Big-city boy.”

“Hey, aren’t you Harold Wright?” Leo stared directly at my face through the openings in his bandages. “Didn’t you play baseball for the Razorbacks a while back?”

“Yep. Before med school. You follow baseball?”

“Sure do. Man, weren’t the Cards looking at you?”

“Yeah. But I threw my shoulder out during the summer before my senior year. Guess I just wasn’t meant to be a pro-baller. Anyways, I’m a better doctor than a pitcher.”

We laughed and talked well into the night. Leo finally drifted off in a morphine haze.

Leo stayed in the hospital for the next few weeks. I visited daily and helped the young Marine recover. Although Leo would never see combat again, his company commander agreed to let him stay on as a medic at the Saigon hospital headquarters under my care and tutelage.

By the time I got my separation papers in 1968, Leo and I had become friends as only men fighting a war together can become: mopping up other men’s blood, celebrating those who survived, mourning those who died, working until we fell asleep on our feet.

Leo stayed on. Nothing to go home to in Lonoke, he told me over a warm beer the afternoon I bugged out.

“I’ll miss you, man. You saved my life. Even though you totally fucked up my face, you dirty leatherneck. I owe you everything, y’know.”

“Oh, you’re still prettier than any of those other yahoos back in Arkansas. Hey, look me up when you get out. You can probably find me somewhere around Little Rock. One hospital or another.” Our shared love of the state helped seal our bond of friendship.

The helicopter took me to Cam Rahn Bay where I would board the first of several flights back to the States. I would never forget the bloodshed, the lost limbs and lost lives, the heartbreak of Vietnam. I would never forget the thrill of a life saved, of a limb restored, of a friendship forged. I said a final goodbye to Corporal Leo Richardson, the best friend I would ever have.

1969 Little Rock VA Hospital

After spending a few weeks at my parents’ farm near Landmark in southern Pulaski County, I drove to the Veterans Hospital in Little Rock to ask for a job. More than happy to hire a vet, the VA put me to work. They needed physicians to care for all the men coming home from Vietnam.

It didn’t take long for me to see the physical and mental devastation in the veterans I served. Too much drug abuse to help them forget the things they had seen, the things they had done. Too much skittishness at every door that slammed, every elevator bell that dinged. Too many nightmares. Too many screams in the middle of the night.

I met Trula during my stint at the VA. A new graduate of the creative writing program at UALR, she taught writing classes as a part of their outreach for Vietnam vets. Writing about their experiences seemed to help the vets cope. Helped their mental health. Trula and I married about six months after meeting at the hospital.

My duties at the VA included treating the inmates from the state prison each week. I watched as officers from the Arkansas Department of Correction brought us inmates who were also veterans for various treatments, counseling, and surgery. One day, I approached the ADC van driver.

“These guys you bring here for treatment...are they dangerous?” My naiveté amused the officer.

“They’re all vets who’re convicted of felonies. We don’t really know why. Not our business. We just bring ’em to their appointments. Since they’re vets, they get to come here instead of the other hospitals when they need something our prison docs can’t do.”

“Prison doctors? Y’all have doctors in prison?” My stunned expression tickled the officer.

“No, no,” he chuckled “They ain’t inmates, Doc. They’re free-world doctors who work there. You know. Employees just like me. ’Cept they make way more money.” The driver laughed again.

That night, I talked to Trula about working for ADC. “These guys they bring to the VA are so sick. They’re way worse off than many of the vets I treat right now. It seems like I’d be doing missionary work and getting paid. I’d be doing some traveling around the state to the different prisons in Malvern and Wrightsville. Maybe down to Tucker or up to Newport. What do you think?”

“You know I’ll support whatever makes you happy. Whatever makes you feel like you can help someone. That’s all that matters.” She turned back to her desk where she wrote her children’s stories. She knew that Harold was creating his own story. No need for further discussion.

1971 Tucker Prison

ADC seemed thrilled to hire me. With my status as a veteran and experience in the combat hospital, I fit right in. In June of 1971, I walked into the Tucker Unit for the first time. Warden Jeffrey Jackson met me at the public entrance building.

“Doctor Wright?” He held out a massive hand attached to an equally massive body. “I’m Jeff Jackson, the warden here at Tucker. Welcome.” Slightly taller than me, Warden Jackson outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds. High-and-tight haircut. Crisp white shirt and dark blue tie. Clearly ex-military. Clearly in charge.

Jackson took care of some paperwork with the duty officer, then escorted me through the double-fenced yard, iron gates buzzing open then clanking shut behind us, some unseen person watching our every move.

“We’ll go to my office to get the paperwork started: fingerprints, photo ID…all the routine security stuff.” I rubbernecked all the way down the concrete hallway, my ears assaulted by echoes of distant yelling, by constant crashes of steel-barred gates.

Inside Warden Jackson’s office, a quiet order prevailed. Gunmetal-gray desk, two neat stacks of paperwork in the top right corner. No clutter. Military awards and discharge documents were framed and mounted on the cinderblock wall behind the desk. The matching frames holding diplomas from the University of Arkansas attesting to Jackson’s criminal justice degree were perfectly aligned. Dust-free. Impressive.

“So, you played baseball at Fayetteville? I went there before you in the early 50s. Offensive lineman. Gotta say it’s still a struggle not to let my football bulk go to fat.” Sitting there on the federal surplus chairs, we quickly bonded over our shared college experiences and military backgrounds.

As I stood to leave Jackson’s office, an officer escorted a short, dark-haired teenage boy through the door. His fresh white jumpsuit had the name “Haynes” stenciled above the left pocket.

“Be with you in a minute, Mr. Haynes.” Jackson walked to the outer door and turned me over to another officer. “Y’all go on and tour the medical department.” He noticed me staring back at the teenager. “Haynes just got here—a new intake—we call ‘em shorthairs. A lifer. Just a kid, a tragedy, really. I meet with all of the lifers on their first day. Establish the rules. Know their faces. This boy will be here long after you and I are gone. Well okay, Doc, I’ll check in with you later this afternoon.”

With that, I turned to the officer, and we walked down the wide corridor to the clinic where I would spend much of the next forty years, the fresh face of the Haynes boy already haunting me.

1981 Wrightsville Prison

I arrived at the Wrightsville prison at my usual early hour of 6 a.m. I had provided medical care to the inmates in ADC now for ten satisfying years. On this brisk spring day, I hoped to finish a little early and get back home to Trula in Newport before dark.

Around midmorning, I found myself holding a medical record for an inmate named Leo Richardson. It’s…it’s a common name. Surely not. My heart raced.

I stood as the nurse escorted the inmate into my exam room—the limp still prominent from the shrapnel in his knee, his face red and pockmarked with deep burn scars.

My mouth gaped; my hands started to shake.

“My God. Leo.” We both froze.

The nurse stopped at the door. “Doc? You okay?”

"Harold? Is…is that you?" Against all rules and probably several state laws, Leo and I embraced. Both of us stunned. Tears filled our eyes. I stepped back, clutching Leo’s shoulders, and we stared at each other.

“Sit down, sit down. What the hell? I…I don’t know what to say, Leo. Tell me what happened. Why are you here?”

“Y’know, Doc. Same old story. Way too common for us vets. After you left ’Nam, I stayed on until the end in ’72. You never seen such chaos in all your life—those days of the pullout. Took three cases of morphine with me when I bugged out.”

“Shit, Leo. You weren’t a druggie.”

“I know. I know.” Leo shook his head. “Thought I’d sell it back in Lonoke, y’know? But, hell, I ended up using for a couple of years, then I couldn’t hold down a job. So, I started dealing anything I could steal from the local drug stores. Y’know, no street drugs. But I finally got busted in ’75. Been down at Cummins for six years and just transferred here last week. I shore never dreamed I’d run into you.”

“Yeah. I started working here in ’71 after a couple of years at the VA.” I caught a glimpse of the nurse and the infirmary officer hovering outside the door, making sure I was safe. I nodded and waved them away.

“But we need to talk about what’s bothering you today. Gotta do my job, eh?” The shock of seeing Leo in his white prison uniform was beginning to ease.

After treating his recurring rash—another malady left over from Vietnam—Leo went back to his job in the braille shop where the inmates made books for the blind school. I took a few minutes to reflect on our friendship and the way our lives had diverged. I’d sure have a lot to talk over with Trula when I got home that night.

2010 Ouachita River Prison

Ulmer Stanton’s lab work confirmed my worst fear: kidney failure. We started treatments the day the lab reports came back. I looked in on the dialysis room when I arrived one icy morning in January.

“Mornin’, Mr. Stanton. Looks like the dialysis is going fine. How’re you feeling?”

“Not bad. Not bad, Doc. ‘Fraid I’ll be ’roun’ this joint a long time yet.”

The little man’s sunken eyes narrowed as he looked around. I knew that, despite Ulmer’s outer tough-guy persona, he had a large family who loved him and showed up every week for visitation. Two sons, who had managed to grow into decent young men despite Ulmer’s influence, a daughter, and three grandchildren. Stanton’s wife, like my Trula, had faith and hoped to take Ulmer home someday. But with ten years left on his thirty-year sentence, I doubted he’d make it that long.

As I moved through my day, I treated men with everything from common colds to Stage IV pancreatic cancer. The ever-increasing workload—plus the burden of Ulmer’s sad case—made me think about retiring to Newport, where we had a home, a garden, and a community of good friends. Trula and I, Chaplain Tom Paine, and Warden Annie Claud Lewis lived and worked together in the little neighborhood just outside the gates of the Grimes prison. I could stop traveling across the state, driving from prison to prison. Maybe settle into some part-time work at Grimes, maybe do some hours across the field at the McPherson women’s prison. My seventieth birthday loomed just around the corner. I needed to slow down.

However, I worried about ADC finding someone to replace me who was willing to put in the long hours and deliver the quality of care the inmates needed. These men and women had had no medical care before coming to prison, most of them being poor with little education and even less family support.

I worried, too, about the terminally ill inmates. The ones dying every day behind bars. And the ones growing old, suffering from incontinence, dementia, heart failure, cancer. The ones who could no longer dress or feed themselves. These cases kept me awake at night.

If only I could get the politicians and administrators to see the folly of keeping those patients in prison. I had done my research. I knew that it cost the state three times more to keep the elderly and dying inmates in prison than it cost to keep the young healthy ones fed and clothed. It took an astronomical amount of tax money to pay for their hospital bills, medicine, and the increased staff it took to care for the old guys—to feed and clothe them, to bathe them and change their diapers. Not to mention the inhumane practice of keeping the dying away from their families during their final days.

I shook off this reverie and waved to the nurse. “Miss Wilma, send in the next patient, please.”

2011 Tucker Prison

The teenager I met on my first day at Tucker, nearly forty years earlier, sat across from me in the exam room. Now close to sixty years old, Phillip Haynes had the pallor typical of lifers in ADC, dark hair now thin and gone to gray.

“I’ve had dark black sticky poop for nearly three months, Doc.” I could barely hear Haynes’ quiet drawl over the ever-present noise of the clinic. “I seen a nurse a couple of times. Finished off three bottles of that green, chalky medicine, but it didn’t help.”

“Okay, Mr. Haynes. Let’s take some blood and get you scheduled for a colonoscopy. I’ll get you an appointment in a day or two. Watch for your name on the lay-in list.”

Haynes’ test results came back the following week. Stage IV colon cancer. Prognosis poor—inoperable—although chemotherapy might buy him a few months of life. I called Chaplain Tom and asked him to contact Phillip’s son, Ben, with the news.

ADC had recently updated its policy for compassionate release, allowing early parole for inmates with terminal illnesses and who met certain stringent criteria. Although I knew that such requests took several months to decide and most were denied, I felt sure I could convince the committee to grant a medical release for Inmate Haynes.

Many times, the inmate died before the committee acted on my compassionate release requests. Disgusting red tape. Haynes had served forty years of his life sentence and was physically incapable of committing another crime. I started the paperwork, hoping I could help Haynes and his son have some time together before Phillip succumbed to his cancer.

2011 Ouachita River Prison

A review of Ulmer Stanton’s records from the kidney specialist was discouraging. His kidneys were on the brink of failure. I called the nephrologist to discuss the case. The specialist gave an estimation of six months for Ulmer to live. Maybe less.

For the second time in the same week, I filled out a request for compassionate release. I hoped ADC would approve it so Ulmer could spend his final days with his wife and children. But my knowledge of the dismal statistics on approvals tempered my hopes. I could only wait and pray.

2011 Wrightsville Prison

Near the end of December, I again found Leo Richardson sitting across from me in the Wrightsville medical clinic. “My right arm and thigh are killing me, Doc. Shit, man. I cain’t even walk from my barracks to the chow hall. I got no energy at all y’know.”

I ordered some blood work. Results of the labs caused me to order a bone marrow biopsy. It confirmed the diagnosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia. Chances of surviving months of chemotherapy at Leo’s age were slim.

Once again, I put thoughts of retirement on hold. My friendship with Leo—despite our different positions within the prison system—motivated me to file the third application for compassionate release in as many months. My eyes blurred with tears as I completed the bureaucratic paperwork.

2012 Grimes Prison

Early in the new year, I asked for a part-time position at the men’s unit at Grimes. No longer did I have to get going by 5 a.m. every morning to travel across the state to the various prisons operated by ADC. Trula and I enjoyed our little neighborhood outside the prison gates. Chaplain Tom and Warden Annie Claud were good folks, and we all cherished our lives together. Trula still wrote children’s books and taught classes at the women’s prison across the field.

I drove my golf cart to the front gate and parked it outside the entrance building beside Tom’s. Before starting to see patients, I stopped off at my office to check my email, hoping for answers on the three applications for compassionate release I had filed weeks ago.

Sure enough, there sat three unopened emails from the ADC Director of Medical Services. Heart pounding, I opened the first one.

They denied my application for Inmate Phillip Haynes’s compassionate release. His sentence of life without parole made him ineligible under current policy.

Dammit.

His son could care for him. Haynes could never commit another crime. No victims came forward to speak against him so…why? Ineligible under the current policy sounded like a cop-out. No one—not society, not his victims, not their families, not the state—had any logical reason to keep Haynes locked up. I felt my blood pressure rising.

The next email held similar and far more devastating news. ADC also denied Leo Richardson’s application for early medical release. At age seventy, Leo had no one to take him in. No family still alive. Nowhere to go. Community nursing homes wouldn’t take him because of the stigma of having a convicted felon as a resident and the fears of the other residents’ family members.

Leo would die in prison. Okay...maybe I could get him transferred to Grimes where I could visit and help Leo during his final days.

Double dammit.

The director’s third email brought better news. Ulmer Stanton, suffering from end-stage kidney failure, received approval for compassionate release.

Ulmer had served more than twenty years of his thirty-year sentence. At age fifty-one, Ulmer’s family wanted to take him home where he could continue dialysis to try and prolong his life a few more months.

I picked up the phone to call Trula. “Hey, hon. They denied Leo’s release. Haynes too.” My voice trembled as a sob caught in my throat. I took a deep breath. “But they approved Stanton’s release. I’m going to head down there this afternoon to let him know. And I’m gonna see about getting Leo transferred here to Grimes, so I think I’ll stay down there tonight. Head back up here in the morning.”

“Oh no. I sure am sorry, Harold. You did what you could—you know that, right? Don’t beat yourself up too much. One out of  threes not bad. At least Stanton gets to go home to his family, and that’s all because of you.”

“I know you’re right. And I hear you.” I felt the burden of my age for the first time.

While I was thrilled for Ulmer and his family, my heart ached for the other two. Especially Leo. When we were younger, Trula and I could have taken him in. But at seventy, we could barely take care of ourselves. If I could swing the transfer to Grimes, at least I could tend to Leo during his last days and care for him like I did in Vietnam.

No matter how hard I tried to spin it—how hard Trula tried to convince me—I still wished I could do more. I thought of the lyrics to a song from my days at the VA: All things must pass away. I guessed that included Leo. Me and Trula too, if I could admit it.

Picking up my list of patients to see, I headed down to the clinic to face whatever awaited me, my heart heavy with disappointment.

2012 Ouachita River Prison

Forty years after my first day on the job as a prison doctor, I once again found myself striding down a now-familiar concrete hallway, inmates and officers greeting me with “Mornin’ Doc,” “How’s it shakin’, Doc?”

Without a conscious effort on my part, my reputation for compassion and fairness had grown to heroic proportions. I had simply devoted my life to helping the most feared, the most hated, the most wretched of God’s children.

A life, I thought, well spent.

In the dialysis room, Ulmer Stanton reclined in his usual chair hooked up to the hissing machine that had kept him alive for the past two years. I rolled a stool beside Ulmer’s recliner and smiled at the shriveled inmate, tiny beneath his cotton blanket.

“I’ve got news for you, Mr. Stanton. Some good news for a change.”