The Needle and the Damage Done
By Mayra Martinez, 18th Oct 2011 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutWritingShort Stories
What would it feel like to know the exact time of your death?
5:30 p.m.
The men walked quickly into the 18th street Albertson's. It was Saturday. The day before had been pay day, but the weekend beer runs had trickled down to a few disappointed customers who were trying to talk the cashiers into selling them beer, even though it was nearly 3 am. I won't tell if you won't tell.
The two men quickly looked around and silently gestured to one another. One of the men walked over to an employee who looked to be the night manager, while the other one walked over to a checker. Simultaneously, they grabbed the person they had chosen, pulled guns from under their jackets, and held them to the victims' heads.
"Nobody move."
There were several screams, but no one tried being a hero. The man who held the manager dragged her to the cubicle that over-looked the entire store, and housed the safe.
"Open it," he yelled, digging the gun into her temple.
"I can't. I don't have the combination," she cried.
"Bullshit. I watched you open it at 11:00 when the shifts changed. Don't lie to me anymore, Bitch." He yanked her hair, causing her head to be pulled back painfully, until he was able to get nose to nose with her. "Understand?"
The manager, her name tag said 'Wendy. How may I help you?', nodded. Her mascara ran freely down her face.
Wendy-how-may-I-help-you fumbled with the combination of the safe. She was only supposed to know the first three of the six digits, with the other manager possessing the rest, but laziness and a false sense of security caused everyone to relax the proper procedures. She knew she couldn't lie about it to the gunman; he had already seen her open the safe. Better to lose her job than her life.
She finished opening the safe, and tried to step out of the way. The gunman pushed her back to the safe and said, "Fill up the bank bags, fast." Wendy-how-may-I-help-you complied.
The robber glanced around quickly, making sure his partner had the rest of the store in control, then turned back to the safe.
A shot thundered behind him. He whirled around. His partner was flying backwards, a blotch of red mushrooming on his chest.
Time slowed.
"Freeze! Police," a voice called from his right.
Oh, shit. An off duty cop, he thought before turning and firing his own weapon. The sound of his shot deafened him, echoing in his brain. The police officer flew backwards in the opposite direction of the injured gunman. The two bodies looked like crazy bookends, housing the frightened faces of the on-lookers.
Time stopped.
He screamed.
He screamed.
Rushing up from sleep, struggling with his blankets and his dreams, he finally awoke.
He sat up in bed, wiping the sweat that trickled into his eyes, and buried his face in his hands.
He heard the sound of wood softly striking metal, but did not look up.
A voice said, "You alright?"
"What do you think?" Isaac answered through his hands. He still did not look up. "How would you be if you were me?"
"Pretty fucked, I'd say. But, that's where we differ: I wouldn't be in your place. Is there anything I can get you?"
Isaac finally lifted his face. He said, "Careful, your humanness is showing. You don't want the other guys to know about that side of you; you'd end up as dog meat. Of course, I can't exactly spread the news, now can I, Stokely?"
"I'm kinda sorry it's your turn, Isaac. I've gotten used to you and your mouth."
"Yeah? Tell that to the governor, will ya?"
Stokely laughed, and started to walk away. He turned back, his billyclub hitting the bars again, and said, "Sure thing, Buddy," he spat the word out. "Just what we need running loose, a Cop Killer."
"Hey, I'm a hero in here."
"Not for long." Stokely cackled again as he walked down the corridor.
Isaac got up and walked to the sink. He splashed copper colored water onto his face. He contemplated going back to sleep, but decided the effort would be too great. Besides, wasn't he supposed to be doing something useful and profound with this time?
"Yeah, like what? Writing the great American novel? Discovering a cure for AIDS?" he said to his reflection in the faucet; mirrors weren't allowed.
He sat on his bunk and pulled a well-worn photograph from under his pillow. His wife and three kids smiled up at him. One more time, that's all he wanted, just one more time to hold them and tell them that he loved them. But, the extensive visitation rights he had enjoyed the last week had ended as soon as he was put on death watch.
They had come for him the morning before, explaining that he had to be moved to the only cell in the other building. He knew why. Prison officials didn't want to have to drag him out on the day of the execution with all the other death row inmates watching. Bad for morale, you know.
He had strutted out of the cell that had been his home for eight years with a cockiness that everyone had recognized as nothing but bravado. He called his good-byes to the fellow inmates, his family, and left with a smile on his face and a swagger in his hips. They called back their farewells, insisting he would be back after the governor called, glad that it wasn't them. Their time would come all too soon.
He left his familiar cell the way they all claimed they would; with pride. And he vowed to face his death the same way, but now he wasn't so sure.
He looked again at the picture of his wife and kids. That was the worst part. They had allowed him to have contact visits with his family on the days before being moved. He had spent all of those precious hours holding his children, and watching his wife fight her tears. The children knew that something was terribly wrong, but how do you explain to your kids that in just a few days you would be dead?
His oldest, Darryl, had been just six when Isaac had been arrested. The youngest, twins, had been babies. Darryl remembered what it had been like to have Daddy home, he was also the one who could read the papers, and knew what was to come.
Darryl came to the visitations angry at his father, asking why he had done it, swearing that he hated him. But, he was still the first to jump on his lap, even though he was 14, and the last to be pulled away when visiting hours were over.
Rosa, Isaac's wife, was perhaps hardest hit. She had spent the eight years if his incarceration moving from anger and betrayal, to great pain as his execution date rushed towards them. She was left alone to raise their children, and she had done a fine job. Darryl, tall for a 14 year old, promised to be a strong, intelligent man, and it hurt Isaac to think that the greatest lesson he had taught this man-child had been from behind prison bars: Don't do what I did. And now he had to face his death knowing that Rosa and Darryl would probably be sitting at home, watching the minute hand on the clock sweep towards 12:01; the time when the overdose of sedatives would be injected into the IV in his arm.
A noise startled him from his musings. He hastily wiped his face and turned to see Stokely standing at the bars with a tray of food. Behind him stood the prison chaplain and another guard.
The mechanical door opened and Stokely put the tray on his table. "Enjoy," he said.
Isaac stared at his food, suddenly remembering that he had requested steak with mushrooms, a baked potato with lots of real butter, and broccoli, fresh, not frozen, for his last supper. He almost laughed. I couldn't eat if my life depended on it, he thought, then really laughed.
The chaplain, who had just started to make his way into the cell, looked up sharply. Isaac noticed him for the first time, and snapped, "Get out."
The chaplain stopped, looked around as if to see whom Isaac meant, then silently turned and left.
"Take the food. I don't want it."
Stokely retrieved the tray, and left the cell. He started to say something, perhaps to berate Isaac on his treatment of the Padre, thought better of it, and motioned for the door to be closed, instead. As he walked away, he reached into the tray, pulled a mushroom off the steak, and popped it onto his mouth.
Isaac watched him leave. Plastic forks and spoons, not even a knife. He wondered how he was supposed to eat the steak without a knife. They had to make sure that he didn't try to kill himself, and ruin their fun. He laughed again.
He sat on his bed and waited.
8 p.m.
He was pacing the floor, walking from one end of his cell to the other. Four steps one way, four coming back. "I want to see the warden," he said, not breaking stride.
Isaac's lawyer was sitting on the bunk. He was shaking his head. "The warden is where he's supposed to be. There's a direct line to the governor, and the judge, in his office. He needs to be there in case the call comes in. You need to relax, Isaac."
"Relax? You must be smoking crack. Could you relax if you were four hours from dying?" His pace increased.
"You know you can ask for a sedative any time you want."
"I'm going to have my fill of sedatives soon enough. No thanks."
James Crowley nodded. He'd been down this road before. You can't be a defense lawyer for 17 years without losing a few. More than anything, he hated being where he was. Death watch. That's what it was; slowly watching a man die hours before the actual act. He felt he owed it to his clients to be there, though. Some of them had no one. "Look, I know you want to be doing something. You must be feeling pretty helpless right now. You've got to believe me when I tell you that my staff is shaking tail, making all the phone calls they can, and going through the precedents. They're pretty good at begging for time. Your job is to try and stay calm. Why don't you have a seat? You can pace the floor until your legs fall off, but you'll never be able to walk far enough to get out of here."
Isaac nodded, slowed, almost stopped, than began walking again. He might not be getting anywhere, but with every step his heart was taking him farther and farther from the prison.
"What next?" he asked.
"The prison doctor will come and give you a physical."
"What for? To see if I'm alive enough to kill?"
James snorted. "It does sound strange, but they do it just in case you drop dead from a heart attack or something ten minutes before a stay of execution is called in. They're just watching their asses. You want to hear something even stranger? They check your fingerprints after your execution."
"It figures. They do everything bass-ackwards around here."
"Come on, Isaac, sit down. There are some things we need to go over." James scooted to the far edge of the bed. Isaac relented and sat beside him.
"Have you gone over funeral arrangements with your wife? Is there anything you need me to do?" This was the hardest part. How do you talk to somebody about their own funeral arrangements when they weren't even old or terminally ill? To James, it was a bit like asking a woman in labor what she was going to do if the baby was stillborn. It was easier to deal with a crisis one step at a time.
"Rosa’s taken care of it, I guess. We don't talk about that much." Isaac's voice dropped, his shoulders wilting.
"Can I do anything?" James asked again.
"No. Yes," Isaac's voice was now a whisper. "Make sure they don't do anything to my . . . my body, OK?" His shoulders started to quiver. James reached over, put an arm across his back, and held him.
11:15 p.m.
The doctor had come and gone. Apparently he was alive enough to kill. Isaac never imagined that he would reach a point in his life when he would pray for appendicitis, but now he could almost feel the pain in his side. Perhaps it was just a boiling in his bowels; his body's way of evacuating reality.
The last time he had felt those stirrings in his belly was on the day he had been sentenced. His attorney had kept telling him not to worry; they only gave the death penalty to the extreme cases. This was his first offense as an adult, and the only violent one, or one involving a weapon. Everyone had agreed that he would get a life term. He supposed that everyone forgot to take into account that the man he had killed was a cop, and white. Black men hang for less than that.
The sound of footsteps broke him from his memories. Ice water ran through his intestines. He needed to use the toilet, but didn't want to be caught sitting there when the footsteps stopped. He threw up, instead. It'll serve them right if I shit all over their table when I die; my closing statement, he thought.
The cell door slid open.
The hall was filled with guards. The warden had to elbow his way through, "I'm sorry, Isaac. It's time to go."
Isaac walked to the cell door, stopped and turned for one last look. A prison cell never looked so inviting before. He stepped out into the hallway, and waited to be handcuffed.
A guard stepped forward and reached for Isaac's hand. To Isaac, the guard's touch felt like the devil's claw. I'm not going down like this, he thought, if they want to kill me, they can do it with a bullet in my back. He lunged backwards, pushing the guard off balance, and into the men standing behind. Isaac moved forward, legs ready to start pumping. He could feel a surge of adrenaline as he prepared to run to freedom.
The crowd moved forward as one. Before he could move even a step away, he found himself face down on the floor. A needle was pushed into his arm, and slowly he stopped struggling. He rested his cheek on the cold cement floor, waiting for the pressure on his back to ease. He noticed that one of the guards was a little lax in polishing his shoes.
Isaac was lifted to his feet.
He began to walk.
Somewhere along the way his legs had stopped working. He didn't think it was the sedative they had given him that had caused his legs to rebel. The guards never broke step. They simply half lifted, half dragged him the rest of the way into the execution chamber.
Isaac learned on important thing; there is no walking into death proudly. In the end, the bravest way to go out was kicking and screaming, fighting for life. Isaac wasn't even strong enough for that.
11:45 p.m.
He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. It needed paint.
The doctor had inserted a catheter into his penis, and a plug into his rectum. I guess I don't get to make my final statement after all, he thought.
Both of his arms were strapped down, as were his legs. The doctor carefully inserted the IV needle into his arm, and started the saline drip. Two lines were piggy-backed to the tubing. One carried more saline solution, the other held the lethal cocktail of sedatives. By that point, it didn't strike Isaac as odd that his arm had been carefully swabbed with alcohol before the needle had been inserted.
The doctor continued with his work, as if treating a trauma patient, rather than a man who was supposed to die. Electrodes were stuck to his chest, and from across the room, Isaac could hear the steady beating of his heart. He held on to that sound.
Finally, a cloth was brought to cover him from chest to foot. He needed to look presentable for the spectators. All those illusions of niceties were so on-lookers wouldn’t be offended by the presence of death.
11:55 p.m.
A curtain at the far end of the execution chamber was opened. Behind it was a rope partition. Twelve chairs, in two rows, were sitting behind. Four were reserved for the press, and the rest were for the lay-observers. Isaac had requested that none of his family attend the execution.
He looked at the faces behind the rope. Most of the people stared back; only a couple had the decency to look away.
His stomach jumped into his mouth.
Rosa.
What was she doing here? She sat in the last seat, next to another woman. The other woman had a smile on her face. She was the dead cop's wife. He remembered seeing her at the trial. She was the only person in the room smiling; she looked almost sexually excited. She looked like a vampire. Poor Rosa. How could they have seated her next to the victim's widow?
He concentrated on Rosa's face. I didn't want you to be here, but I'm glad you came. I could die in peace if only my last image is of your face, he thought.
Somehow, he was sure she heard him. She mouthed, "I love you." He mouthed it back.
12:01 a.m.
"Do you have any last words?" asked the warden.
Yeah, why isn't the fucking phone ringing? Isaac held back his impulse to be snide, nodded, and turned back to his wife. "Inshallah," he said to her. If God permits.
He heard a click, and knew that the buttons in the other room had been activated. One was a 'dummy' switch, the other worked the killing machine. There were two buttons so that no one would know who had thrown the fatal switch. It was funny that they could be so set on killing a man, and yet no one wanted to take responsibility for striking the lethal blow. At least he had looked the cop in the face when he had shot him.
His vision started to blur. He shook his head, trying to clear his eyes. He wanted an unfettered view of his Rosa. The blur became a blanket; it covered his eyes, allowing only pinholes of light to penetrate. A wah-wah sound reverberated through his head. The pinholes of light danced in syncopation.
"Inshallah," he whispered.
"Inshallah," came the unheard response.
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