He looks at me over reading glasses that sit crooked on his nose. "The new one?"
"Yes, sir. Can I sit?"
He nods at the chair. I sit. His cell is different from Thomas'. Books stacked along the desk, spines creased and re-creased. A history of the American West. A collection of short stories. A library request form pinned to the wall with a list of titles, half of them crossed out. Denied or unavailable, I can't tell which. Hisnotebook is open to a page of tight handwriting, pencil marks pressed hard enough to indent the next page underneath.
I tilt my head to read what he's working on.
"Is that about the Dust Bowl?"
He glances at his own writing, then back at me. "The Okies. Their migration patterns." He taps the pencil against the page. "Most people think it was just Oklahoma, but it was Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and parts of New Mexico."
"That's a lot of ground to cover."
"Well." He straightens his glasses. "I've got time."
I ask about his treatment plan, his medication, his access to the common area. He answers everything.
"When was the last time you had an independent review?"
His pencil stops. "They told us one was coming last week. Before that?" He thinks. "A year ago. Maybe longer."
His file lists the last independent monitoring visit as fourteen months ago.
George watches me write it down. His face stays still, but his shoulders drop an inch. He relaxes into his chair.
"I'll be back, Mr. Palmer."
"I don't doubt it," he says, and goes back to his book.
Gage badges me into Ward C. The security office is the same as before—desk, filing cabinet, two monitors cycling through camera feeds. I pull Jude's sedation record from the cabinet while Gage leans in the doorway behind me. He doesn't ask what I'm looking for. He doesn't offer to help. He stands there, arms folded, watching the corridor.
I open the file. The numbers run in a column—dates on the left, doses in the middle, signatures at the bottom.
Twenty milligrams IM diazepam. Logged at 06:00 this morning.
I check for a corresponding incident report. There isn't one. No Code White. No documented event. No reason for anyone to put a needle in his arm at six in the morning.
On the monitor, Jude is on the floor of his cell doing push-ups. Full range, controlled, his shoulders rolling through each rep. His breathing is even. His eyes are open.
I look at the file. I look at the screen.
Twenty milligrams of IM diazepam should flatten a man his size for hours. It should slow his coordination, blur his motor function, keep him down. The man on the screen is doing push-ups. That doesn't add up.
Either his tolerance has outrun the dosing so far that twenty milligrams doesn't touch him, or the log is bullshit.
"Gage." I don't look up from the file. "What did he do this morning?"
Silence. I wait.
"Nothing." Gage shifts his weight in the doorway. "He didn't do anything."
"Then why is there a twenty-milligram dose logged at six a.m.?"
He doesn't answer right away. When I glance back, his jaw is tight and he's looking at the corridor, not at me.
"They've been dosing him ahead of incidents. Trying to prevent them." He pauses. "Hasn't worked. He's built a tolerance."
I sit with that for a second. They're sedating him with no precipitating event. No documented behavior. No clinical rationale. Just a needle at six in the morning because it's easier than dealing with him awake.
