About six of us left the St Louis Federal courthouse cells and departed on a prison bus to Pulaski County, Illinois. It took us about three hours to get there. Luckily I got a bottle of water as I was very dehydrated. We also got a bag lunch with a white bread sandwich and a bag of potato chips, but my clean and healthy diet didn’t include anything provided in those bag lunches. Eventually I would learn to eat the (junk) food they provided in all of these places, but not at this point, and not for quite a while until I weighed in at a measly 156 pounds, having lost about 25 pounds, mostly muscle.
We arrived mid-evening at Pulaski County detention center. We were processed, changed our clothes after the lovely strip search, and got our holey sheets and paper-thin sleeping pad. I walked into a large, two-story holding cell for about 50 men. Nearly every bunk would be full. I was immediately met by a nice guy, loosely serving as the leader of the white guys, who showed me where to go and what to do. There was another older man there, and he was also a doctor. Somehow they already knew that I was a doctor, so I couldn’t keep that a secret like I did at most of the other places I went moving forward. The worst part of that first night was that my fiancée, family, and people at work all expected me home that night and back to work the next day. I couldn’t even get a hold of these people for a day or two. I only had one call to a friend who had to try and notify everyone what was going on.
This place was only a little dirty, freezing cold, and always loud. Most of the lights went out for bed, but not all of them, and not the one right above my top bunk. Every night at least a dozen of the guys stayed up until three or later and made it nearly impossible to sleep, especially with a light right above my bed. And for the first time in my life, and for the next four months, I would have to learn how to sleep without a pillow.
There were several TVs with cable, which was nice because I was here during the Olympics and got to watch a lot of the competitions. It took me a while to get access, but the communication methods were good here, as they had tablets with a type of email, a little handheld Chirp for messaging, plus regular phones, and video calls. None of this was inexpensive, and it had the most and best options for communications in all of the seven places I would be, but it was helpful as I was trying to settle in that I could talk and message frequently. I could not receive books here, but there was a stash of old books, and I read a new novel every day or two in addition to some time reading the Bible on the tablet everyday.
This place ended up being okay for the 16 nights I was there, mostly because of those two guys I mentioned before who took me under their wings and watched out for me. It was very uncomfortable, impossible to sleep, there were no windows, we got small portions of decent but not very healthy food, only one time we got to go outside to a small overgrown fenced in grass field, and it was finally not so freezing after I got commissary ordered sweats on day 9. I didn’t order as much food as all of the other guys did, but I did get coffee and some tuna for extra protein. But everything I bought was surrendered about a week later as I was aroused at 4am, put back in my suit and dress shoes without laces, for another bus ride to who knows where.
Oh, one funny thing here, the prisoner uniforms were a nice lemon-yellow shirt and pants with a hot pink undershirt.
