The Guardians(61)

The collar usually works in hospitals so I put it on in the parking deck. ICU is on the second floor and I bluff my way past a busy nurse. Two huge young men—one white, the other black—are sitting on stools next to a room with glass walls. They are prison guards and wear the gaudy black-and-tan uniforms that I’ve seen around the Garvin Correctional Institute. They are bored and seriously out of place. I decide to be nice and introduce myself as Quincy’s lawyer.

Not surprisingly, they know virtually nothing. They were not at the scene, did not see the victim until he was in the ambulance, and were ordered to follow the ambulance and make sure the prisoner remains secure.

Quincy Miller is certainly secure. He is strapped down to a bed that sits high in the center of the room, surrounded by tubes, monitors, drips, machines. A ventilator hums away as it pumps oxygen through a tracheotomy tube and keeps him alive. His face is covered with thick gauze with tubes poked through it.

The white guard is telling me that he has flatlined three times in the past two hours. Folks came running from all directions. The black guard confirms this and adds that it’s just a matter of time, at least in his opinion.

Our small talk quickly runs out of gas. These boys don’t know if they are supposed to sleep on the floor, find a motel room, or go back to the prison. The office is closed there and they can’t find their boss. I offer the shrewd observation that the prisoner is going nowhere.

One of the doctors happens by and notices my collar. We step away for a quiet word. I try to quickly explain that the patient has no family, that he has been in prison for almost twenty-three years for someone else’s crime, and that as his lawyer I’m sort of in charge. He’s in a hurry and doesn’t need all this. He says the patient received multiple injuries, the most serious of which is severe trauma to the brain. Using pentobarbital, they put him in a medically induced coma to relieve pressure on the brain. If he survives, he faces a lot of surgery. The upper left jaw, collarbones, and left shoulder will be rebuilt. Maybe his nose. One knife wound pierced a lung. His right eye could be badly damaged. At this early moment, there is no way to predict the level of permanent brain impairment, though it will probably be “substantial—if he makes it.”

I get the uneducated impression that the doctor is clicking through a mental checklist of Quincy’s injuries, and since he’ll die anyway, why name them all?

I ask about his chances, and the doctor shrugs and says, “One in a hundred.” Like a gambler in Vegas.

After dark, my two buddies in uniform have had enough. They are tired of doing nothing, tired of getting in the way, tired of the frowns from the nurses, and tired of guarding a prisoner who couldn’t possibly make a run for it. They’re also hungry, and judging by their bulging waistlines their dinner hour is not to be trifled with. I convince them that I plan to spend the night in the visitors’ lounge down the hall, and if anything happens to Quincy I’ll call their cell phones. I say goodbye with the promise that their prisoner is locked away for the night.

There are no seats or chairs near the beds in ICU. Visitors are not welcome. It’s okay to stop by for a look, or a word if the loved one is able to talk, but the nurses are fairly aggressive about keeping the place as dark and quiet as possible.

I make a nest in the lounge around the corner and try to read. Dinner is machine food, which is seriously underrated. I nap, unload a barrage of e-mails, read some more. At midnight, I tiptoe back to Quincy’s room. His ECG is causing concern and there is a team around his bed.

Could this be the end? In some ways, I hope so. I don’t want Quincy to die, but then I don’t want him living like a vegetable either. I purge these thoughts and say a prayer for him and his medical team. I back into a corner and watch through the glass wall as heroic doctors and nurses work frantically to save the life of a man Florida tried its best to kill. An innocent man robbed of his freedom by a crooked system.

I struggle with my emotions as I ask myself: Is Guardian responsible for this? Would Quincy be here if we had declined to take his case? No, he would not. His dream of freedom, as well as our desire to help him, made him a target.

I bury my face in my hands and weep.





Chapter 31



There are two sofas in the ICU lounge, neither designed to be slept on by an adult. Across the room, one is being used by a mother whose teenaged son was gruesomely injured in a motorcycle accident. I have prayed with her twice. The other sofa is where I wrestle with a hard pillow and nap fitfully until about 3:00 a.m., when I think of something that should have been obvious earlier. I sit up in the dimly lit room and say to myself: “Great. Dumbass. Why have you just now thought of this?”

Assuming the attack on Quincy was ordered from someone on the outside, then isn’t he in more danger now than he was in prison? Anyone can walk into the hospital, take the elevator to the second floor, breeze past the ICU nurses at the front desk with a plausible story, and gain immediate access to Quincy’s room.

I calm down and admit my paranoia. There are no assassins on the way, because “they” believe “they” have already taken care of Quincy. And rightfully so.

Sleep is impossible. Around 5:30 a doctor and a nurse enter the lounge and huddle with the mother. Her son died twenty minutes ago. Since I am the nearest minister I get dragged into this drama. They leave me holding her hand and calling relatives.