He was screaming like a tortured soul when I arrived for my shift at the ward that day. The head nurse asked the if she could sedate him but the doctor said no.
This guy was treated like scum.
He was brought in from prison, having being beaten by fellow prisoners because here in the US, prisoners brought in for rape, especially of children are treated like the scum they are. Other prisoners even consider themselves better than them.
A child rapist is kept in a different jail, far from the rest of the (general population) gen pop because they are easily viciously targeted by the other prisoners.
Even among hardened criminals, a child rapist; is considered the vermins to be horribly stamped out!
Anyway, how did I get into the prison system?
When I went to the States to join my husband, we had agreed I would study nursing so that I could work and earn a living as well as him. He was a cabbie…at that time but now he runs his own clinic.
Anyway, to your question about life and work in the US. As I was saying, one of the unforgettable incidents I witnessed while at work is that of the guy I was telling you about.
He was an elderly man, Jim, an oyibo man who had been reported to have been molesting a child. Prior to that, he had been abandoned by his family and was later found out to have molested his three daughters. all of these happened years back before the recent one that landed him in jail.
Jim was dying because he had been attacked in prison by his cellmate…who incidentally was also a rapist, he prided himself at raping gay guys…yes, I know, this is really sick!
By the time they brought him to the clinic and approved his transfer to an hospital outside, it was too late. Jim was emaciated, had bed sores and stank to the high heavens!
Anyway, from what I gathered at first sight, he had little chance of surviving and usually, when we have patients like that, we usually want their families and loved ones to visit because you know, they would die pretty soon.
So I asked him, let’s call him Jim. I said “Hey Jim, when are your kids visiting? Are they coming anytime soon?”
Jim said, no, no kids coming.
I go like, “Oho, here comes another with no kids.”
But I found out Jim had kids, he had grown up children who refused to visit him and this is sad.
Jim himself told me he had been sexually abusing his own daughters. He had two daughters who were in their 40s at that time. Jim also suggested that his wife was also an accomplice; how, you say?
He said she knew about his crimes and didn’t report it now stopped him and didn’t try to protect their daughters from him. Isn’t that an accomplice?
The wife would shush up her daughters and tell them to behave or their daddy would be mad at them.
Well, the daughters turned out to be addicts…what do you expect. One of them died from drug overdose, the other was rehabilitated after years on the streets and well, she met a biker who married her and they have two kids, I think or maybe three.
I think Jim’s wife also died, she was also a junkie, always shooting up. Anyway, Jim blamed his wife for not stopping him, for enabling him and not standing up for their girls.
Jim told me his story over the course of the next two to three weeks that he lived.( The authorities didn’t approve of him being transferred to the hospital.)
So I asked him one day, why didn’t he stop? Why was he blaming his wife for his decadent behavior?
He said, many times he wanted to, he wanted someone to stop him and when she didn’t stop him, he continued.
So you see why they abandoned him?
Jim asked me if I could pray for him…
I did but a few days before he died, like two days before he died, Jim was already in hell!
He would be screaming of fire, he would be asking for that “black nurse” (that’s me, o) “send ‘er to pray for me, send her to pray for mi soullll”
I would rush over to Jim and tell him to pray but he never prayed for himself, he just kept asking me to do the praying.
Yes I’m a Christian but I’m not the firebrand type, you know we Nigerians are by the fact that we are even Nigerians very religious, so that was just me trying to help a poor soul.
To be honest, I’m not sure Jim’s soul was redeemed. He died screaming to hell; he was just complaining of burning up, burning up, he would ask us to pour ice on him!
That was a tortured soul, I tell you.
And when Jim finally died, we saw burns on his body; burnt flesh. I began to think, maybe he was also into Satan worship, you know these people are into all kinds of things.
No one showed up to claim his body!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)