A Rude Awakening

As the first rays of daylight began to make there way through the very few small windows located near the ceiling in the Morgan Street Jail, and after a very long and uncomfortable night...I managed to close my eyes and escape into a half-sleep. I'm not sure how long I may have dozed, but it couldn't have been much more than an hour. It is amazing how one loses all sense of time in jail...minutes feel like days. I was awakened by the clanging of steel doors as some of the prisoners I was locked up with were notified that their bail had been paid...and they could leave. As the door clanged shut behind them...and I realized that nobody in my life even knew where I was...or what had occurred the night before...my heart sank. It is a pretty rude awakening...waking up in a jail for the first time. It is very cold and damp...there is no furniture of any kind...and it was a pretty filthy place...and I tried to put the thought that I might be staying there for a very long time...out of my mind. I had been given my one phone call the night before...and got no answer when I had called my house. The police had made it very clear that they felt they had complied with their Constitutional requirements...and there would be no other phone calls for me. A kind of low-level claustrophobia began to set in...as I realized that I had absolutely no choices about anything...not even about whether or not I could eat, sleep, or even use a toilet...things that I had never thought about as "privileges" before this...I had just always taken those things for granted. The reality of what being incarcerated really meant...was just beginning to register in my brain. I didn't like it at all. I started to really wonder how and when I was going to get out of this place...if ever. I knew I was going to be arraigned that morning in Hartford Superior Court...but I had no clue about what that meant...or what would happen...or when. I desperately clung to the idea that there would be somebody...some familiar face...waiting there...to post bail...once it had been set. But I also knew it was more likely that nobody would be there...and after being arraigned, I would be right back in the same cage...maybe for days...or weeks...until someone found out where I was. It was amazing to me how quickly my thoughts...turned to...and focused on only one thing....freedom. I began to realize that as far as the "world" was concerned...I was just a criminal...a "bad guy"...and I was right where I belonged. That was a pretty rude awakening too...because up until that moment...that was never how I had thought of myself. But as I pondered the seriousness of the charges against me...I realized that sympathy for me...and my situation...would be in very short supply...unless it came from people who cared about me...I began to put a lot of hope in the guy who had promised to call Don for me after he had been released. It was a pretty tough to realize  that my best hope for getting out of jail was a person whose name I didn't even know, whom I had only met for thirty seconds...while we were sharing a jail cell together, and whom I would probably never see again...keeping a promise to me that he made as he was walking out of my life forever...and who probably had many other things that were more important to him at that moment...than keeping a promise to a stranger in a jail cell. I began to realize how my circumstances were forcing me to count on total strangers for even the faintest glimmers of hope...and that didn't make me feel a whole lot better...because my life experiences had taught me that I was often very disappointed when I had counted on my friends...or even my own family...to follow through on promises. I vascillated back and forth between the distant hope that my new "friend" had made the call to Don...and the very real likelihood that he hadn't.

   What seemed like an eternity later...the guards came and loaded us all into a paddy wagon for transport to the Court for the arraignment. Even that felt like a welcome change...but in reality...I was also still feeling like a sheep...being led to slaughter. We were all placed in another cage...just outside the Courtroom...where we were all handcuffed, and we were all shackled together by chains...attached to our ankles. It was very de-humanizing and humiliating...and I realized again...how I would be perceived by the society I suddenly no longer felt I was a part of. I fought to get a glimpse into the courtroom every time someone from the group was called to be arraigned...but I never had an angle to see anything at all inside the Court...so I could only wait in quiet desperation...until my turn came. After about an hour...my turn did come...and as I walked into the Courtroom...I looked anxiously around for anything that resembled a familiar face. Just before I was about to go in front of the judge...I was notified that there was an attorney there that wanted to speak to me. As I walked around the corner...I recognized an attorney that worked in the office of my attorney...(my attorney was a close friend and a customer of mine)and I realized...with a flood of gratitude...that my new "friend" from jail had actually made the call he had promised to make...and had reached Don...who had contacted my attorney...who happened to have his offices in Hartford. The lawyer didn't have a lot of time...my case was being "called"...so he just told me to say nothing...and that he would arrange bail for me. I think the exact words were..."I'll have you out of here in an hour"...and they were music to my ears...and the best words I had ever heard.