Sidney Sheldon - If Tomorrow Comes

The ride on the prison bus was interminable, the bus hot and smelly, but Tracy was unaware of it. She had withdrawn into herself, no longer conscious of the other passengers or of the lush green countryside the bus passed through. She was in another time, in another place.

She was a little girl at the shore with her mother and father, and her father was carrying her into the ocean on his shoulders, and when she cried out her father said, Don't be a baby, Tracy, and he dropped her into the cold water. When the water closed over her head, she panicked and began to choke, and her father lifted her up and did it again, and from that moment on she had been terrified of the water….

The college auditorium was filled with students and their parents and relatives. She was class valedictorian. She spoke for fifteen minutes, and her speech was filled with soaring idealism, clever references to the past, and shining dreams for the future. The dean had presented her with a Phi Beta Kappa key. l want you to keep it, Tracy told her mother, and the pride on her mother's face was beautiful….

I'm going to Philadelphia, Mother. I have a job at a bank there.

Annie Mahler, her best friend, was calling her. You'll love Philadelphia, Tracy. It's full of all kinds of cultural things. It has beautiful scenery and a shortage of women. I mean, the men here are really hungry! I can get you a job at the bank where I work….

Charles was making love to her. She watched the moving shadows on the ceiling and thought, How many girls would like to be in my place? Charles was a prime catch. And she was instantly ashamed of the thought. She loved him. She could feel him inside her, beginning to thrust harder, faster and faster, on the verge of exploding, and he gasped out, Are you ready? And she lied and said yes. Was it wonderful for you? Yes, Charles. And she thought, Is that all there is? And the guilt again….

“You! I'm talkin' to you. Are you deaf for Christ's sake? Let's go.”

Tracy looked up and she was in the yellow prison bus. It had stopped in an enclosure surrounded by a gloomy pile of masonry. A series of nine fences topped with barbed wire surrounded the five hundred acres of farm pasture and woodlands that made up the prison grounds of the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women.

“Get out,” the guard said. “We're here.”

Here was hell.

A stocky, stony-faced matron with sable-brown dyed hair was addressing the new arrivals: “Some of you are gonna be here for a long, long time. There's only one way you're gonna make it, and that's by forgettin' all about the outside world. You can do your time the easy way or the hard way. We have rules here, and you'll follow those rules. We'll tell you when to get up, when to work, when to eat, and when to go to the toilet. You break any of our rules, and you'll wish you was dead. We like to keep things peaceful here, and we know how to handle troublemakers.” Her eyes flicked over to Tracy. “You'll be taken for your physical examinations now. After that you'll go to the showers and be assigned your cells. In the mornin' you'll receive your work duties. That's all.” She started to turn away.

A pale young girl standing next to Tracy said, “Excuse me, please, could —”

The matron whirled around, her face filled with fury. “Shut your fuckin' mouth. You speak only when you're spoken to, do you understand? That goes for all you assholes.”

The tone, as much as the words, was a shock to Tracy. The matron signaled to two women guards at the back of the room. “Get these no-good bitches out of here.”

Tracy found herself being herded out of the room with the others, down a long corridor. The prisoners were marched into a large, white-tiled room, where a fat, middle-aged man in a soiled smock stood next to an examination table.

One of the matrons called out, “Line up,” and formed the women into one long line.

The man in the smock said, “I'm Dr. Glasco, ladies. Strip!”

The women turned to look at one another, uncertainly. One of them said, “How far should we —?”

“Don't you know what the hell strip means? Get your clothes off — all of them.”

Slowly, the women began to undress. Some of them were self-conscious, some outraged, some indifferent. On Tracy's left was a woman in her late forties, shivering violently, and on Tracy's right was a pathetically thin girl who looked to be no more than seventeen years old. Her skin was covered with acne.

The doctor gestured to the first woman in line. “Lie down on the table and put your feet in the stirrups.”

The woman hesitated.

“Come on. You're holding up the line.”

She did as she was told. The doctor inserted a speculum into her vagina. As he probed, he asked, “Do you have a venereal disease?”

“No.”

“We'll soon find out about that.”

The next woman replaced her on the table. As the doctor started to insert the same speculum into her, Tracy cried out, “Wait a minute!”

The doctor stopped and looked up in surprise. “What?”

Everyone was staring at Tracy. She said, “I… you didn't sterilize that instrument.”

Dr. Glasco gave Tracy a slow, cold smile. “Well! We have a gynecologist in the house. You're worried about germs, are you? Move down to the end of the line.”

“What?”

“Don't you understand English? Move down.”

Tracy, not understanding why, took her place at the end of the line.

“Now, if you don't mind,” the doctor said, “we'll continue.” He inserted the speculum into the woman on the table, and Tracy suddenly realized why she was the last in line. He was going to examine all of them with the same unsterilized speculum, and she would be the last one on whom he used it. She could feel an anger boiling up inside her. He could have examined them separately, instead of deliberately stripping away their dignity. And they were letting him get away with it. If they all protested — It was her turn.

“On the table, Ms. Doctor.”

Tracy hesitated, but she had no choice. She climbed up on the table and closed her eyes. She could feel him spread her legs apart, and then the cold speculum was inside her, probing and pushing and hurting. Deliberately hurting. She gritted her teeth.

“You got syphilis or gonorrhea?” the doctor asked.

“No.” She was not going to tell him about the baby. Not this monster. She would discuss that with the warden.

She felt the speculum being roughly pulled out of her. Dr. Glasco was putting on a pair of rubber gloves. “All right,” he said. “Line up and bend over. We're going to check your pretty little asses.”

Before she could stop herself, Tracy said, “Why are you doing this?”

Dr. Glasco stared at her. “I'll tell you why, Doctor. Because assholes are great hiding places. I have a whole collection of marijuana and cocaine that I got from ladies like you. Now bend over.” And he went down the line, plunging his fingers into anus after anus. Tracy was sickened. She could feel the hot bile rise in her throat and she began to gag.

“You vomit in here, and I'll rub your face in it.” He turned to the guards. “Get them to the showers. They stink.”

Carrying their clothes, the naked prisoners were marched down another corridor to a large concrete room with a dozen open shower stalls.

“Lay your clothes in the corner,” a matron ordered. “And get into the showers. Use the disinfectant soap. Wash every part of your body from head to foot, and shampoo your hair.”

Tracy stepped from the rough cement floor into the shower. The spray of water was cold. She scrubbed herself hard, thinking, I'll never be clean again. What kind of people are these? How can they treat other human beings this way? I can't stand fifteen years of this.