The Archangel Drones by Joe Nobody Page A

him into the building via his handcuffed upper arms.
    The Harris County Jail’s staging room looked more like the waiting area at an airport gate than a lockup. Rows of plastic chairs filled the space, televisions hanging from ceiling mounts.
    As soon as Jacob was arranged in one of the plastic seats, the officer removed the handcuffs. They tried three times to prop the unresponsive kid in a chair, each attempt resulting with the prisoner’s lanky body sliding to the floor. Finally, they pulled him to a corner and left him prone.
    “I’ll call the medical people to come down here and check him out,” said the jailer. “I don’t think he’s faking it.”
    “Should I load him up and take him to the ER?” the young deputy asked, now worried he might be held responsible somehow.
    “Naw. He might be drunk, passed out from drugs… any number of things. Scalp wounds always bleed like crazy, but no way has he lost enough red corpuscles to be in danger. The nurse will be down to check him out in a bit. Give me his packet, and you can go have your car cleaned out.”
    Shrugging, the officer handed over the envelope and then returned the handcuffs to his duty belt.

    It would be difficult to find a position in the medical field more troubling than that of the admission review staff at a big city jail.
    Exposed daily to the most troubled examples of the human race, the tainted, mind-numb registered nurse and aides were witness to a constant parade of drug users, prostitutes, alcoholics, lice-infested homeless, and hardened criminals.
    Often, the incoming detainees were belligerent, fighting, spitting, and kicking balls of filthy humanity, either unwilling, or unable to respond to the medical questionnaires or attempts at examination. Exposure to blood, vomit, urine, and feces were as common as the foul language, combative attitudes, and hostile profile displayed toward anyone who worked for “the man.”
    It was a thankless, low-paying, exceedingly dangerous job that created calloused individuals who basically operated with one cardinal rule - nobody was to die while in custody. Beyond that, the examination process was haphazard at best, often at the benevolence of the individual healthcare worker’s mood at the time.
    In this regard, Jacob was lucky. The nurse aide who was called to the staging area was in a reasonable frame of mind, having just spent 20 minutes with a business executive hauled in for a DUI. The man had made her laugh and had been cooperative, a rarity for the graveyard shift.
    Escorted by two massive jailers, the aide had recognized immediately Jacob was in trouble. Rushing to the prone teen’s side, her first check was the lividity of his arm. After watching the flaccid limb flop uncontrollably to the floor, she then pulled back his eyelid. She found him cold and clammy, his diaphoretic state coinciding with all of the other symptoms.
    “Get him out of here – stat,” she turned and instructed the idling hulks. “He’s in trouble, and I don’t want him dying on my shift. Get an ambulance here… now.”
    “Are you sure?” asked the guard who had helped drag Jacob in.
    “Don’t fuck with me, Bluto…. Get him to Central right now.”
    Rising from Jacob’s side, she heaved the radio from her belt, lifting to speak into the black box’s grill. “I need the RN and a cart to the staging area, stat,” she said.
    She then returned to Jacob and started patting down his body, searching for other injuries. With her patient’s shirt soaked in blood, her first inclination was that he was suffering from a gunshot wound that had somehow been overlooked, but that was rare.
    As she worked down his right leg, she suddenly stopped, pulling a pair of sheers from her breast pocket. After a few snips on Jacob’s pants leg, she pulled apart the denim material and inhaled sharply. “Holy shit… look at this kid’s knee.”
    Stretching to gawk over her shoulder, the two jailers were impressed as well. Purple