Member-only story
A Prostitute’s Debt to Society
The prison guard locked the woman inside a metal cage and walked away.
The woman sat down and waited for the guard to come back with some water. She wished she'd thought to ask while the guard was still there. What if he forgot?
The cage he’d shut her in was roughly the size of a bathroom stall, so the woman didn’t have much room to move around. The sun was a brilliant ball of white fire high in the cloudless blue sky, like a camera flash. It beat relentlessly down upon everything below, making the buildings gleam, awash in blinding blue sunlight.
The woman sat and waited and half an hour passed. Finally, a guard went by her cage and the woman went and pressed her face against the dense chain link siding and shouted for the guard to bring some water.
The guard said she would and went away.
Hours passed and nobody brought the woman any water. It was over a hundred degrees in the cage. It was time for the woman to be let out but nobody came to open the door.
After shift change, the nurse made the customary med rounds. The woman in the cage had a prescription, but the nurse didn’t come to the cage. The woman wasn’t supposed to skip her daily dose of medication. The doctor had told her not to. The nurse didn’t come. She finished passing meds and went back to her…
