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Medical departments are all the same. They have specially designed, uncomfortable chairs and they leave you sitting for a minimum of ten minutes after your appointment time just to get you frustrated and raise your blood pressure. They also have the sort of pictures that nobody wants to look at on the walls. I’m sure that it’s all part of a cunning ploy by the NHS to create an environment of non-expectation so that the non-thinking section of the general public are pleased with the poor service they actually get. No, that’s far too clever for the NHS; it’s just 1948 socialistic bureaucracy carried on to the present day.

I was shown into a treatment room and I was trying to explain to the sister that there was nothing wrong with me when the hoo-ha broke out. An alarm sounded followed by a Tannoy message for all prisoners to return to their cells. The phones in the medical centre were ringing and a message came over for medical staff to go to the A and B bathroom. The sister shot off and I wandered back to my cell. As I did, prison officers were shouting at me to get a move on.

There followed a lock down, the second one in two weeks and for the same reason – murder. This time a double murder. I was feeling differently about this one. It was self-defence. No longer was I elated; I just had a sense of relief mixed with a sense of horror of what had happened and what could have happened to me. My hands were now trembling, my mouth was dry and I felt sick. I realised that for the first time in my life I felt fear and it was after the event. I’d had apprehension before when in action. I’d concerns that my men could be injured but it was never me. I’d always assumed I would be okay. No, that’s wrong; I’d never thought about me and I’d always been okay, well, more or less. Yes, I’d been injured and wounded but never what I considered seriously. I wonder why that was. I’d seen men terrified and thought I understood but I didn’t because I’d never experienced what they were experiencing. Now I understood fear: a black illogical dread that you couldn’t prevent. Something so awful it had no name happening to you and yet this was after what could have happened was past. I realised if I’d felt like this in the showers I couldn’t have done what I did. Thank God for Harry’s little mind game. For the first time I understood the suffering some people had through fear and made a resolution to never let fear incapacitate me.

We sat and waited. I was reading a John Grisham novel, The Summons, and Harry was sticking some bits of cardboard and wood together for some kid’s party somewhere. The door opened and we were hurried out of our cell. The search team went in and took the cell apart. Everything – the cupboards, the drawers, even the misnamed sponge bag (who the hell has a sponge in prison?) – was scattered on the floor. For what purpose? Perhaps just to relieve their stress and anger. Needless to say, they found nothing in our cell. After all, we’d been trained so that if we had anything we shouldn’t have had, they wouldn’t find it. They then locked us in and just left us to clear up the mess. Harry wasn’t a happy bunny. The bastards had smashed the toy castle he was making. What petty mindedness. He started again.