Lessons Learned

Untitled Part 7

  The game lost its appeal when Walt tried using a hidden ace up his sleeve and the rest of the men almost knocked the table over in their fury. Apparently, cheating was a dire offense especially when the pot contained almost half a pack of unsmoked cigarettes. John stepped back to avoid having any stray punches land in his direction and the fight finally broke up when Walt landed a solid punch on another man's nose, breaking it. No guards stepped in to break up the fight. In fact, the only armed guard John had seen the entire time he'd been there today was the disgruntled man who'd escorted him to his cell.

John was immediately called on to tend the injured man's copiously bleeding nose. He had no gloves and fretted about blood borne exposure the whole time. He tried to simply direct the other men on the correct method for stemming the flow, but eventually he had to wade in and apply pressure on the man's face himself. He seethed inwardly cursing Mycroft's name the whole time. If he ended up with Hepatitis B while he was here....He didn't want to think about what else these men might be carrying in their blood. He finally staunched the flow and helped the man calm down enough to check for broken bones. He'd have to reset the nose after the swelling had gone down, but he needed to wait until some solid clots formed. He didn't want to risk another episode of bleeding. Lord knew if the prison carried blood stores for a transfusion.

By the time he'd cleaned up at the spigot, he'd wanted nothing more than to lie down for a while. He had a furious stress headache. Trevor had disappeared during John's ministrations and that frustrated him even more. He didn't know which cell Trevor called his and didn't want to raise suspicions by snooping around or coming out and asking where he was. He'd just have to lay low and wait.

Apparently the prison system fed the men one meal a day at about six o'clock. It usually consisted of loaves of stale bread, packages of processed lunchmeat and wormy fruit. Most of the men had better edibles imported from outside but John had no one looking out for him so he'd have to put up the local fare if he wanted to survive the next few days.

Since it was only about three o'clock now, he decided to go back to his cell and try to get some rest. He entered the room and found it exactly as he'd left it, his possessions strewn about the floor. He gathered them up and spread his scratchy blanked over the top bunk. He fished out his tin cup from under the bed and set it on the shelf. There was no ladder to the top bunk and John had just begun to try to figure out a way to haul himself up when his roommate walked in.

Walt still had a fire in his eye from his fistfight, "You patch up McGowan, Doc?"

"Yeah," John said keeping his voice non accusatory. "He'll live."

"Good. Trevor said you'd be worth it." Walt moved into John's personal space. "I figure since you're gonna stay in here, you and me could make friends," he said reaching out to brush over John's cheek much like he had when he'd pinned John to the wall earlier.

John backed up. "Friends, sure, but nothing more than that. I..."

Walt surged forward and grabbed John's neck to pull him forward for a bruising kiss. All John could think about was how foul the man smelled. Sour cigarettes and some kind of rotgut alcohol issued off him in waves. John pushed back and Walt broke the kiss.

"That's all right, Doc. We got a nice long time to get to know each other. You ain't going anywhere and either am I," he said stepping back and grinning lewdly at him.

John groaned inwardly. What a goddamn cliché, he thought. He suddenly found he could scramble up to the top bunk pretty easily. He heaved himself up and backed all the way up to the wall. Walt brayed again, the man even laughed with an accent, and made a fake lunge at his ankle. John jerked it away from him tensing for more of a fight, but Walt gave him one last look and left the room. John lie on his back keeping one eye on the door in case the Australian asshole came back.

He couldn't help himself and closed his eyes for a moment. He jerked awake a few hours later when the guard that had escorted him earlier yelled at him from the doorway and threw a hard loaf of bread and a plastic package of cold cuts on his bed. "You want apples?" he asked.

"Yeah," John said eying the meat with more than a little disgust. The guard threw two, small green apples at him and he managed to catch one. The other rolled on the filthy ground and the guard snorted.

"Pendejo," he grumbled at him and disappeared. John had been briefed on the conditions of the prison, but experiencing it for himself continued still continued to surprise and unnerve him. He opened the package of processed meat and was greeted with an unpleasant smell. It most certainly had gone "off" and John discarded the idea of eating any of it. He turned his attention to the stale loaf of bread. He broke it open and discovered it did not contain any mold so he nibbled on it. It made him thirsty so he bit in to the apple to try to get some moisture back. It was terribly sour and sure enough, full of wriggly worms. He struggled through most of the bread and decided to try for another drink of water at the spigot.

He retrieved the fallen apple and put it in his pants pocket. He hoped Trevor would be about so he climbed off his bunk. The courtyard was even livelier now that the heat of the day had passed. A cool breeze floated through and most of the occupants of this section of the prison seemed to be taking advantage of it. He made his way over to the table and found a few of his new mates playing another game of cards. Trevor wasn't among them and John felt his final reserves leaving him. He wasn't going to be able to do this mission. He wondered if Mycroft had every intention of leaving him in here to rot for the rest of his life, and he'd never see London or his family again. He found a chair and dropped wearily into it. It seemed hopeless to him now. He sat for a while with his head in his hands and no one bothered him. Perhaps seeing him beaten had calmed something in them as well and they chose to leave him in peace.

After a while he looked up. The summer sun had dipped behind the prison walls and the courtyard darkened. It appeared gloomy and depressing. One lone light shone in the area casting long shadows as the dark descended. John didn't want to go back to his bunk. Maybe he could just sleep here in this chair... He raked his gaze over the area one more time, searching for any hint of Trevor when it fell on a figure he hadn't noticed before. The tall, lanky man wore a dark hoodie than only showed his glowing eyes. He appeared to be staring directly at John. He couldn't tell much about the man's features but he called to John's mind that famous scene in The Fellowship of the Ring with Strider in the bar at Bree. The line, "I look foul but feel fair," kept running through his mind. When the man caught John staring at him, he stood up and left the courtyard.

John might have been more interested in the hooded figure but at that moment Trevor made his appearance. It seemed he'd found a friendly bottle of whatever Walt had been drinking because he could barely stand up. He staggered off kilter and sat in a chair next to John. "Doc," he said with a slur. "Glad to have up with caught you this evening. I've been meaning to have a private word."

John tried his best not to rear back at the man's fuel soaked breath. "Trevor," he returned evenly. "That would be fine. But we might wait until tomorrow when you're a bit sober."

The man was in no shape to have a serious conversation with. John was going to have to wait until morning but he had an idea. "Let me help you back to your bunk, Trev," he ventured. If he got lucky, he find out where his cell was so he could catch him there tomorrow.

"Ah ha, Johnny boy," he said. "That might be a trick. I try not to ever be sober in here." Trevor said tried standing up. He swayed on his feet however and John rose to steady him.

"Just helping you out, mate. No funny business, okay?" he said putting an arm around the drunken man's waist in order to steady him.

"You're an upstanding guy, Doc. Thanks a lot," Trevor said grinning and leaned heavily on him. "This way," he pointed down a hallway John had not explored yet.

John got his shoulder under Trevor's arm in order to help him along, and began shuffling them both in the direction of, he hoped, Trevor's cell.

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