Dr.Jedidiah's Diary Episode #36. Penny, the Warden I Know

Dr. Jedidiah’s Diary

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or some fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.



Episode # 36. Penny, the Warden I Know



“I need more sleep aid. You said the other day that I need to sleep more. Well…I just wanna live my life without these illusional voice in my head. I hear their voices night and day….every single day.” Penny had always been so breviloquent whenever she said what she wanted from me as my on-and-off patient. As a warden of the state penitentiary, Penny’s life was far from jollifications of any kind. She told me that her drive to work felt like covering for her long time colleague named Grim Reaper. The inmates on death row would be escorted to the execution chamber where warden Penny had been waiting to supervise the entire procedure of lethal injection. She was a soi-disant conductor orchestrating a long elegy in that emotionally-charged chamber.





Penny had been terribly deprived of sleep for all those years. She always complained of headaches and hearing things. She said it was getting worse. I thought Penny did not care that much about her job, although she didn’t seem too proud to be a warden. She often said “Well, this is not where I’ll finish my life, career-wise. Sick of those outcasts. They flout all the rules and regulations in the world. I’m planning to leave this dark place full of all the ugliest, filthiest souls on earth. Hope it’s gonna happen in any time soon.” On the day of execution, Penny had to take a deep breath and get ready to let go of the prisoner just by the statutory duties. Walking on the long hallway floor to the chamber, Penny would walk on the tips of her toes not to get annoyed by the sound of her own footsteps. She’d whisper to the prison colleagues who were specially trained to give the lethal injection to the condemned person, “What’s new? Just relax and be mindful of the execution won’t be botched.”  When the curtain was opened so that the witnesses facing this room on the other side could see the inside the execution chamber, the time had come for prisoner on the gurney to take this as force majeure and make his or her final statement. Even at that moment, Penny tried not to get emotional or affected by the somber mood in the chamber. She had stayed poised and undisturbed throughout this whole procedure of carrying out the execution. When the death of the prisoner was confirmed by the medical examiner, Penny would wrap things up and hurried out the chamber without taking a glimpse of the dead man’s family letting out a wail of despair on the other side. All along the corridor, Penny had felt dizzy, nauseous, and completely drained.





“Yes, Dr. J, I thought I was all right. I had no problem with my job. But….I don’t know why or since when…I started to hear the lingering voices of the death row inmates. When I fall asleep, I still hear the ghostly footsteps from the long hallway that those prisoners had reluctantly walked in. I just…wanna leave all this behind. Time to let go of those guys out of my mind for good.”  I told Penny that she might not sleeping pills anymore as long as she didn’t have to face a bunch of people outside the penitentiary, interceding on behalf of the inmates. Although I wasn’t able to guarantee her a deep and sound sleep right away, I knew for sure that Penny would have a respite from pain once she undressed herself from the duty and dropped her baton. It was time she said goodbye to the cloak and scythe of the Grim Reaper.





Expressions

   

   1.   breviloguent: speaking or expressed in a concise or terse style; using brevity of speech

    2.   penitentiary: a prison for people convicted of serious crimes

   3.   Grim Reaper: personification of death in the form of a cloaked skeleton wielding a large scythe

   4.   lethal injection: an injection administered for the purposes of euthanasia or as a means of capital punishment

   5.  soi-disant: calling oneself thus; self-styled; so-called or pretended

    6.   elegy: a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.

   7.  emotionally-charged: full of strong, raw, uninhibited emotion

    8.   to flout: to openly disregard a law or regulations

   9.  botched: carried out badly or carelessly

   10.               force majeure: Force majeure refers to a clause that is included in contracts to remove liability for natural and unavoidable catastrophes that interrupt the expected course of events and prevent participants from fulfilling obligations.

   11.               medical examiner: a medically qualified public officer whose duty is to investigate deaths occurring under unusual or suspicious circumstances, to perform postmortems, and to initiate inquests.

   12.               to let out a wail: to cry high-pitched cry of pain, grief, or anger

   13.              to feel drained: to feel worn out/ exhausted/ wiped out