Ida stared at the eggshell wall of her drab county office. In younger years, she might have burned with humiliation. Instead, she just stared with numbness. She made no effort to block out or hide from the laughing voices in the hallway, but she also made no move to confront them.
“A sled?!” One of the female voices howled, delighted. “Oh, my god.”
More laughter. Camaraderie, thought Ida. That’s good.
After decades spent in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, Ida was used to hearing gallows humor in the hallway. Of course, it was a little different when the humor was directed at her.
Ida imagined the 1970s-style office on fire, flames licking at the asbestos-stuffed walls. Suffocating smoke. Deafening alarms. Clouding confusion. Court-appointed attorneys scrambling to access stairwells. Meanwhile, Ida would still be on the eighth floor of the county building, unable to walk down the escape stairwell due to her 400-pound frame. She would wait while her designated “helper” got her county-issued plastic sled, set it up at the top of the stairwell, and then unceremoniously stuffed her fat flesh into the sled and pushed her down the emergency stairwell. Ida imagined her teeth rattling as the sled clattered down each staircase.
Ida sighed. Without taking her eyes off her drab wall, she reached for another doughnut and stuffed the entire pastry into her mouth without bothering to chew.
JD Greene is an aspiring author whose observations of the criminal justice system have led her to believe that the truths about it are stranger than fictions.
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