Waiting for an Echo by Christine Montross

Author:Christine Montross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

10.

IMAGINE YOUR BATHROOM

We have become a society that has developed rings we use to chain men to the floor. Trapdoors to keep feces from being thrown or arms from being grabbed. Tether chains. Handcuffs. Leg irons. We support a constant stream of innovations in control. And in the face of all these, the human spirit flexes and rebels. It chafes and maneuvers. It fakes left and goes right. It morphs in a relentless search for autonomy, connection, agency, and self-expression.

If we continue to ignore what neuroscience has to teach us about human needs and human behavior, we do so at our own peril. Yet all too often, fear undermines our ability to see situations clearly and address them rationally.

Once while I’m performing a competency evaluation with two other clinicians at Northern, the evaluee’s nose begins to itch. Because his hands are cuffed behind him, he cannot scratch it. He tries to raise his knee to his nose. With the chains it does not reach. He leans down at the waist, raises his knee, leans over further, and at last rubs his nose on his knee.

When the evaluation ends, we’re supposed to call the CO by opening a wall-mounted plastic box inside which there’s a metal button and an intercom. I’m seated beside it, so when we finish, I reach over to initiate the call. I try to flip open the clasps on the plastic box, and they don’t budge. I try harder to pry them open with my fingers. My colleagues and I all laugh nervously. The man we have interviewed watches with a dispassionate expression on his face. Eventually the psychologist who’s with me comes over and, using both his hands, manages to pry the box open. I press the intercom button and say, “We’re all set.” We wait for the CO. There’s an awkward silence. For what feels like several minutes, no one comes.

“Suppose I was gonna injure one of y’all,” the man in chains slowly drawls, looking me straight in the eye. “They take this long?”

It is a comment meant to provoke. Its intention is to unnerve, to make me feel afraid. It works. In this fleeting moment, I understand the limitlessness of fear. I am across from a man so profoundly restrained that he cannot even scratch his nose, let alone attack me. And yet I watch the door apprehensively, waiting for the CO to arrive.

Herein is evidence of this cycle of endlessly escalating repression. In retrospect I understand the man’s comment as a way of highlighting the ridiculousness of what he observed. Our nervous laughter. My fumbling fingers and skittish glances. All this despite the fact that his every limb was manacled. We might have been respectful of him during the interview, but our actions in these final moments conveyed an underlying truth—that we viewed him, consciously or not, as someone worthy of fear. His comment was a response to our hypocrisy. If we were going to judge him as a monster anyway, then he’d go ahead and fulfill the prophecy.

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