Spring 2017

It was a typical spring morning in Los Angeles; the sun was shining, it was 70 degrees (21 degrees Celsius) and with barely any clouds. Echo Antonina Carter was on her way to work at one of the many prison centres. Today she was going to visit one of her regulars- Sam Wallace. He had been having sessions with Echo for the past month or so. He had two life sentences for murdering his wife and one of his children. This was one of the easier patients Echo had, and she was trying to get him a reduced sentence. Sam had undiagnosed schizophrenia- this caused him to have hallucinations; Echo was nearly one hundred percent certain that this was the primary cause of Sam's violence.

Sam had been violent to Echo as well. A few times he had attempted to attack her. Casting Sam out of her mind, Echo continued to walk on her way to the prison centre. Crossing a few streets, turning left, passing the big oak tree. Three-quarters of the way there, Echo passed by a children's park. Pausing, Echo glanced wistfully at it; her parents had always taken her there when she was a child. Her parents were a rather young couple, they had eloped at nineteen and twenty-one respectively, her mother had her a year after their marriage at twenty. When Echo was twelve years old, her father was shot by a police officer. That day, they had gone to that very park.

Shaking it out her mind and wiping away her tears, Echo took out her iPhone 6s to check her mascara. It wasn't smudged and Echo continued her journey. Five minutes later, Echo arrived outside the prison. Giving her ID card to the police officer by the gate, Echo had to remind herself that this wasn't the one that had shot her father. Entering the building, Echo wondered why, of all days, did that memory come to mind. She passed that park at least once a week to arrive at this prison. Checking the date on her phone, Echo sighed inwardly. It was the 19th of May, the anniversary of her dad's funeral.

Pushing all her thoughts aside, she realised she was standing in the middle of the hallway stone still and was attracting a fair amount of attention from the prison wardens there. Smiling at them, Echo continued and arrived at the front desk. Tom was sitting there that day, and he greeted Echo.

"G'morning Toni, how you doing?"

Toni was another name of Echo's, a nickname that her friends called her. Plastering on her biggest smile, Echo replied in equal enthusiasm, "Hi Tom, I'm great thanks, how about you?".

Echo answered and exchanged the pleasantry. Tom was one of the kindest warden's in the facility. He always had a smile on his face, a kind word to give and radiated positivity. Not something you would expect of someone working in a prison. Everyone liked Tom. He also remembered everyone's birthdays; on prisoner's birthdays he would try to get them an extra call to their families or perhaps a slightly better meal. He wouldn't always succeed, but that meant he had a good relationship with many of the prisoners. Except the few odd ones out, many of the prisoners appreciated his kindness.

Tom was respectful to everyone and treated everyone equally, whatever race, colour, gender, sex, religion etc. you were. Echo and Tom had an extremely close relationship, Echo considered him as a father figure, and Tom treated her like his daughter. He inquired about how she was feeling today- remembering that it was the anniversary of her father's funeral.

"I'm alright,", Echo began saying, "It is just hard, mom has been having trouble sleeping recently.".

After a couple more minutes, Echo signed in and parted from Tom. They would talk later. Collecting her file from her office, Echo opened it to the Sam Wallace section. Recently he had been having a lot less outbursts and was responding well to some medication. There was another new section added. Echo grinned. It was permission for Sam to be able to go to a specialised facility for people like him so he could get better. Echo felt like jumping for joy. This was one of the highlights of her job, when she could actually help someone. Most of the time, it wasn't like this though. Sometimes, her patients couldn't be helped as they either would not cooperate or were just too volatile, you could say.

Entering the meeting area, Echo sat down. She waited for a couple of moment and Sam was brought in and he sat down in the opposite side of the glass.

"Hi Sam, how are you today?" Echo began by asking.

Sam just grunted in response. Echo continued, "Well, I've got some good news, I've got a document here which says you are going to be moved to a place which can help you better. They've got doctors, nurses and more therapists to help you,"

What Echo did not expect was for Sam to become violent. He started banging on the glass and screaming at her. Not a very pleasant first appointment of the day. Echo then made the rest of her rounds in that prison, had a break for lunch, a few more patients afterwards, wished Tom and a few other wardens a good weekend, as it was a Friday, and then left.

Echo lived in a small apartment by herself. She dropped off her things, and then decided to go and visit her mom's house after dinner. At six-thirty-five, Echo left her apartment and ordered an Uber to collect her to her mom's. Arriving there at seven, Echo knocked on the door. Her mom answered. It was plain to see she had been crying.

Anna Carter had a hard life. Her parents had cut her off as she married a black man. Her husband had been shot by a policeman; he was just doing a bit of gardening in his own garden and the officer thought he was a thief. As the officer was extremely trigger happy, he shot Ralph (her husband) without a second thought. The officer was never charged. Anna then had to raise her daughter by herself without any support from anyone, trying to balance a job and raising her twelve year old daughter. They somehow got by and now her daughter was a successful criminal psychologist. Anna had never really approved of her daughter working in the same police force as the cop who had murdered her husband, but realised that she couldn't hold back her daughter.

It was just especially hard as it was the anniversary of Ralph's funeral that day. It was a very small service, Ralph's grandmother came, a few of his friends from work, herself and her daughter.

Echo hugged her mother tight, and they both went inside the house. They didn't need to talk, everything was communicated through body language. They just sat together on the sofa and watched a few episodes of friends. They fell asleep on the couch next to each other, both of them dreaming about how different their life would have been if Ralph was still alive.

*approx. 1000 words*