My Brother and I, United in Struggle

Confronting mortality and searching for hope amid despair

By Tony Triplett

Frustration and nervousness plagued me as I sat in the inmate infirmary bullpen.

It had been three hours, and they still hadn’t called me to see the doctor. The day turned for the worse when the nurse came over and addressed another inmate, a towering figure covered in tattoos.

“You have stage four cancer,” she said.
“Stage four?” he responded. “What happened to stages one, two, and three?”

The nurse didn’t respond. She casually shrugged her shoulders.

“What does that mean?” asked the inmate, mimicking the nurse’s nonchalant manner.

She didn’t answer him; she just stared at him as if he were the problem, not her. Frustrated by her lack of empathy, the inmate looked in my direction.

“Is she serious?” he asked.

I didn’t respond to him. Instead, I addressed the nurse. “You should probably go to lunch,” I said.

She was about to contest my suggestion until she saw the look in my eyes and the veins in the other inmate’s neck pulsating from anger. After a few seconds that seemed like minutes, she finally returned to the nurse’s station, leaving me with a man who was literally about to die.

All I could do was watch as the inmate paced back and forth.

“This is some bullshit!” he screamed.

He pointed in my direction several times, expecting a response, but all I could do was stare at the white tiled floor. After twenty minutes of ranting, I asked to be sent back to the unit.

While he needed empathy, I didn’t have any to spare.

In prison, empathy is a limited resource, and whatever empathy I had left was for my cellmate, who I thought of more as my brother. I arrived at my cell in hopes of finding solace.

Instead, I found my cellmate Michael Broadway, aka “B-Way,” drenched in sweat from an intense workout.

At 5’9” and 250 pounds, B-Way could easily pass for a retired football player.

Tired and exhausted, I tried to get into the top bunk. But B-Way remained jogging in place, blocking my path to the bed.

“What you doing?” he asked.

“I’m tired,” I said.

“So, what!” he replied. “Let’s work out.”

I didn’t know if he was asking or telling, but either way, I found myself running in place alongside him.

While workouts hadn’t been part of his daily routine, medical circumstances had forced him to take better care of himself. Just like the guy in the hospital, B-Way also had stage four cancer (prostate, to be exact).

We ran together for twenty minutes before my left calf locked up. Surprisingly, I didn’t stop; instead, I went for another twenty minutes.

Once we transitioned into doing push-ups, B-Way broke the silence.

“So, what did the doctor say?” he asked. “I didn’t see him,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because the nurse pissed me off.” “What did she do?”

I didn’t answer him right away. I pretended to struggle with my push-ups. I found myself in an awkward position. The last thing I wanted to talk about was somebody else having cancer.

“I just got tired of waiting,” I said.

“I know the feeling,” B-Way replied. Even though I hated lying, I didn’t see the point of telling the truth at that moment.

Our next workout was jumping jacks. Normally, we would do them in sets of twenty-five, but we both elected to go for fifteen minutes straight.

I didn’t respond. I just stayed in unison with him as we did the jumping jacks.

“We can’t die in prison!” he said.

Why was he saying “we”? I didn’t have cancer.

But I knew what he meant.

At 285 pounds, I was overweight. My diet consisted of junk food: cereal, cakes, candy bars, and soups. Even though they served food, it wasn’t very appetizing, so I normally ate items I purchased from the commissary.

Even though a doctor or nurse never told me, I knew I was a diabetic. It was only a matter of time before I was laid up in a diabetic coma.

“Ain’t nobody dying in prison,” I finally said.

After our workout, I stood in front of the stainless steel sink. I let the water run, but it remained brownish-looking. Realizing that it wasn’t going to turn clear, I grabbed eight bottles of water, went back behind our makeshift curtain, and began to wash up. B-Way sat crouched on the floor, staring off into space.

“We gotta get the fuck out of here,” he said.

I could see the tears streaming down his face.

“We will,” I said. “Just be patient.”

“I’m all out of time, patience isn’t a luxury for me,” he said.

He was right.

Despite our long sentences owed to the state of Illinois, his time was definitely borrowed. I stood frozen, staring at the cellmate who I viewed as a brother and saying to myself, ‘Why him?’ Whether he knew it or not, I always envied him. Because everyone gravitated to him, he had a strong support system on the outside, and a loving companion.

“You’re going to be good, B-Way,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes.

Twenty minutes later, B-Way and I switched positions in the cell. Just like me, he was forced to wash up in bottled water. As for me, I stared at the 96 steel bars that confined me.

“Do you ever think about dying?” asked B-Way.

“Sometimes,” I said solemnly, then tried to lighten the mood. “I spend more time worrying about where I’ll go.”

“Well, it’s got to be heaven,” he said. “Because we already in hell.”