To Breathe or Not to Breathe

By Ann

Confined to a small space, I gasp for breath.   A hot noxious gas sweeps over my shoulders, my neck, and the back of my head.  I grab the closest surface within my reach and hold on for dear life.  My heart feverishly pounds in protest and I pray that the cloud of pure evil will not make its way to my nose and into my lungs.  It starts out slowly enough but begins to gain momentum and before I can even gasp, it is in my nose, my throat, my lungs and my eyes.  I am losing consciousness and falling into a vivid old memory.
It is another time, a lifetime ago, when I lived in the city.  There had been a terrorist attack and people were buying Israeli gas masks in the event that we were subject to biological warfare.  I didn’t buy one at the time but at this moment I understood what a grave mistake that had been.

With blurred vision and shaking hands I try to maintain my lucidity but all I can see is an obnoxious orange and all I can hear is … “Counsel.  Counsel.  COUNSEL!” 

   

The judge impatiently waited for me to respond.  He had been arguing with the prosecutor for what felt like an indeterminable amount of time about an issue that really wasn’t relevant to these proceedings.   They were engaged in a pissing contest and the prosecutor was threatened with being held in contempt.

Nonetheless, my client, a jailed inmate clad in an orange jumpsuit was getting annoyingly excited and anxious.  He was explaining, no whispering, no passionately whispering and hissing his custody agreement to me.  He was doing this and spewing his dirty breath all over me and all I could do was sit there and try not to die.  Before I could respond to the judge, I had to wonder why the jail did not require inmates to brush.  Then I wondered why inmates chose not to brush.  Then I wondered if his breath would stick to my suit.

I’ll never understand why men choose not to brush when they are in prison.  But I do understand one thing.  I understand that no one in the courtroom actually knows what is going on except for the lawyers and the judge.  I had been told this in the past by an older, experienced attorney but I didn’t truly understand it until today.  Today the judge and the prosecutor were going at it about a document that wasn’t relevant.  I knew it.  The prosecutor knew it.  The judge knew it.  But my client did not know it and the argument threw him into a state as a frenzied human dragon with deadly breath with which he used to furiously and viciously whisper and cruelly annunciate.
The officer didn’t know it because he had that deer stuck in headlight expression and the bubble over his head, the one that contains verbal thoughts in comics, that bubble was empty. 

I regained my composure and leaned into my client before I responded to the judge.   “Sometimes, it’s a better strategy to sit back and watch the train wreck and this is one of those times.”  He nodded. 

“I have nothing to add your honor.” 

My client was released right after that hearing.