Lupo

My first job was wrapping bodies within the Florida Department of Corrections. I caught my charges at 21 but started working in prison at 22, so I was very green.

Lake Butler Main Unit was the FL DOC’s Sorting Hat from Harry Potter, a distribution center where new inmates from county jail got sorted and shipped to their permanent institutions across Florida. But it was also the medical center for the entire state, housing inmates coming in for surgeries, cancer treatment, or just waiting to die. Another port of hell. I was a permanent there, which meant I wore the white prison uniform instead of the blue ones most inmates wore throughout the DOC, thus the name prison blues commonly coined by us inmates. The whites differentiated us from all the other inmates in blue at Lake Butler RMC, made us easy to identify as permanents, not just transit inmates passing through.

I worked in the hospital. Wrapping bodies. Taking inmates to the morgue. But I also worked on 2-East, what we inmates called Death Row. I’d tend to all types of sick and dying inmates, guys needing surgeries, guys healing from them. That’s where I met Lupo.

As I walk through the open double doors of the 2-East 3rd Bay, I’m pushing a dust mop as I’m stopped by this man in the first bed to my left. He’s Latino, a Cuban. On the pound, he goes by Lupo. I find out later he has multiple life sentences. He’s an old school chico from Miami and has the gold around his neck to prove it. I don’t know how the police allowed it, but it says one thing—Lupo has money. A lot of money and power. Cash in prison is power, the same as any place in the world.

There he is, all 230 pounds of him, wrapped snugly under thick, heavy hospital blankets. Lupo’s shaved, bald head shines under the harsh, fluorescent lights, and his puffy eyes are closed, giving him a deceptively peaceful look. His pale Cuban skin tells the story of a man who hasn’t felt the sun’s warmth in a very long time.

Looking more closely, I know he’s all messed up. Now, his closed eyes and peaceful breathing look more rough and haggard, pained even.

As I pass him, pushing my dust mop, his eyes remain shut, but his lips part slightly and he whispers...

“Hey, Permanent.”

I turn and face him.

“Hermano, bro, will you please help me, man? I cannot feel my leg, yo. It must be asleep or something.”

Of course I say, “Sure, bro, I got you. Which leg is it?”

His legs are hidden under more than a few blankets, the outline of what I assume are his limbs barely visible beneath the fabric.

“It’s the left one, homie. Please, yo. It hurts really bad. Mierda.”

As I move toward him, all I’m thinking about is my job. I help inmates in the hospital or wrap them up and close the freezer door after placing their dead bodies inside of it. So, it’s nothing to me when I reach for his left leg.

I grab the edge of the blanket, ready to pull it back, but Lupo stops me.

“Nah, hermano, just lift it. It’s too cold to take the blanket off.”

I nod. Whatever, dude.

My hands move to where his left thigh is, fingers curling to grip his solid limb. But as I start to lift, my hands close on nothing but air. The blanket sinks, following the shape of the mattress rather than a leg.

I can barely grasp what happened. A “what the fuck” escapes my mouth as the imaginary leg seems to disintegrate and vanish under my touch.

HAHAHAHAHAJAJAJA.

Lupo’s laughing his ass off as he says, “Hermano, yo, I ain’t got no leg!” cackling to himself.

It turns out Lupo’s a diabetic with a huge honey bun addiction. He trades his morphine pills for honey buns slathered with icing.

“I aint got no leg, hahahahaha,” he says again.

After I manage to scrape together some measure of composure, I turn around in a daze. He shows me the bloody stump. The leg was freshly cut off a couple days prior at an outside hospital.

The same guy, about eight months later, will ask me again to help him move his other leg and prank me again. His other leg was cut off, too.

“Hahahahahahahaha, I aint got NOOOOO legs homie, hahahahahahaha,” Lupo says as he kicks both stumps up and down, laughing hysterically.

I’m glad to see he has such a positive attitude about having no legs. This time, I laugh with him. I’m in on the joke. The joke’s no longer on me—it’s on life.

Lupo’s demise came from K-2, a dangerous synthetic drug often called Spice or synthetic marijuana. K-2 is made from chemicals sprayed onto plant material. It can cause unpredictable and deadly reactions such as rapid heart rate, seizures, heart attacks, kidney failure, and sometimes sudden death. Nobody ever really knows what’s in a batch until it’s too late.

He smoked it and his heart blew up.

End of Lupo.