PART 4: The Guard’s Iron Grip
PART 4: The Guard’s Iron Grip
Heavy hands drag desperate fathers away.
The prison rules were absolute, drilled into every inmate during orientation with zero margin for error or human empathy.
No physical contact through non-contact partitions. No standing up during visitation without authorization. Any attempt to breach the perimeter results in immediate termination of the visit.
Before Arthur’s knees could fully straighten, heavy hands clamped down onto both of his shoulders with bone-crushing force.
"Sit down, Vance! Back off the glass now!" a correctional officer barked, his voice dripping with bored authority honed by years inside a maximum-security environment.
Arthur stumbled backward, his legs tangling with the plastic stool as he was forcefully shoved down into a seated position.
"Wait! Please! Just give me one second—she’s my daughter! She’s just a baby!" Arthur pleaded, twisting around in his seat, his eyes wild with panic as he reached a desperate hand back toward the partition.
"Visitation is over for table twelve. Code yellow, clear the booth," the guard shouted into his shoulder radio, ignoring Arthur’s desperate appeals entirely.
Across the glass, Clara went rigid with terror.
She clutched a weeping Lily tightly to her chest, standing up from her chair as two other guards stepped in to escort visitors toward the exit doors.
"Arthur! Arthur, don't fight them!" Clara screamed over the rising noise of the room, her voice breaking as she pressed Lily’s little hand against the glass one last time. "We’ll come back next month! Stay strong!"
"Clara! Lily!" Arthur cried out, struggling against the two massive guards who had now grabbed him by his orange biceps, hauling him up from the stool and dragging him backward toward the heavy steel exit leading back into the cell blocks.
He kicked his legs, his eyes locked on his daughter’s tear-streaked face as she vanished into the crowd of exiting families.
The heavy steel door slammed shut with a sickening, metallic echo.
The visiting room vanished.
Arthur was thrown against the cinderblock wall of the intake hallway, his breath knocked out of his lungs, the orange jumpsuit chafing against his skin as the guards patted him down with rough, practiced efficiency.
"Get him back to solitary for disciplinary review," the lead guard spat, adjusting his belt. "Trying to breach the glass partition. You're lucky you're up for parole next month, Vance, or you’d be spending the next year in the hole."
Arthur didn't answer.
He let them drag him down the long, dimly lit corridor, his mind completely numb, his soul hollowed out.
He had wanted one hug.
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Just one single embrace to prove to his daughter that she was loved, to prove to himself that he was still a human being.
Instead, he had been ripped away like a dangerous animal, left with nothing but the lingering chill of plastic glass burning against his palms.
