MarQui Clardy describes how rookie doctors training in prisons are allowed to try out their new skills on prisoners. 

“So, Mr. Clardy, today we’ll be doing a quick biopsy,” says the young resident as he enters the examination room. “We’re going to make a small incision and remove a sample of the cyst. We need to gather some information on it before we can remove it.”

I reflexively tense against the cushy leather exam chair in which I’m seated, a mixture of confusion and frustration jolting through me. “But I’ve already had two biopsies and they were very painful,” I inform him. “I’m supposed to be having surgery today. I’m ready to get this process over with.”

This annoys me, but I dare not let it show. Prison has instilled in me a weird self-consciousness, a need to suppress negative emotions around civilians so they won’t think I’m a danger to them. Even worse, I’m in a hospital. The looks I’ve gotten from people from the moment I was escorted in—ankles shackled, wrists cuffed, iron chain wrapped around my waist, two armed guards flanking me—run the gamut from curiosity to disdain to fear. Makes me feel like a monster. This resident undoubtedly harbors some biases about prisoners as well. To keep from fueling those biases, I bottle my frustration, I’m overly polite, and I speak extra softly in hopes that he’ll see me as a regular human and not a monster.

Don’t Miss: A Medical Check-up in Prison

Brow furrowed, bewilderment written all over his face, he flips through my medical chart before excusing himself from the room. I’m left with my escorts, both of whom are sitting across from me in small plastic chairs, tapping away at their cellphones. They don’t socialize with me. I’m just a package to be picked up, transported, and dropped off. Nothing more.

Minutes later, the resident returns with another young doctor who he introduces as his co-resident. (I soon learn that this new resident is the senior of the pair, so I’ll refer to him as Senior, and the former as Junior.)

“Change of plans,” Senior announces, pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “We are doing your surgery today. I apologize for the slight mixup.”

The last thing a patient wants to hear before being operated on is that there’s been a “slight mixup.” I want to tell them they need to get their shit together because my health, and possibly my life, is on the line. That’s what a civilian might do, and justifiably so. But I’m a prisoner. So again, I bottle my vexation and say nothing, because I want these doctors to know that I’m a regular human, not a monster.

After they anesthetize my gums and set up their equipment, the real fiasco begins. Referring to a large monitor displaying an x-ray of my jaw, where the cyst is located, Junior makes an incision into my gums while Senior holds a suction tube in place.

“Uhhh… I’m not seeing anything here,” Junior mutters after about five minutes of cutting. He glances at the monitor. “Am I in the right spot?”

“Yep. Should be between 26 and 28.”

“Well I’m not seeing it. I’m gonna go in a little deeper.”

Thanks to the anesthetic, I’m not in any pain. However, there’s an immensely uncomfortable pressure on my mouth as Junior jams the scalpel in farther. Imagine having your jaw hitched to an F-150 while it’s accelerating at full power.

“Still not seeing it,” Junior grumbles another five minutes later.

Senior offers him an electric drill called a bur. “Here, try this.”

By the second, it’s becoming more apparent that these residents haven’t performed this operation before. They’re in way over their heads. I peek at the guards. Both have put away their phones and are locked in on my surgery, mouths wide open. You’d think they’re watching an episode of Botched.

Junior, now armed with the bur, is jackhammering my jawbone like a construction worker. Every muscle in my body is constricted. My butt cheeks are clenched tightly enough to suck the cotton out of my seat.

After several more minutes of chattering among one another, consulting the x-ray, cutting deeper, rechecking the x-ray, and even more drilling, the residents are interrupted by one of the guards. “Maybe y’all should call somebody else in, because this is taking too long,” she quips.

‘Thank God,’ I want to yell, grateful for her intervention. I’m sure her impatience has more to do with her own physical discomfort than mine. We’ve been in this room for more than half an hour. That tiny chair is probably chafing her wide hips. Still, super grateful.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Junior concedes. “Hang tight, Mr. Clardy. We’ll be right back.” Both residents unmask, lay their tools on a tray, and shuffle out of the room.

Maybe ten minutes later, a middle-aged man with hairy arms and Mediterranean features enters with the residents trailing him. He introduces himself as the attending physician and immediately takes command of the operation.

“Why isn’t the patient in the proper position?” He circles around to the head of my chair and pulls a lever, reclining me flat on my back. “Pull the tray across his chest and adjust the light closer to his face,” he orders Junior. “You, enlarge the x-ray,” he commands Senior.

His assertiveness is indescribably reassuring, considering the bumbling aloofness of the residents. He easily locates my cyst and begins the process of excising it while barking orders and lecturing them on the procedure.

“I, uhhh, I didn’t drill there because I didn’t want to, you know, hit the mental nerve,” Junior stammers in what sounds like an attempt to save face.

“The mental nerve isn’t here, it’s over there,” the attending counters, tapping a finger about an inch to the left of where he’s operating.

Within a few minutes, my surgery is finished. The attending instructs the residents to suture me up, then hastily exits the room. Junior grabs a roll of dissolvable stitches and a pair of needle drivers. He goes to make an insertion, but…

“Wait!” Senior interrupts, grabbing Junior’s arm. “Don’t start there. Go here first, then do that part. That way, it won’t bubble up.”

‘What does he mean, bubble up?’ I wonder, shooting Junior a glare. ‘Shouldn’t he know what he’s doing?’

And then it hits me. This is a “teaching hospital.” I’m these residents’ hands-on training. Senior is literally teaching Junior how to properly suture, using my gums for practice, and the attending just used me to teach them how to perform this surgery. I’m gut-punched by the reality of how truly insignificant I am as a prisoner. Is this the Department of Corrections’ idea of adequate medical treatment? Surgery by residents who weren’t prepared because they thought I was there for a simple biopsy? Who couldn’t even find my cyst? I’d been worried about reassuring them of their safety around me, while all along it was my safety that was in jeopardy, with them operating on me without knowing what they were doing. What if the guard hadn’t urged them to bring in the attending physician? How much longer would they have continued butchering my gums? What irreparable damage could they have done?

I’m reminded of a book by Allen Hornblum entitled Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison, about a dermatologist named Albert Kligman who conducted hundreds of experiments on prisoners for the furtherance of medical research. The book’s title comes from a quote by Dr. Kligman in 1966 about his first time entering Holmesburg Prison: “All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.”

That such atrocities occurred in the 1960s isn’t shocking, but in 2024? Who would have imagined? When I was sentenced to prison, no one told me that part of my incarceration would entail my body being used for medical residents’ training. Angela Davis noted long ago that “prisoners have served as valuable subjects in medical research, thus positioning prison as a major link between universities and corporations.” But forgive my naivete for expecting a more moral and ethical standard of treatment for prisoners in modern times.

Junior and Senior will both go on to be better doctors, thanks in part to me, the prisoner who simply wanted to be seen—and treated—as a regular human. I can only hope that there will come a day when medical residents at similar teaching hospitals that contract with prisons will look down at the prisoner reclined before them, his arms and legs restrained, while they practice surgical procedures on him as if he’s merely a cadaver, and question their own humanity.

MarQui Clardy, Sr. #1404630
Lawrenceville Correctional Center
1607 Planters Road
Lawrenceville, VA 23868

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