Search Results: 'Infirmed'

The Palliative Exit

Words: 2987 · Source Novel:: Meridian Rust

At the Hamilton Aged and Infirmed Correctional Facility—a converted textile mill where inmates wait to die under the indifferent watch of for-profit medical contractor MedCorr—seventy-one-year-old Orson Ballard, convicted in 1987 for the bombing of a union hall, discovers that his terminal liver failure is being accelerated by deliberate under-medication. He shares a cell block with Eli Vance, a twenty-six-year-old serving time for a fire that killed a predatory bail bondsman. During a staged medical emergency, the two slip through a disused laundry chute and steal a supply van. As they disappear into the pre-dawn fog of the Meridian Turnpike, MedCorr activates a recovery clause, dispatching a freelance tracker named Doreen Hawke, a former homicide detective whose pension was erased by the same factory closures that gutted the county.