When he reached his fifth year, he’d yet to complete a quarter of his sentence but it felt like he’d been incarcerated a lifetime. Now when he ran, his left knee ached and when he lay in bed at night the pain cascaded down into his foot and up into his hip. He couldn’t imagine not running. More often than not it was the only thing he considered an event in an otherwise eventless day. One morning a few years ago he’d gone to the infirmary to have his leg examined by the same nurse who’d ordered him strip-searched in her presence. She’d given him a blue tensor bandage with a number 4 on it, which he’d worn only once, realizing sadly that suffering from pain and awaiting its relief, particularly at night, were, in a weird way, two precious activities he wasn’t prepared to give up.
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