But they weren’t looking at me. Three of them were huddled together and whispering in a language I didn’t know. Hookers, I guessed, though not the happy variety. If there was such a thing. My fourth fellow prisoner was a white girl trembling so violently her teeth clicked. From fear, the cold, or the drugs she’d ingested—take your pick.

Upon arrival at the Women’s Unit, we were led shuffling into a holding cell where the white girl promptly vomited onto the concrete floor and started to cry for her mother. Successfully, as it turned out. In less than thirty minutes, a guard arrived to take her to her parents; her bail had been posted. The three Asian women were soon taken away, too. I was left behind with the puddle of vomit.

An hour later I was processed, a term that made me think of packaged meat. I underwent a cursory medical exam—stick out your tongue, say ahh, hold this thermometer in your mouth until we finally remember to take it out ten minutes later. This was followed by a less cursory strip search. I used to laugh when my personal trainer used the term prisoner squat, but that was when I was wearing Lululemon leggings. It wasn’t so funny when I was wearing nothing.

A shower came next, and I was glad for it after a long day in the office and a second long day in the police station. They gave me a scrap of a towel to dry myself with, but no comb and certainly no blow dryer. My hair was going to dry in tangles—I’d look like Medusa. But maybe that was a good thing: one more mark of the warrior.

I waited with the scant covering of the towel clasped around me while a clerk eyeballed me for size. She issued me a white cotton bra and panties, a set of orange scrubs, a pair of canvas sneakers, and a white T-shirt and blue pants for pajamas. I changed as directed into the underwear and scrubs, and they bagged the clothes I’d been wearing. They bagged my wedding ring, too. I didn’t have any other personal property to be checked; my coat and purse and briefcase were still being held by the police as evidence.

I was assigned an inmate number, fingerprinted and photographed, then led to another clerk, who peck-typed my data into a computer and had to backspace with a sigh at regular intervals. Full legal name, address, birth date. Contact person? I hesitated before I named David Lambert, same address. But when I couldn’t provide a telephone number for him, the clerk heaved another sigh and backspaced to delete his name. I watched it disappear across the screen, letter by letter, until he was wiped from my profile.

I didn’t have any money to deposit into my commissary account, a deficiency that made the clerk sigh yet again. Then it was time for my allotted phone call, my single chance to find someone to post my bail. Who could I call? Not my mother. Not only was she broke, she was the one who’d landed me here. Not any of my old friends. I’d ghosted them years ago so they wouldn’t know how far I’d fallen. Imagine if they could see me now. And certainly not Mrs. Casco. She might never recover from the shock and disappointment of learning how her brightest hope had turned out.