Arthur captured four mice that he kept as pets. He studied their behavior and began to write a long report about the possibility of grafting the skin of mice on human bum victims. One afternoon in the lab, while he was making some notes, three inmates came in. One stood guard and the other two confronted him.

“Gimme the package,” one of them said. “We know you got it. Give it over.”

Arthur shook his head and went back to writing his notes. The two prisoners came around the desk and grabbed him …

Ragen pulled the two men down, kicking one and then the other. When the inmate who had been standing guard outside the lab came at him with a knife, Ragen broke his wrist. The three of them fled, one shouting, “You a dead man, Milligan. I’m contracting your ass.”

Ragen asked Arthur if he knew what was going on.

“A package,” Arthur said. “From the way they acted, I imagine it would be drugs.”

He searched the lab and the dispensary. Finally, behind some books and papers on a top shelf he found a plastic bag with white powder.

Allen asked, “Is it smack?”

“I’ll have to run some tests to be sure,” Arthur said, putting it on the scales. “There’s half a kilo here.”

He discovered it was cocaine.

“What are you gonna do with it?”

Arthur tore open the package and dumped the white powder down the toilet.

“Someone’s gonna be awful sore,” Allen said.

But Arthur was already back to thinking about his skin-graft report.

Arthur had heard about the state prison blues. Most prisoners went through an anxiety period during the process of becoming institutionalized. As the inmate faced losing his independence and his identity and was forced to accept suppression, the change often led to depression and an emotional breakdown. For Milligan it caused a mix-up time.

The letters to Marlene changed. Philip and Kevin, who had been writing obscenities and drawing pornographic cartoons, stopped. Now the letters showed a fear of insanity. Tommy ’s letters said he was having strange hallucinations. He also wrote that he was studying medical books day and night. When he got his parole, he wrote, he was going to study medicine, “even if it takes fifteen years.” They would marry, he promised, and have a house, and he would do research and be a specialist. “How does that sound?” he wrote. “Dr. and Mrs. Milligan.”

On October 4, because of the cocaine episode, Milligan was transferred to C block and kept segregated in protective isolation. His medical books and portable TV set were taken away from him. Ragen ripped the steel bed rails from the wall and jammed them into the door. Workmen had to remove the door to get him out of his cell.

He had difficulty sleeping and complained of frequent; vomiting and blurred vision. Dr. Steinberg saw him from time to time and administered mild sedatives and antispasmodics. Though he felt that Milligan s problems were essentially psychological, on October 13 he ordered that Milligan be taken from Lebanon to the Central Medical Center in Columbus for treatment.