This story first appeared in the Guardian on October 9.
When I first met my friend Melissa in prison, she impressed me with her ability to endure crisis with a mere shrug and dispassionate roll of the eyes. She doesn’t rattle easily, so the trembling in her voice during recent phone calls alarmed me.
“I’m scared,” she said about the mounting COVID-19 crisis in Texas prisons. This was the first time I heard Melissa say she feared anything.
