The Hospital Diaries

Officer Anissa Stafford

40-year-old Eden Montgomery slowly and quietly rose from her hospital bed late that night while Officer Anissa Stafford, a decade her junior, sat slumped in the chair just behind the head of Montgomery's bed, feigning sleep. She kept her eyes cracked open just enough to see Montgomery's movements. Stafford had mixed emotions about her babysitting job with Montgomery nearing its end. She hated the woman, as did most people, but would miss the hilarious diaries and stories she would share with the woman she had recently begun dating, in which they would both enjoy a hearty laugh. Montgomery was mean, delusional, huge, and ugly. She was a few inches shorter than Stafford but much wider than her own thin, athletic frame. The hospital room was fairly large and normally held two beds, but no one was allowed near Montgomery except for hospital staff, and only with an officer present. The nut job wasn't just violent, but she also seemed to possess a supernatural kind of strength. The woman didn't seem to realize just how infamous she had become, believing she was barely known where she had been living for the last several years and not nationwide. Stafford would be willing to bet she'd made headlines overseas as well. It wasn't that there weren't other criminals like Montgomery. It was more about Montgomery’s unique strength and appearance. It was only the mid-90s, and had the Internet become what it eventually would, Montgomery would have swept it by storm, almost in the way Michael Jackson's death had. Between many eyewitness accounts and even Montgomery's own accounts, which she thought were far more private than they actually were, both on and off paper, the woman was a die-hard people-hater who rebelled against authority, loved to play the victim, and had zero empathy for others. Her only concern was herself. Others only mattered if she had something to gain from them. She'd been in and out of trouble with the law. Therapists described her as having preteen smarts and teenage behavior. The woman was as naive and gullible as ever. The police took advantage of that gullibility to give her what she wanted so she would be easier to deal with while in the hospital and while they ran their investigation. Six weeks ago, Montgomery had walked out on her husband, Jerrod—not that he could complain much—and decided not only to throw in the towel on him, but also on the rest of her probation. She'd been on probation after assaulting a woman in a grocery store that she claimed had cut in front of her in the checkout line. The victim was Hispanic, and she, along with witnesses, claimed Montgomery called her all kinds of racial slurs and bashed her for not learning English after pummeling her into a black eye, broken nose, bloody lip, and fractured rib. To make matters worse, the woman insisted she had abnormal bleeding at the wrong time of the month and that Montgomery had caused a miscarriage. Unfortunately for the victim, however, it couldn't be proven that she had been pregnant to begin with. The fact that Montgomery had only gotten six months in jail and two and a half years of probation outraged most people. Many believed she should have been sent to prison for years and received a much longer probation sentence. Officer Stafford was inclined to agree. On top of that was the fact that Montgomery was suspected of killing two of her husband's family members shortly before she went on the run. This was supposedly over teasing about her weight and possible jealousy issues. The police, along with her probation officer, agreed it would be best not to let her know she was suspected of murder. They believed it might increase the odds of her slipping up if she didn’t know they were on to her. They’d even had one of their undercovers pose as a therapist who was sympathetic to her plight. After all, it wasn’t like Montgomery wasn’t a victim herself, if only because she had been held hostage along with her friend in a bank heist and then injured while the friend was killed. Law enforcement used this to try to gain as much information as possible about what Montgomery had been involved in besides absconding. The “therapist” agreed to give her a diary, one that she was assured that only she was allowed access to, for recording her thoughts. Since the diary had a combination lock, Montgomery was led to believe only she could unlock it, as long as she didn’t write down or share the combination. They hoped this would get her to open up. In the end, it had—and it hadn’t. For the most part, it was a fun source of entertainment for law enforcement, as it was filled with paranoid delusions. The part they were concerned about was when she began catching on and realizing there was no deal in the end—or at least becoming heavily suspicious that she was being lied to and swore she wasn’t about to end up in jail for it. Montgomery had written that her “protectors” or “bodyguards,” who were actually there to keep her under control and not to protect her from others, as they had told her, were raising her hackles with their behavior and some of the things they said. “They just don't have the kind of empathy one would normally have for a victim who has been through all I've been through,” she had written. “I've got to listen to what my gut instinct is telling me and get the hell out now before taking the chance of finding I’ve indeed been lied to and have to escape from prison rather than a hospital, which could take longer. They've been falling asleep during the night, but I haven't complained since they're about to discharge me anyway, and I could see how boring it would be just sitting there all night that I'd probably fall asleep too.” The police had one of the medical staff lay out the outfit she would supposedly wear to a fictitious safe house, where she would remain until she testified against the bank robbers—not that convicted felons were allowed to testify in court, though Montgomery wasn’t aware of this. They told her not to worry about media bombardment because they would exit through the door at the end of the hall, go down a few flights of stairs, and safely out the back. They were hoping Montgomery would try to make a run for it so they could tack on additional charges and keep her in prison longer—something most people felt she deserved and believed was the only way to keep the general public safer. Officer Stafford sat by her bed. Behind the drawn curtain, a big, burly officer sat just inside the door. There was also an officer outside in the hall, as well as a couple just outside the exit door below. True to form, Montgomery did exactly as they suspected she would. She slowly rose out of bed as the two officers in the room pretended to be asleep. They heard her tinkling in the bathroom. Then they noticed she took longer than usual, not returning to bed. Instead, when she opened the bathroom door, they could see she was no longer in her hospital johnny, but in the clothes that had been laid out for her: a plain gray T-shirt, black tights, and simple canvas shoes. They watched her creep swiftly toward the door before they sprang into action, causing a cry to escape from Montgomery. Incredibly, she managed to yank herself out of the officers’ grips, both inside and just outside the room, and bust through the emergency exit at the end of the hall. It took a moment for the stunned fallen officers to get back on their feet. Meanwhile, Stafford leaped over them and down the scissor stairs after Montgomery. It was four flights down to the door. Breathlessly, Stafford grabbed her walkie-talkie and alerted the other officers. But much to everyone’s absolute astonishment, Montgomery managed to plow past those officers as well. Directly off the parking lot was a thicket of woods, and Montgomery ran straight into it. They fired their weapons in hopes of hitting their dangerous target. Yet despite Montgomery’s screams of terror, alerting them to the direction she’d taken, they missed.