This article is derived from a socio-ethnographical study and shows how medical care provided in prison and relationships developed between male inmates and female nurses offer opportunities for intimacy in a universe of hardships based on suspicion (access to medical care, preservation of medical confidentiality, construction of trust relationships, life on top of one another and lack of affection, competition among the nursing staff for human relations and humanity). It describes how inmates make use of medical care. This ranges from a refusal that is inscribed in a strategy of resistance based on an increased prestige of masculinity which is proper to prison life to a protective comforting by nurses.