“I see the hospital,” the other boy said. I couldn’t remember his name. But I saw lights from the hospital through the window above my head. Round Hill Hospital, where I’d had my tonsils out and my hand stitched up after I cut it carving a boat out of balsa wood. I closed my eyes. The hospital would take care of me. I could sleep.
* * *
The next thing I knew, Jocelyn was squeezing my shoulder, telling me to wake up. “Open your eyes,” she said. “Don’t sleep.”
Everything was the same. The same jut of her chin above me. The same dark car ceiling. The same stop-and-go motion that was making me nauseous.
“Why are we leaving?” I asked. “Did they … fix me already?”
“No, honey,” Jocelyn said, and I thought, “Honey”？ Why is she calling me honey? Why did she bite off the words like she was angry? “Once they found out you’re one of ‘those SCOPE kids’ they said you have to go to the Negro hospital. ‘The colored hospital,’ they called it.”
“I don’t know where that is,” I muttered. That seemed so wrong. “I’m from Round Hill. I had my hand taken out there.”
“Your hand taken out?” Jocelyn asked, then she spoke across me to the boys. “She’s delirious or something,” she said.
“I’m driving as fast as I can,” Paul said.
“It’s in Carlisle,” the other boy said, loudly, so I could hear him. Chip. His name was Chip.
Carlisle? Carlisle was a million miles away. I shut my eyes. I wouldn’t let Jocelyn wake me up again.
* * *
At the hospital, they kept me awake when all I wanted to do was sleep. They shined lights in my eyes and put ice on my head and gave me pills to lessen the pain. A nurse sat next to me, smiling and talking. I tried to tune her out and sleep, but gave up after a while. I got my words mixed up when I spoke to her. I wanted to tell her about SCOPE but couldn’t remember the name of it. She knew, though. She said her auntie had been one of the protesters in front of the courthouse. She was proud of her.
I had no way of reaching my SCOPE team, but I assumed they knew where I was, since Paul, Jocelyn, and Chip had brought me here. “Just you don’t worry ’bout it,” the nurse said. So I didn’t.
* * *
Sunday was a blur, but when I woke up Monday morning, I felt almost fine. I sat up in the narrow hospital bed and ate eggs and grits and talked to my roommate, who was there for a broken leg. “You white, ain’t ya,” she said. “Why you here?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” I said, and I explained about the white hospital turning me away. The more my head cleared, the angrier I got about that.
The nurse told me someone from SCOPE would pick me up that afternoon. She said she was “truly honored” to have me as her patient and thanked me for the work we were doing. I was suddenly glad the white hospital had turned me away then. Nobody there would be thanking me.
* * *
Win walked into my room right after lunch. I lit up, seeing him, but he didn’t smile.
“You’re a fool, girl,” he said, pulling a chair next to my bed and sitting down. He spoke quietly, with a glance at the curtain pulled around my roommate’s bed. “What were y’all thinking, going to a Klan rally? That mob could’ve killed you. You’re lucky you got away with just a lump on your head.”
“Nobody did this to me,” I said. I touched the tender spot on my forehead and tried not to let the pain show in my face. “I did it to myself. I tripped.”
“So I heard. Running to get away from the mob. Greg lit into Paul and the others. He’ll probably go easy on you since you’re hurt, but you’d best have some remorse.”
It all came back to me. The woman collecting money in the pail. How she lost her smile when she saw Jocelyn’s SCOPE button. The angry spectators. The enormous flaming cross. Uncle Byron. I looked at Win. “It was nasty,” I said.
“Mm. Not surprised to hear it.”
“The sheriff from Round Hill was there. Byron Parks. He’s my father’s lifelong best friend. He’s my godfather!” I shook my head, still distressed at seeing Uncle Byron in that ugly crowd. I thought I should write to Daddy to tell him Uncle Byron had been there, but then I’d have to admit that I’d been there and he’d come to get me. Assuming he could find me.
“Maybe your father was there, too,” Win suggested.
I rolled my eyes in annoyance. The movement made my head throb. “My father would never be a part of the Klan,” I said.