“He’s white,” Loother says.
When Opal pulls up, Jacquie sees Harvey come running out toward them. She doesn’t know why he should come, or why she calls out his name, waves him over. They all get into the back of Opal’s Ford Bronco and Opal puts her foot on the gas.
Blue
BLUE AND EDWIN MANAGE to get out to Blue’s car without having to stop. Edwin is out of breath and starting to look pretty pale. Blue puts Edwin’s seat belt on, starts the car, and heads for the hospital. She leaves because she hasn’t even heard sirens yet. She leaves because Edwin is officially slumped in his seat, his eyelids half-closed. She leaves because she knows the way and can get there sooner than someone not even here yet.
After the shooting stopped, Blue could barely make out what Edwin was yelling at her from the ground.
“We gotta go,” Edwin said. He was talking about the hospital. He wanted her to take him. He was right. They wouldn’t get enough ambulances there in time. Who knows how many people had been shot. For Edwin, it was just one shot—in the stomach.
“Okay,” Blue said. She tried to help him up, wrapped his arm over her shoulder and pulled. He winced a little but for the most part was pretty unfazed.
“Hold it with pressure so it doesn’t bleed too much,” Blue said. He was holding three or four Big Oakland Powwow T-shirts against his stomach. He reached behind his back and the color went out of his face.
“It went through,” Edwin said. “Out the back.”
“Fuck,” Blue said. “Or good? Shit. I don’t know.” Blue put an arm around him and let his arm hold on to her. They hobbled out of the coliseum like that, all the way out to Blue’s car.
* * *
—
When Blue pulls into Highland, Edwin is passed out. She’d been telling him, yelling at him, screaming at him to stay awake. There was probably a closer hospital, but she knew Highland. She keeps her hand on the horn, to try to wake Edwin up and to get someone to come out to help. She reaches her hand over and slaps Edwin a few times on the cheek. Edwin shakes his head a little.
“You gotta wake up, Ed,” Blue says. “We’re here.”
He doesn’t respond.
Blue runs inside to get someone with a stretcher to come out and help.
When she comes out through the emergency room automatic double doors, she sees a Ford Bronco pull up. All the doors open at once. She sees Harvey. And Jacquie. Jacquie’s holding a boy, a teenager in regalia. As Jacquie passes Blue, two nurses come out with a stretcher for Edwin. Blue knows right away there will be confusion. Should she allow Jacquie and the boy to go in Edwin’s place? It doesn’t matter what Blue has or hasn’t decided. She watches the nurses load the boy and take him away on the stretcher. Harvey walks up to Blue and looks at Edwin in the car. He nods his head sideways at Edwin like: Let’s pick him up.
Harvey slaps Edwin a few times on the cheek and he rustles a little but can’t pick his head up. Harvey yells some incomprehensible thing about getting someone out here to help, then gets Edwin halfway out of the car and puts Edwin’s arm around him. Blue squeezes between the car and Edwin and takes his other arm and puts it around her shoulder.
* * *
—
Two orderlies settle Edwin on the gurney. Blue and Harvey run alongside as they roll him through the halls, and then he’s through the swinging doors.
* * *
—
Blue sits next to Jacquie, who’s looking down at that angle, at the ground, elbows to knees in that position you take when you’re waiting for death to leave the building, for your loved one to come out in a wheelchair with a broken smile, for a doctor with a sure step to come for you with good news. Blue wants to say something to Jacquie. But what? Blue looks at Harvey. He really does look like Edwin. And if Harvey and Jacquie are together, then does that mean…？ No. Blue doesn’t allow that thought to finish. She looks across from her. There are two younger boys and a woman who looks a little like Jacquie, but bigger. The woman looks at Blue and Blue averts her eyes. She wants to ask the woman why she’s here. She knows it has to do with the powwow, the shooting. But there’s nothing to say. There’s nothing to do but wait.
Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield
OPAL KNOWS Orvil’s gonna make it. She’s telling herself that in her head. She would scream the thought if you could scream thoughts. Maybe you can. Maybe that’s what she’s doing to make herself believe there’s reason to hope despite there maybe being no reason to hope. Opal wants Jacquie and the boys to see it on her face too, this belief despite everything, which is maybe what faith is. Jacquie doesn’t look okay. She looks like if Orvil doesn’t make it, she won’t either. Opal thinks she’s right. None of them will make it back from this if he doesn’t. Nothing will be okay.