Antebellum (46 page)

I nodded my head. I couldn't hide in this hospital room forever. I'd have to face the world beyond its sliding doors eventually. It might as well be tomorrow...

“Remember,” SaTia interjected into my thoughts, “it doesn't mean you have to leave tomorrow—just that that's what they'll be saying in the press. In the end, you leave whenever you're ready. Okay?”

I nodded my head again, grateful for her concern.

“Okay, next. The doctors are crying about it being against the law that you're being housed in a hospital but none of the doctors have been allowed to see you.”

“Is it against the law?” My mother's curiosity got the best of her as she leaned forward in her seat.

“Yes, it is. I've been pulling strings to keep them out, but I won't be able to do it much longer. Moses, are you willing to let a doctor examine you?”

I flashed back to first waking up from my coma and having the white doctors charge toward me. I almost jumped out of my seat as I vigorously shook my head.

“Okay, okay, Moses, calm down...” SaTia saw my excitement and began to speak soothingly to me until I was sitting back in my seat once again. “God...Moses, I honestly don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to keep them out of here.”

“Why don't you let 'im choose?”

We all looked at Big Mama, wondering what she meant.

“I'm sorry, Mama Jenkins?”

“Let him pick what doctor he want to look at him. Ask him if he wanna pick.” She motioned to me while continuing her knitting.

“Moses, would it help if you could pick the doctor who looks at you?”

I nodded my head.

“If you picked out a doctor, would you let him examine you?”

See if you can find a doctor who can make Sarah's roots,
I thought to myself as I nodded my head.

“Thank God!” SaTia threw her hands up. “Mama Jenkins, you're a genius!”

“Child, please...” Big Mama glanced up at SaTia incredulously, and went back to her knitting.

“Okay, I'm going to get some doctors in here as soon as we finish. The sooner we get you examined, the quicker I can get these lawyers and the medical board off my back. Just two other small things, okay?”

I nodded for her to continue.

“First, I want to expose you to some of what is beyond those doors today. Are you open to that?”

I nodded my head.

“Great. Second, Brian, Henry, and Ray have been blowing up my phone. They want to come see you tonight. I told them I'd get back to them. Do you think you're ready for that?”

My forehead wrinkled. I couldn't pinpoint it, but something was off. Brian...Henry...Ray...wasn't somebody missing?

“You're wondering about Orlando, aren't you?”

SaTia had read my thoughts once again. I looked at her solemnly and nodded my head.

“Orlando's in jail, Moses. He was working with P. Silenzas to set you up.”

I knew it, but the words hit me like I didn't. I flashbacked to standing on my front porch and seeing his face before feeling my chest break apart like a dropped Lego tower.

Brian, Henry, Ray, and Orlando...my best friends from a different
life. Would I even recognize them now? Would they recognize me?

I nodded to SaTia, telling her to go ahead and let them come. Maybe they could tell me who I was without my asking.

“Okay,” she said while standing up from her seat. “I'll call them and let them know. Right now, though, I'm going to round up some doctors for you to choose from. The sooner we can get that over, the better.”

SaTia walked briskly over to the double sliding doors, but stopped before she walked under the censor.

“Moses...come here.”

I stood and walked up beside her.

“There are two sliding doors to this room. You have to walk through the first set, and then take about four steps and walk through the second set. By the time the doors to the hallway open, the first set have already closed. As the VIP room, it's built that way on purpose, so that no one looking in from the outside hallway can see straight into the room.”

I looked at her, wondering why she couldn't have told me this while I was sitting down.

“I'm telling you this because it's time you saw what's on the other side of this room. You need to know what you'll be walking into, whenever you decide to leave. Come with me.”

We took a step forward and the double doors in front of us opened, revealing the short hallway and the next set of doors a few feet ahead of us.

“You wait here. When I step up and open those doors, you step back from these doors. It'll be about a two second delay before they close, and the reporters on the other end have gotten so used to seeing me come out that they don't even lift their cameras anymore. You won't have a long time, but take a good look at what's out there. I'll be right back with the doctors.”

SaTia looked over at me as I nodded to her one last time, and then she stepped forward. Once I heard the doors in front of me begin to move, I tried to step back from the doors that I was standing in, but I couldn't. The scene in front of me was mesmerizing. There were people all crowded into the cramped space of the hallway like sardines in a can. I couldn't see the walls anywhere. Every spot had a body blocking it.

It was like a parade had decided to march into the hospital. The cameramen waved their cameras while the reporters did tricks with their microphones. Various journalists had found unused gurneys lying around, and turned the portable beds into their own temporary office spaces. Papers lay scattered around like litter in a public park, and the tapping of laptop keyboards seemed to fill the air with a rhythmic cadence that you could almost dance to.

It was just a matter of time, I guessed, before it would happen.

“Oh my God...it's him. It's him!!!!”

And just that quickly, my comical parade turned into an unrelenting stampede. I couldn't even tell the different people apart anymore. Before my eyes, they all meshed together into one huge, ferocious beast that galloped toward me, shaking the very foundation of the building as it bounded ahead. The sheer force of what was coming toward me forced me back a step, but when I looked up again and saw how close it was, my body froze in the fear of impending death.

Finally, when the beast had gotten so close that I could just about smell the bloodlust on its breath, the first set of double doors slid shut, as did the set that I was standing in front of, and before I knew what had happened, I was back in my solitude, surrounded by peace and quiet once again.

“Moses, baby, you okay?”

My mom saw me standing at the doors, still frozen from the few seconds that had passed. She walked over and placed one
hand on my arm and the other around my waist, leading me back toward the bed.

“You rest now.” She sat me down and glanced at my pale face. “You'll be fine; you just rest.”

Thirty minutes later, SaTia walked back through the door. Exhausted from my brush with death, I had fallen into a fitful sleep on the bed. The sound of the double doors opening again jarred me awake, however, and I jumped up with wide, darting eyes.

“Calm down, Moses. It's just me.” SaTia walked up to the bed and sat down at the foot of it. “You didn't see me looking back at you, but I saw what happened. I hope you can understand why I had to make you do that. Nothing I said could have prepared you to come face to face with them. You had to see them for yourself.”

I nodded my head, understanding what she was trying to do, but traumatized nonetheless.

“Whenever you're ready, Moses, I have doctors waiting right outside the door.”

I nodded again, and closed my eyes to try and shake off the fear from earlier. Once I calmed myself down, I moved over to the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, and motioned for SaTia to continue. Mama and Big Mama sat quietly in the corner, spectating.

“Okay,” SaTia said, “so I pretty much rounded up all the doctors I could find. I'll bring them in three at a time.”

Immediately I became defensive. The thought of my room being crowded with people I didn't know made me uncomfortable enough to stand and ready myself for battle once again. SaTia saw my
face change and my body tense up as I rose to my feet. “Moses, what...?”

“I think you better bring them doctors in one by one,” Big Mama said. And before SaTia could respond she added, “or else you gon' get one'a them doctors hurt.”

SaTia looked at Big Mama, then me. “Moses...look, I'll bring them in one by one, okay? Only one at a time. But if I do, you gotta sit down and try not to look like you want to murder them. Deal?”

She waited for my response. Slowly, I lowered myself back down to the bed and tried to calm myself.

“Good. Thank God! Okay, one by one. You ready?”

I nodded again, and SaTia made her way over to the door. When it opened, she motioned to the first doctor, who was an older white man with a gray beard. He came in with a smile, but lost it when he saw the hate in my eyes.

I didn't even have to shake my head. SaTia ushered him out just as soon as he had come in.

That was the routine for the better part of an hour. SaTia would usher in white doctors of all varieties—tall and short, male and female, fat and skinny, tanned and pale, and I'd reject all of them in the same manner. Every once in a while there was an Asian or Middle Eastern doctor thrown into the mix, and the room would become quiet as everyone watched my face soften a bit, but in the end, I'd shake my head for them as well. They were still strangers to me.

SaTia never lost hope. She continued to bring more doctors in, and I continued to turn them away. Just as she began to show a little crack in her armor, and cut her eyes at me with the slightest look of exasperation, she invited in a middle-aged man with bifocal glasses and a crisp shape-up.

Visibly nervous, his white coat shook slightly and contrasted with his dark tan skin. He'd set his face hard. He wouldn't let it betray him. He'd been broken before. I could tell by his eyes. He'd been broken and had somehow found his way back, just as I had.

I turned to SaTia and nodded.

“Are...are you serious? You're okay with him? Really?”

“Well, what's wrong with him?” Big Mama said from the corner.

“Nothing, Mama Jenkins. I just can't believe Moses finally made a choice. So...”

SaTia turned to me again, hesitant. She was scared I would change my mind, but it was made up. “You're okay with him? We can start your exam?”

I nodded my head once again. SaTia paused a moment and turned her head up to the ceiling. “Thank goodness!”

“Wasn't too hard to figure out the puzzle after while, girl,” Big Mama interjected. “Seems you went and rounded up all the white doctors you could find.”

SaTia looked at Big Mama with words on her tongue that she knew she couldn't say, then looked back at the doctor.

“Moses, this is Doctor—”

“Bail...” the doctor's voice cracked like a broken cell phone screen. I, along with my army of women, couldn't help but smirk. His embarrassment had sufficiently lightened the mood in the room. I was already happy I'd picked him.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “...Bailey. My name is Dr. Bailey. And if you don't mind, Mr. Jenkins, we're gonna see just how healthy you are today.”

Mr. Jenkins
. If I'd ever been called that before, I hadn't cared enough to note it. Now it made all the difference in the world.

“Shall we begin?”

One more nod, and we were under way.

An hour later and Dr. Bailey was wrapping up. I hadn't said anything during the examination, but he'd gotten over his nervousness and become light-hearted and jovial enough for me to consider him a potential friend by the time we were done. Every once in a while he'd look at me curiously, as if there was something he just couldn't figure out, and then he'd shrug his shoulders and start out with the next part of the exam. There was only one point in the exam where he was perplexed enough to stop the process and pull me to the side.