“I’m good.”
“What happened?”
I started running the story down and got about halfway through, just up to when the cop pressed me, when Spoony lost it.
“See?” he said, looking around to our parents. “See? This is that bullshit! I’m so sick of them treating us like we animals. Like we America’s disobedient dogs!”
“Calm down, Spoony,” Ma said, which only made it worse.
“Calm down? Calm down?” Spoony’s voice got significantly less calm. “Haven’t we been a little too calm? They get to do whatever they want to us, to him—to your son—and we’re supposed to just calm down?” He put his hands on his head, flattening his locs, rocking back and forth in that way people do right before they punch a wall.
“Spoony—”
“And he was unarmed! Calm down? Do you know the stats? It’s something like black people are twice as likely to have no weapons on them when they’re killed by cops. Twice as likely! Should I run down the list of the people this has happened to? Calm down? Let’s paint their names on the walls and watch, there’ll be enough to give the entire hospital a fresh new look. Then tell me to calm down. He could’ve been killed!”
“But he wasn’t,” Dad said, deadpan. He seemed totally unimpressed by Spoony’s outburst, and probably wrote it off as theatrics. He was always calling Spoony a rebel without a cause.
“But he could’ve been! For a bag of chips that he was gonna pay for! For having brown skin and wearing his jeans a certain way. And guess what, Dad, that ROTC uniform was right there in that bag. The bag was open so that cop probably saw it. But did it matter?” Spoony’s voice fanned, the anger breaking him down.
“That’s enough!” Ma said firmly.
Dad and Spoony glared at each other until finally Dad turned away and looked out the window. Ma just sat on the bed, rubbing my hand, her eyes wet from it all. Spoony leaned against the wall. And I sat there thinking about what was going to happen to me. I know my father and brother were arguing about what had happened, but all I could think about in that moment was what was going to happen next. Would the charges stick? Would they follow me around, a smudge on my record until I was eighteen when it would finally disappear? Does anything actually disappear these days?
The silence was much worse than the yelling, so I fiddled with the remote. The same one that controlled my bed controlled the television. I turned it on. Too bad TV sucks on Saturday morning unless you’re a little kid or a politician. And politics are painful to watch. Boring. So the sound of helium-pitched cartoon characters had to be the life raft for this sinking ship of awkwardness. Thankfully, the doctor came in to save us from the equally awkward distraction of cartoons.
“Good morning, folks,” he said, full of cheer, which was weird because this was not a cheerful occasion. But I guess doctors always have to try to lift the mood. “I’m Dr. Barnes.”
“David Butler,” my father said, shaking his hand.
“Jessica,” my mother said, doing the same.
“Randolph,” Spoony said, introducing himself with his government name. He got the nickname Spoony because when he was young, he refused to eat with a fork. He was always scared he’d poke himself in the tongue, so he only ever used spoons. But that’s not something you tell a doctor.
“And Rashad,” the doctor said, pointing at me. I nodded. “Nice to meet all of you. I just want to give you all an update on what’s happening and what’s ahead of us.”
“Sounds good,” Dad said.
“Okay, so Rashad’s nose was broken, but we’ve already set it, so as long as he doesn’t bump it or knock it, it’ll heal just fine. The same goes for his ribs. There’s really nothing we can do about them except make sure that Rashad isn’t in any pain, but as long as they’re fairly stable, they’ll heal up as well. We did do an X-ray just to make sure there were no lacerations to any of his organs, and there weren’t, so we’re pretty much in the clear with that.”
“So when can he come home?” Ma asked, starting to beam.
“Well, that’s the thing. Under normal circumstances I would say that Rashad could go home tonight.” Ma stopped rubbing my hand. The doctor continued. “But this isn’t a normal circumstance. He has some internal bleeding—hemothorax, it’s called—which just means there are some torn blood vessels around his lungs due, I’m sure, to the impact. Usually, this fixes itself, but we’ll need to monitor him for a few days in case it doesn’t.”
“And if it doesn’t . . . ,” my mother began.
“Then he’ll need surgery,” the doctor told us.
Surgery. That’s one of those words that no matter how many times you hear it, it always freaks you out. Surgery. My mother’s face tightened as she did everything she could to hold it together, but she couldn’t keep her leg from bouncing like she always does when she’s trying keep her emotions tucked in. Spoony bit down on his bottom lip. My father just seemed to be taking it all in, not particularly bothered.
“Sound good?” the doctor asked.
“Sounds good,” Dad replied, shaking the doctor’s hand once more. Dr. Barnes said he’d be in to check on me in a few hours, and left.
I reached for the remote and turned the channel.
I wish there were more interesting things to tell you about the rest of the day, but the truth is that most of it I spent dozing in and out of sleep, while my family sat around watching me doze in and out of sleep. Well, at least, Ma and Dad did. Spoony was in and out of the room, making and taking phone calls, and whenever he was in the room he was texting. I didn’t know who all the texts were going to, but I knew at least some of them were going to his girlfriend, Berry. And, funny enough, Berry’s little brother was my homeboy, English. English Jones. The athlete, pretty boy, non-asshole who everybody loved. Yep, that guy. So I knew that if Berry knew what happened to me, English knew. And if English knew, Carlos and Shannon knew. And if those two dudes knew, then by Monday, half the school would know.
And then I was asleep. And then I was awake again. And Clarissa brought lunch in. I had barely touched breakfast. The oatmeal. Maybe a spoonful or two. It wasn’t so bad, but after my father acted like . . . my father, I had pretty much lost my appetite. I offered it to my mother, but she couldn’t eat either. Spoony ate the fruit cocktail and said it reminded him of elementary school.
“I used to love the grapes, but there was never enough of them,” he said, holding the cup up to his face and slurping the fruit out.
For lunch, Central Hospital served up its finest turkey club sandwich with vegetable soup. I ate half the sandwich after my mother pretty much forced me to eat something, and I have to say, it was pretty good. All these years I had been hearing about how nasty hospital food was, and now that I finally got a chance to taste it, it wasn’t half-bad. Better than school lunch, that’s for damn sure.
Still nothing on TV except for an overly dramatic Lifetime movie that my mother was totally into. A cliché stalker story. A woman meets a man on a bus on her way home from work. They exchange numbers. Go out on a first date. He’s perfect: attractive, smart, and he has a good job as an audio engineer for television shows. She’s excited until she finds out he’s wired her whole house so that he can hear everything she does when he’s not around. He can hear her shower, and cook, and talk to her friends about how crazy he is. And he listens to the feed while he watches TV, on mute, in the attic of the house next door, where he lives (she doesn’t know this, though). Total stalker. Shittiest actors on Earth meets the shittiest story on Earth, which makes for the perfect Saturday afternoon movie. For my mom.