Free Tina Mcelroy Ansa by The Hand I Fan With

clothed on a cot in an examining area of the emergency room, but she heard him raising his voice outside her room.
    “What you mean no
evidence
of a contusion or concussion? The girl was hit in the head. I tell you, a loose board was hanging right over her head when I found her laying out on the floor,” Mr. Jackson insisted.
    “There’s got to be at least a bump on her head or some dizziness or something on one of those head scans ya’ll do,” he continued over the calm explanation of the attending physician. “And you gon’ just stand there and let her walk out of here when she just might fall over and
die
at any moment?”
    The physician raised his voice at that and Lena finally remembered she had talked with this young doctor and his wife after Mass one Sunday at St. Martin de Porres.
    “Now, Mr. Jackson, don’t be having folks in town thinking I ain’t taking care of Lena McPherson,” the young E.R. physician said uneasily. He had meant it to sound like a joke, but the northern boy had gone to medical school in Birmingham and knew enough about small southern towns to know not to mess with a leading and beloved citizen.
    Lena lay back on the cot and wished she could still go to St. Luke’s Hospital, where she was born. She had never been in anyhospital overnight since then. Never in for a baby’s birth. Or a broken bone. Or to have her tonsils taken out. Or for an emergency D&C She was in and out of hospitals all the time visiting this one and that one, but she had never had to stay there herself.
    She closed her eyes and pictured the little one-story building with the simple professional black and white sign out front stating: ST. LUKE’S HOSPITAL . Then, in smaller letters: Front Entrance. The rear entrance had nearly been obscured by the mass of pink and white and red roses growing in back. She could see the faces of the nurses and orderlies, dressed in starched white cotton, scurrying around silently, trying to keep up the high standard of the founder and owner, Dr. William A. Williams.
    But in the little town’s rush to be a part of the world back in the sixties and seventies, Mulberry—in the name of revitalization, growth and urban renewal—had allowed and encouraged wholesale razing of neighborhoods and streets and historically significant buildings, as if the tiny burg had a real urban section to renew. And the private hospital that had served Mulberry’s black community for more than half a century was torn down like a pile of trash to make way for a little-used urban playground. At the last minute, there was talk of a protest and the town officials moved up the scheduled demolition in response to the rumors. Lena’s gardener, Mr. Renfroe, and his crew barely got to the site in time to save the roses.
    All Mr. Jackson’s fussing had accomplished was to keep Lena at the city hospital all day and into the evening having a battery of tests run on her to prove she had not sustained trauma to the head.
    By the time Lena just insisted that they find something wrong with her or let her go, the hospital staff was as ready for her to depart as she was to leave. They had taken her purse and her little black cellular phone away from her at the start of her visit. But they gladly returned both to her a couple of hours later. All morning long, the nurses had been kept busy bringing phones to Lena or calling her to the phone because “they say it’s vitally important,” the women and one male nurse intoned flatly for the twentieth time. Precious andsome of her office and department managers—Wanda, Brenda, Carroll, Marilyn—slipped in and out all day with papers resting on leather attaché cases with “LLL” marking the spots for Lena to sign.
    “Here, Miss McPherson, put your magic on this for me.”
    “Here, Lena, sign off on this, and we’ll be through.”
    “Here, Miss Mac, I replaced the tape in your recorder.”
    Lena kept smiling and shrugging and saying resignedly to the hospital staff,