The Sacrifice. Joyce Carol Oates

that nasty place.

      In the ER in the bright lights you could see these words scrawled on her chest and belly you couldn’t read too well because the letters were smeared and distorted NIGRA BITCH KU KUX KLANN.

      (Right away I had to wonder—why’d anybody write words on somebody’s body upside-down?)

      NIGRA BITCH—this was just below the girl’s breasts, on her midriff.

      KU KUX KLANN—this was on the girl’s belly just above her navel.

      Photos were taken of these racist words as photos were taken of the girl’s injuries. This is ER procedure in such cases. When the flashes went off Sybilla Frye tried to hide her face making a wailing sound like Noooo.

      It was our assumption she’d been raped—very possibly, gang-raped. Her clothes were ripped and bloody and her lower belly and thighs were bruised, we saw when we got the jeans pulled down. (She fought us pretty desperately about that—pulling down her jeans.) Her face had sustained the worst injuries. Both her eyes were blackened and her upper lip was swollen to twice its size, like a goiter.

      A brutal gang-rape is not a common incident even in inner-city Pascayne. Yet, a brutal gang-rape is not an uncommon incident in inner-city Pascayne.

      When she was first brought in Sybilla Frye hadn’t been ID’d yet. We didn’t know her name or address or who to contact. The EMTs couldn’t help us much. We were asking her questions but she kept pretending to be unconscious and unable to hear us when it was obvious that she was conscious and she was hearing us.

      I was the ER physician on duty, Sunday morning October 7.

      Right away I said to her, “Miss? Open your eyes, please.” Because I had to examine her eyes. I had to determine if possibly she’d had a concussion or a skull fracture. I’d be ordering X-rays including X-rays of her skull. But still she wouldn’t open her eyes. She was so tense, you could feel her body quivering. Yet she refused to cooperate. She pretended to be unconscious the way a small child might pretend to be “asleep.” It isn’t easy to pretend you’re unconscious when you’re conscious. You might think it is, but it isn’t. I lifted one of her arms over her head and released it and immediately she deflected her arm to avoid striking her face—it’s a reflex you can’t help. Clearly, this girl who’d be identified as “Sybilla Frye” was conscious in the ER and in control of her reactions. I could see she’d been injured—that was legitimate—I felt sorry for her but this kind of uncooperative behavior would impede us in our treatment so I said, “Miss, you can hear me. So open your eyes”—and finally she did.

      Looked at Dr. D___, like she was terrified of him.

      Dr. D___ is Asian, light-skin. Later it came out she was afraid of him, he’d looked “white” to her.

      Of the EMTs, just one of us was “white”—“white Hispanic.” The others were dark-Hispanic, African-American. Yet, she’d acted scared of us.

      She was terrified! Just so scared …

      She wasn’t hysterical but she was—she wasn’t—you had to concur she wasn’t in her right mind and under these circumstances you couldn’t blame her for not cooperating. She didn’t seem to understand where she was, or what was happening …

      She understood exactly where she was, and exactly what was happening. She didn’t wish to cooperate, that’s all.

      I did wonder why she wasn’t crying—most girls would’ve been crying by now. Most women.

      We treated her for face wounds. Lacerations, black eyes, mashed nose, bloody lip. A couple of loosened teeth where he’d punched her. (You could almost see the imprint of a man’s fist in her jaw. But he hadn’t strangled her, there were no red marks around her throat.) The blood wasn’t fresh but had coagulated in her nostrils, in her hair, etc. By their discolorations you could see that the bruises were at least twenty-four hours old. Also the blackened eyes. We gave her stitches for the deepest cuts in her eyebrow and on her upper lip. She reacted to the stitches and disinfectant so we had to hold her down but she still didn’t say any actual words only just Noooo. We wondered if she was, like, a Dominican who didn’t know English, or—there’s Nigerians in Pascayne—maybe she was Nigerian …

      There were Hispanic nurses we called in, to try to talk to her in Spanish—she ignored them completely.

      Where (presumably) the rope had been tied around her wrists and ankles there were only faint red abrasions on the skin. No deep abrasions, welts, or cuts.

      We couldn’t get a blood sample. That wasn’t going to happen just yet.

      Pascayne police officers were just arriving at the factory when the EMTs bore the girl away in the ambulance. The bloodied tarpaulin and other items were left there for the police to examine and take away as evidence.

      Soon then, police officers began to arrive at St. Anne’s ER.

      The hard part was—the pelvic exam …

      We had to determine if she’d been raped. Had to take semen samples if we could. Any kind of evidence like pubic hairs, we had to gather for a rape kit, but the girl was becoming hysterical, not pretending but genuinely hysterical kicking and screaming No no don’t hurt me NO! Dr. D___ was angry that the girl seemed determined to prevent a thorough examination though such an examination was in her own best interests of course. We were able to examine her and treat her superficially and it took quite a while to accomplish that with her kicking, screaming, and hyperventilating and the orderlies having to hold her down …

      (Now we knew, at least—she could speak English.)

      She continued to refuse to allow Dr. D___ to examine her just clamped her legs together tight and screaming so Dr. D___—(flush-faced, upset)—asked one of the female interns to examine her; this young woman, Dr. T___, was a light-skinned Indian-American who was able to calm the girl to a degree and examined her pelvic area by placing a paper cover over the girl’s lower body but when Dr. T___ tried to insert a speculum into the girl’s vagina the girl went crazy again kicking and screaming like she was being murdered.

      Like she was being raped …

      It was a terrible thing to witness. Those of us who were there, some of us were very upset with Dr. D___’s handling of the situation.

      By this time, the mother had arrived. The mother had been notified and someone had driven her to the hospital and before security could stop her she’d run into the ER hearing her daughter’s screams and began screaming herself and behind her, several other female relatives, or neighbors—all these women screaming and our security officers overwhelmed trying to control the scene …

      Pascayne police arrived at the ER. Trying to ask questions and the girl refused to acknowledge anyone shutting her eyes tight and screaming she wanted to go home and the mother was saying My baby! My baby! What did they do to my baby!

      You couldn’t get near the girl without her screaming, kicking and clawing. We’d have sedated her but the mother was threatening to sue us if we didn’t release her daughter.

      (It is strange that a mother would want her daughter released into her custody out of the ER, before she knew the extent of her daughter’s injuries. It is strange that the mother, like the daughter, refused X-rays, a blood test, but it is not so very uncommon under these circumstances. We are accustomed to delusional behavior and violence in the ER. We are accustomed to patients dying in the ER and their relatives going berserk. Yet, this seemed like a special case.)

      We were trying to explain: the girl had to have X-rays before being discharged.

      It was crucial, the girl had to have X-rays.

      If she’d suffered a concussion, or had a hairline fracture in her skull, or had broken or sprained bones—it was crucial to determine this before she left the hospital.

      If there was bleeding in her brain, for instance.

      And we needed to do blood work.