“I’m Dr. Dewberry, the neurologist taking care of Ms. Adams,” he said.
Adisa introduced herself.
“I’m glad you’re here,” the doctor continued. “Your aunt had an MRI of her brain shortly after admission. I just reviewed the results with the radiologist.”
“What’s wrong? She’s talking nonsense.”
“She’s had a brain hemorrhage,” the doctor replied. “And she probably doesn’t recognize you or realize that her speech is impaired. My hope is that she’s going to stabilize without the need for surgery. Dr. Steiner, a neurosurgeon, is going to review the MRI this evening.”
Adisa looked at Aunt Josie, who mumbled a few sounds and licked her lips.
“How bad do you think it is?” she asked.
“Bad enough that it’s a good thing the next-door neighbor who found her immediately called 911.” The doctor patted Aunt Josie on the arm. “As you know, she’s mildly hypertensive, but there was no way to predict that she had a blood vessel in her brain that was weak and about to rupture. From the scan it appears the bleeding is confined to the intracranial areas that control movement on the right side of her body.”
“I live in Atlanta. If she needs brain surgery, I’d prefer to move her to Emory or Piedmont.”
“Certainly,” Dr. Dewberry replied easily. “But I suggest you delay that decision until we hear from Dr. Steiner.”
“And when do you expect that to happen?”
“Anytime from six to midnight,” the doctor said, glancing at his watch. “As soon as I know anything, I’ll notify you.”
“I need to get back to Atlanta by morning.”
“Does your aunt have a health-care power of attorney?”
“Yes. I’m a lawyer and prepared it a few years ago. The POA designates me as the primary decision maker and my sister as secondary.”
“Then I hope one of you will be available to give us direction about surgery and anything else that comes up.”
“My sister is driving up from Augusta tomorrow afternoon.”
“Good. Does the hospital know how to get in touch with you? The next day or so will be critical.”
“No, but I can leave my cell phone number at the nurses’ station.”
“And it’ll be necessary to have a copy of the health-care power of attorney on file to make sure we comply with HIPAA.”
“Sure, I know where she keeps it in her house.”
“Okay,” the doctor responded and turned to leave.
“Thanks for taking care of her,” Adisa said, not wanting to come across as ungrateful.
“You’re welcome,” Dr. Dewberry replied. “She’s in good physical condition for an eighty-year-old woman. Hopefully, she’ll bounce back strong.”
After the doctor left, Adisa leaned over and gave Aunt Josie a quick kiss on her wrinkled cheek. Her aunt’s eyes remained closed.
“I’m going to your house to pick up the health-care power of attorney,” Adisa said. “The hospital needs to have it on file. I won’t be gone for long.”
Hoping for a response, Adisa stared intently at Aunt Josie’s face. Her aunt twitched her nose but gave no indication she understood. With a heavy heart, Adisa left the hospital room. She stopped at the nurses’ station and asked where she needed to drop off the legal papers.
“After five o’clock everything can be handled here,” the nurse replied, writing down Adisa’s name. “I’ll record your contact information in the file and put you on the list for twenty-four-hour access.”
“Thanks.”
It was less than a ten-minute drive from the hospital to Aunt Josie’s house. Adisa needed gas for her car and stopped at the Westside Quik Mart. After paying for the gas at the pump, she went inside the store to buy a bottle of flavored vitamin water. Two workmen were installing a Plexiglas barrier in front of the cash register similar to what she’d seen at convenience stores in rougher parts of Atlanta. A bold sign on the barrier announced “Cashier Has Less Than $100 Cash and No Key to Safe.” Adisa glanced up and saw two large surveillance cameras pointed directly at the spot where she was standing.
She left the store. A few blocks later she turned onto East Nixon Street, the main access point to the older neighborhood where Aunt Josie lived. Most of the modest houses had been built in the 1950s and ’60s. The dwellings were small but the lots spacious. Without any neighborhood restrictions or oversight by the city, the condition of the houses varied widely. Some were neat and meticulous, with green grass, flowers, and neatly trimmed bushes. Others were surrounded by weeds, with ripped screens in the windows, peeling paint, and multicolored shingles on the roof due to irregular repairs.
Adisa saw a cluster of floral displays surrounding a picture in the grass beside the road. She slowed to a stop. In the middle of the flowers was a large photograph of a young black man. Adisa didn’t recognize him, but it had been more than ten years since she’d lived in Campbellton. The young man was wearing a coat and tie. Stuck among the display was an orange basketball with signatures scribbled on it.
Her aunt’s house on Baxter Street was one of the few mostly brick homes in the neighborhood. The exterior walls were redbrick up to the level of the windows on the front and entirely brick on the sides and rear. Aunt Josie used to tell the girls the wicked wolf would never blow her house down.
The businessman who sold the house to Aunt Josie really was a wolf who utilized an installment plan that bordered on usury. In spite of the oppressive terms of the contract, Aunt Josie paid off the house when Adisa was in the sixth grade and threw a big party to celebrate.
Adisa pulled into the driveway and parked behind her aunt’s fifteen-year-old sedan that had less than fifty thousand miles on the odometer. The grass in the front yard of the flat lot was in good shape. Even though Adisa had offered to pay for a lawn service, Aunt Josie still insisted on cutting the grass herself. Mature bushes reached to the bottoms of the windows and lined the narrow sidewalk that connected the concrete driveway to the entrance. There wasn’t a garage or carport. Taking groceries inside during a rainstorm meant getting wet. Aunt Josie didn’t plant flowers in the yard, but Adisa knew the inside of the house was filled with color from flowers, ferns, and other kinds of potted plants. She got out of the car and walked around the side of the house.
The backyard was adjacent to baseball fields and basketball courts owned by the local parks and recreation department. The area reserved for Aunt Josie’s garden had been tilled, but it wasn’t clear what the older woman had planted except for a line of ten tomato plants. The clothesline in the photo in Adisa’s office was gone, replaced many years before by an electric dryer.
A neighbor, Mr. Walter Broome, was sitting in a chair on the back stoop of his house. The gray-haired man had worked for the city as a heavy-equipment operator for over forty years before he retired.
“How’s your aunt?” he called out.
Adisa walked over and gave him a quick summary.
“I was the one who called 911,” Mr. Broome said. “Mary sent me over to borrow some vanilla extract for pancake batter, and when Josie didn’t answer I went inside and found her lying on the floor in the living room.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“And I was thanking the Lord that her door was unlocked.” Mr. Broome pointed up at the sky. “Her angel was working overtime.”
“Yes,” Adisa agreed.
“I called Brother Mack,” Walter continued, referring to one of the deacons at the church Aunt Josie attended. “He’s out of town with his wife but will be back Sunday morning.”
“Shanika is driving up tomorrow,” Adisa said, “so everyone should probably check with her to get the latest news.”
“Can’t Josie have visitors?” Mr. Broome asked in surprise.
“No, they’ve put her in a room on the quarantine floor because of a shortage of beds.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Adisa regretted them. Mention of the word “quarantine” was likely to spark
crazy speculation. She knew it was pointless to ask Walter and his wife, Mary, to keep quiet. Fresh gossip was better than iced sweet tea with a thick slice of lemon on a hot afternoon in August. Adisa quickly changed the subject.
“What’s going on with the memorial on East Nixon Street?” she asked. “I didn’t know the young man in the picture. Was he hit by a car?”
“Where have you been?” Mr. Broome asked in surprise. “I was sure that story made it into the newspaper in Atlanta. Deshaun Hamlin was shot in the middle of the road by a white police officer looking for a young black man to kill. Thankfully, Deshaun didn’t die, but he’s hanging on to life by a thread with a bullet in his brain. It would have been on TV, the Internet, and everywhere else if it had happened in a big city. But nobody cares about a place like this. Or what happens to a fine young man like Deshaun. Thelma Armistead is his grandmother. He was living with her during his junior year in high school.”
Adisa remembered Mrs. Armistead as a jolly, overweight woman known for wearing hats and baking delicious desserts. It was sad to think about her grieving the tragic shooting of a grandson.
“Now that I think about it, I did see a headline in a newspaper at the hospital about the shooting. It looks like the district attorney’s office may file charges against the officer,” she said.
“There’s a petition with over seven hundred and fifty signatures on it asking him to do exactly that. Even a few white folks signed it. I wish you were practicing law here in Campbellton. You wouldn’t be afraid to prosecute a police officer.”
“That’s not my area of the law now.”
“But it could be,” Mr. Broome insisted hopefully.
“No, I’ve moved on. The local DA’s office will make that decision.”
“But do you really think they’ll do the right thing? Jasper Baldwin, the DA, only got elected because of his uncle’s money.”
Adisa didn’t want to get dragged into a sinkhole of Nash County politics. She glanced over her shoulder at her aunt’s house.
“Maybe folks should get the governor’s office involved,” she suggested. “He could bring in a special prosecutor if the local DA’s office doesn’t want to handle the case.”
“Could the governor appoint you to do it?” Mr. Broome perked up. “Everybody knows how smart you are.”
Desperate to escape, Adisa began backing away. “I need to take something from the house to the hospital,” she said. “Thanks for letting Brother Mack and folks at the church know about Aunt Josie.”
“No problem. And let us know if we can help in any way. Mary and I think the world of Josie. After Mary had her hip surgery last summer, Josie took care of both of us.” Mr. Broome patted his stomach. “I love to eat but can’t cook anything except a fried egg. Josie fed me and helped Mary with her bath.”
Adisa told Walter she would keep him and Mary posted on Aunt Josie’s condition as she waved and turned to walk back to the house. She picked up her aunt’s copy of the local newspaper and carried it inside. Aunt Josie’s walking stick was in its usual place behind the door. All the bark had been stripped from the five-foot piece of wood. The spot Aunt Josie grasped as she walked was totally smooth and the wood darkened by the oils from the older woman’s hand.
In the den a ball of gray yarn lay on the floor beside her aunt’s recliner, a partially finished scarf draped across the armrest. On a low table next to the chair was a half-empty cup of green tea. Adisa picked up the delicate teacup, an antique made of fragile cream-colored china, took it into the kitchen, and poured the tea down the drain. Aunt Josie hated dirty dishes piling up in the sink, so Adisa washed the cup in warm sudsy water and returned it to its assigned place in the cupboard above the toaster. When Adisa closed the cupboard she was hit by a wave of sadness that her aunt might never be able to do a simple task that had been part of a sixty-year routine for her.
“No, Lord!” Adisa said out loud. “She’s going to be better soon!”
Drying her hands and pushing back gloomy thoughts, Adisa went into her aunt’s bedroom. A chenille spread decorated with a large multicolored peacock in the middle covered the bed. Against the far wall was a small desk with two side-by-side drawers. The health-care power of attorney was in an envelope with “Dixon and White” printed as the return address. Adisa took out one of the two signed and notarized copies.
Returning to the kitchen, she stuck her finger into the dirt in a pot that contained an explosion of multicolored coleus. Aunt Josie had more than forty houseplants. The hardy schefflera at Adisa’s office was the only plant child in her life. The soil in the kitchen pot was moist, a sign that it had been cared for within the past twenty-four hours.
On her way out the door, Adisa grabbed the newspaper that she’d dropped on the small kitchen table. There would be plenty of time at the hospital to read every word about the local shooting along with the wedding announcements and reports about prospects for the soybean harvest.
Adisa delivered the health-care power of attorney to the woman on duty at the nurses’ station. Aunt Josie was in the same position. Scooting a chair close to her aunt’s side, Adisa opened the paper. Not wanting to read anything gloomy, she skipped the article about the police officer and focused on upbeat news. She read aloud, even though there was no sign Aunt Josie was listening.
“Here’s one I bet you already know about,” Adisa said. “Brianne Morehead took a trip to Europe in the spring and is going to talk about it Saturday morning at the library. She especially liked Venice.”
“Venus?” Aunt Josie croaked.
With a start, Adisa stopped reading and stared at her aunt; Josie’s eyes remained closed.
“Aunt Josie,” she said, leaning closer. “It’s Adisa. I’m here with you at the hospital. You’ve had a stroke.”
Aunt Josie wrinkled her nose and sniffed. On the tray table beside the bed was a cup of water and a wooden stick with a small yellow sponge on the end. Adisa dipped the sponge into the water and ran it along her aunt’s lips. Aunt Josie weakly tried to close her mouth on the sponge. The IV dripping from the bag wouldn’t do anything about a parched tongue. Adisa moistened the sponge again and held it so her aunt could press her lips against it. She repeated the motion seven or eight times before Aunt Josie relaxed, and Adisa was satisfied the older woman’s thirst was at least partially quenched. A male nurse about Adisa’s age entered the room and saw Adisa with the sponge stick in her hand.
“Did she show any interest in the water?” the nurse asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s good. I couldn’t get her to take any a few hours ago.”
Adisa watched as the young man checked her aunt’s vital signs and repositioned her pillow.
“Dr. Dewberry said we’re waiting on an opinion from Dr. Steiner, the neurosurgeon.”
“I saw the referral in the chart,” the RN replied. “We’ll make sure you get a chance to talk to her.”
“Dr. Steiner is a woman?”
“Who graduated from medical school at Johns Hopkins,” the young man replied with a smile. “She treated my mother last summer. She’s an excellent surgeon. My shift doesn’t end until 11:00 p.m., so I’ll be sure to facilitate the call with Dr. Steiner if she tries to contact you.”
“Thanks.”
The nurse left, and Adisa resumed her seat by her aunt. “Your neurosurgeon is a female,” she said to the sleeping woman. “You taught me there’s no ceiling to the sky. I need to remember that.”
SIX
ADISA WAITED TO call Shanika until she was reasonably sure her sister’s kids would be finished with their showers and tucked into bed. Aunt Josie was still asleep, so Adisa picked up the newspaper and read the front-page article about the police officer who shot the young black man. At the top of the article was the same picture of Deshaun Hamlin that Adisa had seen on East Nixon Street. Beside the black teenager’s picture was a photo of a young white police officer with “Officer Nelson” beneath it.
District Attorney Jas
per Baldwin will likely seek an indictment against Campbellton police officer Luke Nelson in the shooting of sixteen-year-old Deshaun Hamlin. Per police department policy, Nelson is currently on administrative leave. Hamlin remains in a coma at Campbellton Memorial Hospital. Police Chief Ben Lockhart stated that his office is fully cooperating with the district attorney. There are no known witnesses, but several residents reported hearing multiple gunshots.
Confidential sources confirm that Officer Nelson contends Hamlin threatened him with a gun and fired first. Members of Hamlin’s family deny that the youth was armed or dangerous. Nelson has refused to respond to repeated requests for comment. One of the newer members of the Campbellton Police Department, Nelson previously served as an officer with the Atlanta Police Department. There is no record of any disciplinary action against him.
Last night a meeting of concerned citizens took place at Zion Hills Baptist Church. Hamlin and several members of his family are members of the church. A number of pastors and community leaders spoke to a crowd of 350 people. Several held up signs demanding “Justice for Deshaun.” Reverend Reggie Reynolds, pastor of the church and spokesman for the group, pledged to maintain public pressure until legal action was taken against Officer Nelson. When informed this morning about the DA’s current refusal to present the case to the grand jury, Reynolds expressed doubt that local authorities would indict a police officer without pressure from the governor’s office. Reynolds stated, “Deshaun was unarmed at the time of the shooting and didn’t threaten the officer in any way. An unarmed black teenager was gunned down in the middle of the street in our town, and the man responsible for shooting him must answer for it.”
Adisa understood why Reverend Reynolds would rally public sentiment and demand a full investigation into the shooting of the young member of his congregation. In a town like Campbellton, the community power brokers were adept at brushing matters under the rug. The newspaper could play a big role in trying to prevent that from happening. She checked the byline for the author of the article. It was written by reporter Jamie Standard. Adisa didn’t know if Standard was black or white, male or female. But it was easy to understand why folks were upset. Adisa could sympathize with Mr. Broome’s frustration, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
A Time to Stand Page 6