The next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground with a terrible headache. I could hear voices, but when I tried to open my eyes, the light hurt them.
“I think he’s coming around,” a voice said. “Hunter, can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
“I’m an EMT. We’re taking you to the hospital.”
I had a moment of awareness. “What about Raphael and Tommy?”
“We’re okay,” I heard Tommy say. “When Carl attacked you, we tackled the other two and grabbed their bats. They got away, but all three of them will have a few bruises to remember us by.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Raphael. That was all he got to say before the EMTs loaded me on a stretcher, put me in an ambulance, and drove away, its siren wailing.
“I need to call Mom,” I said.
“She’s been contacted. She’ll meet us at the hospital,” a woman said. “Can you open your eyes for a minute?”
I tried to do as she asked, but even in the ambulance the light hurt. She pulled up one of my eyelids and shone a light into it.
“Ow!” I exclaimed as the light shone in.
Then she did the same to the other eye and again I cried out.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll leave that for the doctors.”
I could feel her taking my blood pressure and checking my pulse. She listened to my heart and then clipped something to my finger, saying it was to check the oxygen level in my blood.
After a few minutes, I felt the ambulance slow and turn. It stopped and someone opened the back door. I was lifted out and wheeled into the hospital, where I was put in a cubicle. A doctor introduced himself, but I didn’t get his name. He checked me just as the woman in the ambulance had.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.
I was still groggy, but I managed to say that we were being threatened by three boys with baseball bats and that was the last I knew until I woke up lying on the ground with a terrible headache.
He went out of the cubicle for a moment, and I heard him return with Mom.
“Oh, my poor boy,” she said. “What happened?”
I repeated what I had told the doctor, and I heard her ask him if I was going to be okay.
“I believe so,” he said, “but we’re going to do a brain scan to be sure there’s no internal bleeding.”
That sounded bad; really bad.
Mom kissed me on the cheek and said she would be there when I returned from the scan.
I was wheeled out of my cubicle and down a hallway to a room where I was lifted off my gurney and placed on a table. A man told me that the table would move me into the machine and then I’d hear a whirring sound. He said it was very important that I didn’t move.
Of course, as soon as the machine was whirring, my nose began to itch, but I didn’t move, and eventually the itch went away.
I did open my eyes, which seemed to be doing a little better. All I could see was a curving piece of metal or plastic, I didn’t know which. What I knew was that it was very close to my face and I felt claustrophobic.
The scan, or MRI as the man called it, seemed to take forever, but at last I heard the whirring slow down and stop. Then the table moved me out of the machine.
I was transferred to the gurney and wheeled back to the cubicle. Mom was there and the doctor came in a few minutes later. Opening my eyes a crack, I could see him place what looked to me like x-rays on a light box and turn it on.
“Well,” he said as he looked, “I don’t see any signs of internal bleeding. I would like to keep him in the hospital for a day or two so that we can be sure he’s okay.”
Mom agreed and I knew I didn’t have a say in the matter. She kissed me on my cheek and said she’d come to my room after I got settled.
I was wheeled out of the cubicle and down a hall before being put on an elevator. When the elevator stopped, I was wheeled down a corridor and into a room where I was placed on a bed, covered with a sheet and a blanket, and my vitals were taken again. Mom arrived a few minutes later. She and the nurse had a conversation and then the nurse left.
“Hunter, can you tell me who did this to you?” Mom asked.
I told her that one of the boys was Mark Anderson, but I couldn’t provide any details of my being injured. I assumed that Mark had hit me with the baseball bat. Whatever happened, my head was still hurting.
A few minutes later, the nurse returned and gave me a shot, saying it was for pain. I guess I dozed off for a while, but when I woke, Mom was still there.
I was brought some supper but couldn’t really eat anything, because what little I ate came right back up.
When visiting hours were over, Mom kissed me again on the cheek and left, saying she’d be back in the morning.
The nurse came in, and I asked about the urine bag hooked to my bed.
“You have a catheter,” she said.
I asked her what that was, and she told me, so I was just peeing without even thinking about it.
The nurse gave me some more pain meds and settled me in for the night. I fell asleep right away.
She returned in the middle of the night to wake me, check my vitals, and give me more meds. After that I slept until morning.
Following breakfast, a nurse came and said he was going to remove my catheter. ‘Thank God it’s a man,’ I thought. He pulled back the bedding, raised my johnny, and gently removed the tube. I was terribly embarrassed, but I assumed he did things like that all the time.
Mom showed up when visiting hours began. She told me she had taken the day off from work. She asked me about Raphael and Tommy and whether they were hurt, but I didn’t know, although I remembered something about them sending the others flying.
“Someday I have to meet Raphael,” she said.
Her chance came sooner than I expected. In the afternoon, after school had gotten out, Raphael walked into my room with a woman I didn’t know.
“Hunter, I’m terribly sorry you got hurt,” he said.
“Are you Raphael?” Mom asked.
“I am,” he said, and she introduced herself. Then Raphael said, “This is my Tia Betty.”
I had to have him tell me what ‘tia’ meant, but I learned she was his aunt, and he was staying with her and his ‘tio’, or uncle.
“Why are you staying with them?” I asked.
Raphael looked at his aunt and she nodded.
“Tia Betty is my mother’s sister. I flew up from Mexico this summer to stay with her.”
“You speak very good English,” observed Mom.
“Thank you. My mother was American, and I was raised to be bilingual. I also went to the nearby American school, where all the teaching was in English.”
I noticed that he said his mother was American, and I wondered what the story was, but I didn’t want to pry.
Mom eventually said she would go so I could get some rest. She told me she had to work the next day, but she’d come in the evening. After she left, Raphael chatted with me for a few minutes before he and Betty said goodbye. I thanked them both for coming.
* * * * * * * *
The next morning, the doctor ordered another brain scan. Later, he came to see me, saying that the scan didn’t show any problems, but he was concerned that I was still feeling a lot of pain and not able to eat much. Because of that, he wanted me to stay a little longer.
Despite the pain, boredom had set in. Except for my head, I felt fine. I put on the TV more for company than anything else, and I listened more than I watched, sometimes dozing off.
In the late afternoon, Raphael and his tia came in for another visit. Raphael told me that the three boys who had attacked us had been arrested and were going to face charges of assault with a deadly weapon and that it was viewed as a hate crime. I was glad that they were going to be punished and would be out of our way for a while.
Raphael looked at his aunt, and she nodded.
“Hunter, I didn’t tell you the whole story yesterday, and I think you should know it. I can’t keep pretending.
“Last spring, I was walking to school when I heard gunshots. I fell to the ground and lay there as I heard more and more gunshots. When everything was quiet, I raced home, terrified by what I might find.
“Lying on the floor, dead, were all my family—my mother’s parents, my parents, and my three brothers and two sisters. If the bandits had come ten minutes earlier, I would have been lying there, too.” By then, he was in tears.
“But why?” I asked.
“There’s been a war going on between two drug cartels, and unfortunately, we are right on the border between their territories. A lot of innocent people are being killed.”
“Come here,” I said. When he stood beside my bed I said, “Bend over.” As he bent towards me, I hugged him long and hard.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Right now, you are the only person except for Tia and Tio who knows what happened or why I’m here.”
“So you came here to be safe and you’ve been attacked instead.”
“Yes. What was the word you used, Tia?”
“Ironic,” she said. It certainly was that.
“I think people should know what you’ve been through,” I said.
“It hurts too much to talk about it,” he answered.
“Let me think on it,” I said.
Then I asked him about school and how he was being treated.
“I think people are shocked by what happened the other day. They’ve been very kind to me and to Tommy, too.”
“Good,” I said. “I need to get back before I fall too far behind.”
“It’s much more important that you get well,” his tia observed.
I smiled and asked, “What should I call you? I can’t call you Betty.”
“Why don’t you call me ‘Tia’? That’s what Raphael calls me sometimes and it’s fine if you call me that too.”
They took their leave. After supper, Mom came to visit. I had finally been able to eat some of the supper, but I had to eat the ice cream very slowly, so it didn’t give me a headache. After all, I already had one of those.
* * * * * * * *
In the morning when I awoke, my headache was nearly gone. Mom came in around 10:00 and we chatted for a bit. I told her what Raphael had said the day before, and she was shocked. I asked her if she would bring me lined paper and a pencil or pen the next time she came.
The doctor came in while she was there and said that if my head continued to feel better and I was able to keep food down, I might go home in the morning.
Mom left for work, but in the late afternoon, she brought me the paper and a pen and pencil. She asked me what I was going to write, but I told her I needed to think about it first.
After she left, I pulled my table up and began to write. I had decided that people in the town needed to know what had happened to Raphael, and I was the one to tell them. I wrote and wrote, knowing that it was just a rough draft, and I was simply getting my ideas on paper.
While I was writing, Tommy and his mother came in and we had a good visit. Tommy told me what had happened, the details being the same as the ones Raphael had told me. He said that kids at school were asking about me. I said to tell them I was okay and recovering slowly.
By bedtime that night, I had started on a second draft.
The doctor came in the morning, asked how my head was, and said I could go home, but I wasn’t to return to school for at least a week. That was okay because I had a project as well as schoolwork to catch up on.
Mom took me home and asked if I wanted to go to bed. “I’ve been in bed long enough,” I said. “If I get tired, I can lie on the couch.”
As I looked around the very familiar living room, I suddenly realized something.
“Mom,” I asked, “why aren’t there any pictures of Dad in the house?”
She looked a little flustered for a moment but then answered, “I guess your father and I just weren’t into pictures. We never had any taken.”
“Not even of your wedding?”
“No, not even then. At the time we didn’t have much money and it seemed a good way to save some.”
I thought there was something fishy about her answers, but I didn’t pursue the question any farther.
In the afternoon, I sat at the kitchen table and continued writing. When I finished, Mom asked me if she could read it. She read, nodded, and then asked, “What are you going to do with this?”
“I’m sending it to the newspaper,” I said. “People need to know about him.”
“Do you have his permission?”
“Not yet. I’ll call him in a while and ask him.”
When I called and asked his permission, Raphael was at first very reluctant to agree. He was, after all, a rather private person, and he wasn’t sure that the letter would be received well. He thought it might even cause him further problems.
“Raphael,” I said, “you told me that the kids at school are shocked by what happened, and they don’t even know why you’re here. I think they should, and I think the whole damned town should be shocked.”
In the end, he agreed, and I mailed the letter to the newspaper.
* * * * * * * *
Three days later, Mom told me my letter was in the paper. I wanted to be sure they’d printed what I’d written, so I asked to see it.
The letter had been prefaced by a brief paragraph from an editor.
Yesterday, the newspaper received the following letter from a middle-school boy in town. What he wrote about is shocking and very sad, but we think it should be shared in its entirety with our readers.
There is a new boy in town. His name is Raphael. He is, so far as I know, the first Hispanic to live here. He came because of something terrible that happened to his family.
I then wrote about what had happened to Raphael’s family, sparing no details. I continued:
As Raphael pointed out, he came to America to get away from the violence, but he’s experienced it here as well. It began with comments made at school. Then, one day after school, he was beaten and told to “Go home!”
A little while after that, Raphael, I, and a friend of ours were walking to Raphael’s home. We were confronted by three boys with baseball bats.
One of them struck me in the head, but Raphael and our friend were able to tackle the other boys, take their bats, and send all three flying.
Right now, I feel ashamed of our town. I am ashamed that something like that would happen here. I’m disgusted by the prejudice and brutality that I’ve witnessed.
I think we all can be better than this, and I’m asking readers to commit to making this a safe, welcoming community for everyone. I believe we should set aside a day to gather and pledge that nothing like this will happen in our town again.
I’m suggesting that we all gather at Allen Park on Saturday, October 18, at noon and join in a common commitment. If bigots choose to come, then let them see how outnumbered they are.
Hunter Martin