Mad River

new people called, “Hey! Hey, what the hell . . .”
    Virgil shouted, “Police officer! Help me . . .”
    One of the new people yelled, “He’s a cop, let’s get them. . . .” There was some running and scuffling, and then the two men who’d jumped him ran, down toward the end of the bar and around behind it and out of sight.
    His rescuers didn’t go after them. Instead, they squatted around him, four young men, two in sport coats, two in casual jackets, and one of them asked, “You all right?”
    “I’m pretty scuffed up,” Virgil managed. He pushed himself into a sitting position, but every time he moved, something hurt. “I think maybe . . . I ought to go to an emergency room.”
    One of the men said to another, “Go on in the bar and call the cops. And an ambulance.”
    Virgil said, “Thanks.”
    One of the men, whose faces he couldn’t see very clearly, said, “Man, you are bleeding to beat the band.”
    Virgil said, “Artery?”
    “No, I don’t think so. You look like you fell off your Harley. Like seriously bad road rash. You really a cop?”
    Virgil said, “Yeah.” He still couldn’t see them clearly, and began to suspect that one of the kicks had connected with his head; things weren’t quite right. He asked, “Who are you guys?”
    One of them, exactly who was unclear, said, “Pi Kappa Alpha.”
    Virgil thought he’d misheard. “What?”
    “We’re fraternity brothers . . . from the U . . . down here with a friend on spring break.”
    “Ah . . .”
    The guy who’d gone inside came running back out and said, “I called nine-one-one. Everybody’s coming.”
    More people came out of the bar to look, and Virgil tried to get to his feet, got halfway up with one of the frat boys holding his arm, and then fell back on his butt. The kid said, “Just wait. Somebody’ll be here in a minute.”
    Virgil did not feel good.
    •   •   •
    THE COPS GOT THERE FIRST, and one of them looked at Virgil and said, “Criminy! It’s the state cop, Flowers.”
    Virgil said, “Hi.”
    The cop said, “Set right there,” and to somebody else, “You better call Duke.”
    A minute later, an ambulance arrived, and when Virgil couldn’t make it to his feet, they locked up his neck and head, put him on a gurney, and loaded him aboard. His eyes still weren’t quite focusing; he said to the ambulance attendant, “I’m a cop, and I’ve got to call somebody. Get my cell phone out of my pocket, will you?”
    “We’re not supposed to—”
    “Just do it,” Virgil said.
    A minute later, Davenport came up and said, “Yo. You get them?”
    “Not exactly,” Virgil said. “I’m in an ambulance headed for the hospital. I just got the shit beat out of me.”
    •   •   •
    VIRGIL WENT INTO the emergency room, where a nurse helped him take his clothes off, and a doc came and looked at him, and did some simple focusing tests, and recall tests, then said, “You’ve got a concussion. And you look pretty roughed up. We’ll do some X-rays.”
    “The guys at the bar said I’m bleeding.”
    “Not enough blood to worry about. It’s what’s going on inside that worries me,” the doc said.
    He used his hands to probe at Virgil’s chest and kidneys, while questioning him, and Virgil couldn’t remember any particularly hard blows to the body. “I was trying to keep them on my arms and legs. . . . I was on my back most of the time.”
    The hospital staff drew what seemed like a lot of blood, and wheeled him around for the X-rays, and at some point Shrake and Jenkins showed up, and Virgil told them what happened, and realized that he could now focus on their faces. But he was very tired, and began to shake.
    The doc, called by Shrake, came back and said that he might be suffering some post-combat shock, that the adrenaline overload was catching up to him, and that it should wear off fairly quickly. When Virgil told him he could focus, the doc said, “Excellent, that’s a very positive sign,” and went away again.
    Shrake and Jenkins had disappeared, probably shooed away by the nurse, Virgil thought. He was alone for a while and may have slept, then the doc came back and said, “Good news: there’s no sign of a skull fracture or any spinal problems. As far as I can tell, you don’t have any broken bones. You may have some pulled muscles or some other soft tissue injuries. We won’t know for sure until tomorrow. But you are seriously bruised up and you