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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. We needed to draw blood.
    Mrs. Frye didn’t give a damn for any of this. In a furious voice saying how her daughter had been missing three days and three nights and wherever she’d been there were people who knew more than they were revealing and she’d come to take her daughter home, now.
    They took my baby from me, now I’m bringin my baby home can’t none of you stop me.
    The Pascayne police officers set her off worse. When an officer from Child Protective Services tried to speak with Mrs. Frye she backed off stretching her arms out as if to keep the man from assaulting her. She was saying You aint gon arrest me, you aint gon put cuffs on me, you leave me alone seein what you done to my baby aint that enough for you.
    Mrs. Frye’s fear of the police officers appeared to be genuine.
    By this time Sybilla Frye was sitting up on the gurney with her knees raised against her chest trying to hide herself with the crinkly white paper and making a noise like Nnn-nnn-nnn —like she was so frightened, she was shivering convulsively. You could hear her teeth chatter. And now she was crying, like a child Mama don let them take me, Mama take me home . . .
    The mud and dog-feces had been removed from the girl’s hair.
    We’d had to cut and clip some of her hair in order to get this matter out. It would be charged afterward that we had defiled and disfigured Sybilla Frye—we had deliberately cut her hair in a careless and jagged fashion.
    Her body covered in filth had been washed but the racist slurs in black Magic Marker ink remained on her torso and abdomen, more or less indecipherable.
    (It would be recorded in the ER photos that these words had been written upside-down on Sybilla Frye’s body.)
    (Well, you’d think—as if Sybilla Frye had