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By Root 188 0

Avenue, where I took another left and walked the entire Corner (a stretch of shops and eateries on University Avenue). It was about eight in the morning by now. Suddenly, I realized that I was still holding my navy leather flats, hanging from two crooked fingers. At first, I had not put on my shoes because I wanted no one to hear me creep down the stairs of the house. But now I saw that I couldn’t put them on if I tried—my toe was too swollen from trying to kick down the locked bedroom door. As I walked I looked straight down, to avoid eye contact with anyone. I was walking in the opposite direction of any undergraduate classrooms, so it was unlikely I would be greeted by anyone I knew. I simply did not want to see anyone who might remember me, naked, at that party, anyone who had watched me being savagely violated. As the terrible assault flashed through my head, I became even more convinced in my horrifying sense that people had watched it happen. The shame was overwhelming. It was a sunny, crisp day—the same beautiful fall weather that had delighted me the day before. I tried to focus on the feeling of the sun on my face as I put one foot in front of the other. I willed myself to walk. Just walk.

At seventeen, I had had no experience with crime or with sex, but I knew that after something so unspeakably violent and horrible I needed to get to a hospital. In 1984, there were no cell phones—no easy way to call a friend to help me, or drive me. I just had to get to the hospital on my own. My bruises and bleeding felt acute and as I became more aware of my body, I noticed that it hurt when I tried to breathe deeply. My head and face throbbed, my vaginal area was burning, and my whole body felt tender and swollen.

At some point, I became aware of the pain on the soles of my feet. Realizing I was stepping on painful pebbles and bits of trash, I forced my shoes on to my swollen, throbbing feet for the rest of the long walk.

I walked through the sliding glass doors of University of Virginia Medical Center emergency room, scanned the lobby, and took a deep, painful breath. My legs were wobbly and shaky. I walked first to a water fountain and took a big drink, the water dribbling down my chin onto my sweater. Then, I straightened up and approached a desk, where I simply stood, not summoning anyone. I just stood there like a ghost. Finally, a middle-aged woman in scrubs came up and asked if I needed anything.

“I’ve been raped. I need to see someone. I think I am hurt,” I said.

Immediately, she came around the desk and took me by the arm, walking me toward a bank of chairs.

“Honey, what did you say?”

“I’ve been raped,” I repeated in a near whisper. “I don’t feel well and I need to see a doctor.” She led me quietly to a chair. She knelt down beside me, and asked me to tell her everything that had happened. In broken sentences, I told her. “Let me see what I can do for you,” she said.

I sat in that chair for a long time, replaying not only the horror of the night before, but the sheer terror of William Beebe confronting me in his dark bedroom that morning. I stood up and got a pile of magazines to distract myself, but I couldn’t read them. I kept looking up at the desk to see if someone was ready to see me. Every once in a while, I noticed one of the doctors, nurses, or EMTs looking at me. But I was left waiting.

After what seemed like hours, the kind nurse came back, bearing a Styrofoam cup of tea with milk in it. “Drink this,” she told me. “It will help you feel better to drink something warm.”

I accepted the tea gratefully, and she disappeared again. Again, I was left waiting. I was anxious, scared, and in pain, but I had never been to an ER before. It seemed that everyone else was waiting, too, that these things just took a long time. I sat quietly where I was told. Out the window, I saw the light changing, the day progressing.

At last, the kind nurse returned. I brightened as she came toward me, but her face looked sad.

“Sweetheart—here’s what’s going on. What you need to have done, we cannot do here.”

I stared at