12 Years a Slave · written by John Ridley and Steve McQueen · 2013

A ward worker drains Solomon’s smallpox sores as he watches the sicker Clemens and imagines the death that may await him.

Scene 81 of 211 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act one

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 49 min into a 2:22 film

The story so farBefore scene 81

After being kidnapped from New York and sold into slavery, Solomon Northup uses his skills and carefully placed trust to survive and seek a way back to his family.

Scenes 1–29
Solomon lives freely in Saratoga as a husband, father, worker, and musician.
Scenes 30–65
Kidnapped and held under the imposed name Platt, Solomon must preserve his life and identity.
Just before
Scene 78
The group enters a hospital that sounds and feels more like a place for dying than recovery.
Scene 79
In a crowded, unsanitary ward, Black patients with smallpox are stripped, given gowns, and surrounded by sparse staff as a bell tolls.
Scene 80
Days later, Solomon and Clemens lie covered in smallpox sores, feverish and nearly blinded by pain amid the ward’s cries.
Scene 81
This scene

81INT. HOSPITAL/PATIENTS ROOM - LATER

Solomon is being given care by a BLACK WARD. His puss sacks are being drained. ON OCCASION, IN THE BG, WE HEAR THE SOUND OF THE BELL TOLLING. Solomon looks over to Clemens who is in a more advanced state. In some ways it's as though Solomon's looking at future projection of himself. Is this what's waiting for him? And under the circumstances would such an end be so bad?