Twenty Minutes
The keys turned and the sergeant’s voice came through the door, flat and bored. “Twenty minutes.”
“Just give me the time I paid for,” Lila said through the small opening.
“Twenty minutes, Martinez. Then the fire crew clears the wing, with or without you.”
“I heard you the first time.”
Lila didn’t move. She stood with the bag of dressings hanging from her right hand, the fabric of the scrubs stiff against her arms because they were not hers. Nothing in this room belonged to her. The badge clipped to her chest said MARTINEZ, CONTRACT MEDICAL, and she had practiced answering to it twice in the car. The bag held gauze, saline, and tape she did not know how to use.
She could see he was alive.
He was sitting against the far wall because his knees wouldn’t hold him upright. His hands rested palm-up on his thighs, and even across the concrete, she saw the skin was wrong. It was charred black at the edges, scorched down to raw pink meat. He had not flinched when the heavy metal door swung open. He just looked at her.
Every man Lila had ever stood before had looked at her to measure value, calculate advantage, or claim something. She knew that look well. It was a transaction. Jason had never looked at her like an account to settle. Not when he used to pull her boots off by the woodstove, his thumbs tracing the arch of her foot while rain lashed the cabin roof, and not when he pulled her against his chest in the dark until their breathing fell into step. He was not calculating anything now. He stared at her with raw dread, terrified of what she would find.
“Can you stand?” she asked him, keeping her voice level.
“Why are you here, Lila?” His voice was rough, scraping out like gravel in his throat.
“I have saline and clean gauze. Martinez called in sick.”
“You shouldn’t have come inside.”
“You’re bleeding through your pants,” she countered, pointing at his leg.
“Eighteen,” the sergeant called out from the hall.
Smoke drifted under the door, gray and thick, hugging the dirty floor tiles. The cellblock beyond the wall was burning, filling the room with the stench of scorched concrete, battery acid, and blistered skin.
“I came to see if you were alive,” she said, her chest tight with panic.
“I’m alive. Now take that badge and leave.”
“I have eighteen minutes left.”
“Lila, look around you. This place is coming down.”
“Then let me clean the burns.”
“Don’t touch me,” he said, turning his head aside. “You made your point. Just walk away.”
She stayed where she was, anchored to the spot. Her heart hammered against her ribs, terror and stubborn pride warring inside her. The smoke moved across the floor between them, rising in thin ribbons toward the dim fluorescent fixture overhead.
“Sixteen,” the sergeant said from the corridor. “Hurry it up in there!”
Lila took a sharp breath, her fingers trembling against the heavy nylon webbing. The badge said Martinez. The scrubs hung loose, two sizes too large. She had promised herself she would not touch him, but she stood there and waited for him to speak first.He spoke first. “Do you know how to use any of that?” Lila looked down at the medical bag, staring at the gauze, saline, and medical tape she grabbed from a supply cart in the hospital corridor without knowing what she took. “No,” she said, her voice sounding steadier than she expected. “Then what exactly is your plan, Lila?”
“I don’t have one,” she admitted, pausing. “I never did.”
She crossed the concrete in three quick paces, then stopped. Her fingers tightened around the strap. Then she dropped the pack at her boots. The heavy nylon slapped the stone with a flat, final snap. He watched her do it without comment.
“The burns,” she said, looking straight at him. “They look bad.”
“They’re not the worst of it.”
“What is, then? Tell me.”
“You shouldn’t even be seeing this,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Look at what you brought. Gauze and saline won’t fix what happened to me. You stole a badge to get down here, Lila. Take that bag and turn around.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Yes, you are. You can walk out that door right now with a clean conscience, and no one will ever blame you. Why stay when you can’t help?”
“Because walking away isn’t that simple,” she said.
She stared down at the dark pack lying on the dirty tiles. Her feet stayed firmly planted.
The smoke thickened around them, creeping low along the floor while metal groaned deep inside the walls. A corridor lamp flickered beneath the gap of the door.
“Ten minutes!” the sergeant barked from outside. Ten minutes left. Lila coughed, a dry, racking heave that caught in her throat and burned down into her lungs. The heat pressed against the small room like an open furnace. Her eyes stung with bitter, watery heat, blurring Jason’s silhouette against the stone. She wiped her sleeve across her face, leaving soot smeared on the borrowed fabric. Half the clock gone, and every swallow tasted like burnt wire.
He shifted his weight against the wall. The movement visibly cost him, making his jaw tighten with pain. He fixed his eyes on her with that same raw dread, looking as if whatever he feared seeing on her face remained right there between them.
“Why are you really here?” he asked quietly.
It was not the first question he offered. It was not the simple excuse about stolen saline, extra gauze, or Martinez calling out sick for the shift. This was the real question, the one buried underneath everything else.
“I had to see you,” she whispered. “I couldn’t just sit there.”
“That’s not an answer, Lila.”
Lila parted her lips to speak, but nothing came out. Gray haze drifted upward toward the dim ceiling lamp, the seconds ticking away rapidly. She had repeated the simple lie to herself for so long that she had no words ready for the truth.She opened her mouth, but nothing came. “I needed to know you were alive,” she said finally.
He watched her face, his gaze locking straight onto hers.
“Eight months,” she repeated softer. “I know that sounds...” “It doesn’t sound like anything.” His voice was rough, scraped down to bone. “I know what eight months is. The gravel outside the diner. The taillights pulling away into the dust.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” she pressed, her heart thudding against her ribs. “What happened eight months ago, Lila? What changed? What broke?”
She waited for the interrogation, holding back the half-truths she had rehearsed in the car, in the elevator, and in the corridor. She had them stacked and ready like the rolls of gauze in the medical bag at her feet.
“Do you want me to ask?” he asked quietly.
“I have the answers ready,” she admitted. “I came prepared to give them.”
“You don’t owe me a speech,” he said, staring with dark eyes that already held the truth, and the raw weight of his steady silence rattled her composure entirely. “Do you think I don’t know what you had to leave behind?”
He was already standing on the far side of whatever gate she had walked through eight months ago; he understood the full cost without demanding an explanation.
“You really aren’t going to make me say it?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “Why would I make you bleed twice?”
She didn’t know whether that mercy made things better or worse; it probably did both.
“Five minutes!” the sergeant roared through the steel, hammering once with the butt of a flashlight. “Fire crew is two minutes out, last call, Martinez, or you’re both staying!”
Neither of them moved. Lila’s knees shook under the weight of the air. Her chest ached with each shallow breath, the smoke thickening into an oily film across her skin and teeth. Heat pulsed off the concrete walls in waves, sweat stinging the corners of her eyes and dripping off her jaw, but she anchored her heels into the grit. Every second she bought cost her another breath of poison.
Then the key turned hard in the lock.
The sharp click struck her with bruising force. She stood rooted to the concrete floor while the bolt slid back, suddenly realizing she had never locked herself into a small room with anyone on purpose. Every heavy door she had ever closed in her life had been shut to keep people out; every single lock had been a barrier she held against the world.
“Lila,” he said quietly, pulling her attention back. “You know you can still walk out.”
“I know,” she whispered.
The heavy door swung open on screeching hinges. The guard stood squared in the frame, keys gripped tight in his fist as smoke drifted past his broad shoulders. His eyes dropped to the bag on the floor, shifted to Lila, and settled on the prisoner against the wall.
“Time’s up, Martinez.”
Lila did not run. Her gaze remained pinned on Jason against the wall, on his scarred hands resting flat against his denim knees. Eight months earlier, there had been the intake gate off Highway 93, chain-link rattling in the desert wind while the heavy padlock slammed shut between them. A different gate. A different lock. A different choice.
