Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
My eyes fell to his torn, bloodied jumpsuit. Then I looked up into his eyes, shaking my head in wonder. How many men had he battled through, to make it here?
He looked right into my eyes. As many as it took, said his expression.
I’d never felt so protected. All the feelings that had been building for the last week welled up inside me.
I saw his eyes flick down to my lips. I drew in a trembling breath.
He lowered his head towards mine—
Guards in riot gear flooded the room. The rioters had retreated and the guards were retaking the prison. When they saw Gabriel holding me, they grabbed him and tore him away from me, hurling him to the floor.
“No!” I yelled. “No, he saved me! He wasn’t involved!”
But the guards were running on adrenaline and hungry for revenge after seeing so many of their friends injured by the rioters. Their batons rose and fell.
I lunged forward, trying to reach him, but another guard pulled me away.
Gabriel didn’t resist, didn’t hit back. As the blows rained down, his eyes stayed locked on mine, as if nothing mattered but ensuring that I was okay.
6
OLIVIA
I got Alicia out of the drug lock-up and for a few moments, the two of us just held each other. Someone made me a hot drink and tried to get me to sit still and sip it, but there were people hurt: they needed us.
The rest of the day was a blur. Over twenty guards had been injured and about the same number of prisoners, some of them seriously. No one had died, thank God. Alicia and I worked like demons, triaging people, treating the ones we could and sending the ones we couldn’t to hospital.
It took hours for the guards to round up the stragglers and get everyone back to their cells. Just as everything quietened down, the warden appeared.
Warden Thwaite is in his sixties, with gunmetal-gray hair shaved into a military buzzcut, although I don’t think he’s ever served. He’s big—his office is full of trophies from his high school football days—and he’s intimidatingly tall.
He was showing around a group of people I’d never seen before, all of them in suits, and they were muttering questions and noting things down on clipboards. They glanced around the infirmary for a few moments and then the warden hustled them away.
“Department of Corrections,” a guard explained when I asked. “Looking into what caused the riot.”
I nodded. That made sense. Maybe some good could come of all this. They’d want to know what the riot was about, and that would lead to Packard, and how he’d sold drugs in the prison and given the warden a cut. The warden would go to jail and maybe we’d get someone who treated the prisoners like human beings.
I shouldn’t have been so naive.
Around six in the evening, Alicia was talking to one of the guards while she treated him. She suddenly came over to me and pulled me aside, her face pale.
“What?” I asked, worried. “What is it?”
She took my hands and squeezed them. Bit her lip. “They’re pinning it on Gabriel,” she whispered.
What?!
The warden couldn’t have the real reason for the riot come out. So before the team from the Department of Corrections showed up, he’d gathered all the guards and got them singing from the same hymn sheet: the riot was led by Gabriel Kain. The story was that he’d started the riot as cover, so he could break into the infirmary and steal drugs.
And the Department of Corrections people were buying it. Why wouldn’t they? Gabriel was a notorious thief. They’d put him in solitary for a week and were talking about adding five years to his sentence. The guards were all backing up the warden’s story: they knew he’d fire them, if they didn’t. The few decent guards like Louis and Bruno, who might not play along, had been sent home “to rest.” There was no one to tell the truth.
Except me.
But if I did this, I’d be out of a job for sure. And this place was my last chance, literally the only place that would hire me as a doctor after what happened at the hospital. I could get another job, but I’d never practice medicine again.
My stomach contracted to a hard ball of ice and sank to my feet. Being a doctor was all I’d ever wanted. It was my life. I couldn’t lose that.
Movement outside in the hallway caught my eye. The Department of Corrections team were saying their goodbyes. All I had to do was sit tight for another few minutes. My hands hurt, and I realized I was digging my nails into my palms. My eyes went hot. I could not give up being a doctor.
But I couldn’t let Gabriel serve five extra years for something he didn’t do, either.