Two Minutes

Hundred twenty.

Cold sweat evaporates in the spotlit night air as my silent flight crosses dewy grass towards the facility. No time for missteps, errors, or anything without purpose. Five long months, but sixteen even longer. Hundred ten. I close the distance on the three story climb up the brickwork on the northwest corner. Handholds secured in recessed mortar, wiry strength on adrenaline high propels me vertically. Eighty. Outside of the records office. Don’t mind that backwards drop. Seventy. Sidling onto the windowsill, I grab my hammer. Once the window alarms go off…

Sixty.

Shrieking sirens herald my shattering emergence, stenches in the dark accosting me in sickening remembrance. Credentials markered on my arm get hastily entered into the nearest monitor. Accessing the remote server, I insert the hard drive. Got you bastards. Forty. Access my patient files. Prescriptions, disciplinary action, withheld “privileges”, electroconvulsive therapy, internal abuse reports. …Can’t unsee what they did to me. Wait. Twenty five? Footfalls rush through the outer corridor. I turn off the computer. Fifteen? Keys rattling outside, I bolt for the jagged window opening. Five? Staring down a three story drop, resurgent memories cripple me. Behind me, the door bursts open. Three… two…

One.