Blind Justice

The moment the word guilty came from the foreman’s mouth, time briefly ceased to exist. After a collective gasp, the room grew quiet .I could feel my eyes dialate; the room became brighter, clearer. I could hear the pounding of blood in my ears as my breaths became shallow and struggled.

“But I did’t do it. I didn’t do it!” I couldn’t help but repeat it over and over. A broken record of angst and denial.

I glanced around the room. Surely I was dreaming. This didn’t happen to people like me, it couldn’t happen to people like me. I looked over at my attorney, his lips slightly pursed- opening and closing as though he was a fish stranded on land. Fear settled in as I looked for the face of my protector; the one person I knew I could trust.

M sat still as a stone statue. The blood had drained from his face and the only prominent color was the red in his watering eyes. The strongest man I knew sat unequivocally broken. Reality settled in fast and hard. I wanted to scream and vomit simultaneously, yet all I could do was sit there. Shattered, broken, afraid. I couldn’t understand how it happened. Why it happened.

At that moment, time returned to it’s normal pace. I remember this horrible, heart wrenching sob and it wasn’t until days of replaying that moment in my head that I realized that sound had came from me. Things began to blur. A baliff, whom I once worked corrections with, took my arm. I was guided to my husband and gently told to say my good byes. I remember clinging to him, thinking it would be 9 years before I would return home.

The time moved faster. The county sherriff, and family friend, told me to hand my valuables to my husband. I was restrained in handcuffs, and my husband of nearly 10 years was held back by local law enforcement. Crying, sobbing, begging. I swallowed hard, but the bile sat in my throat- a hard lump of defeat. I was already beginning to plot my suicide.

This was not my life.

****

This memory is probably the worst memory of my life. Over 5 years have passed, and yet it is still embedded in my mind. The look on M’s face haunts me. When I cannot sleep late at night, this replays in my head….over and over and over. I don’t know if I can ever get past it.