The Sixteen Seconds
She was nine, she was on a narcotic, she had been through something.
The curtain could be a dream.
The hours could be a dream.
Children compress and rearrange and I know that now from a professional but I half knew it then.
The second was that there had been a delay for an ordinary reason.
No cell coverage.
A ranch road.
Somebody’s bad judgment in a panic — a man who thought her leg was bruised and decided to watch it for an hour and then another hour, which is a thing people do and which is stupid rather than criminal.