#3 - spilled milk

Maya's least favorite season. Winter. She's walking back from the supermarket on Canary Street when she sees the police cars, lights flashing, outside of Winthrop Place. She drops her grocery bags, milk exploding all over the pavement. Maya tightens her white scarf, hesitating fora heartbeat before she breaks out into a sprint, pushing through the glass double doors and bypassing the elevator to take the stairs.After four flights of stairs and a million possible scenarios running through her mind she arrives at her floor. Panic seizes her when she sees a gurney with a black bag being rolled into the elevator.
"MOM!" Maya shrieks, sprinting down the hallway. Police officers and EMT's are clogging the doorway to her apartment and she pushes through them, bursting into her dingy living room. She looks around the apartment, taking a silent inventory. In the middle of the floor sits a black wheelchair, empty. Maya's stomach drops. Then, so does she. A group of paramedics rush to her as Maya's body shudders on the floor.3 hours later Maya finds herself in a barren room, save for a metal table and two metal chairs, within the police station. The cold metal presses against her back. Maya sits rigidly and shakes her leg , waiting.
"How long have I been waiting?" she wonders. "3 minutes, 3 hours?"
The windowless door swings open and she startles from her thoughts as a man with a suit and tie walks into the room, taking a seat across from her.


"Do you know why you're here?" he asks.

"Where's my mother?" Maya replies, ignoring the question. "What did you do with her?"

"Maya.. is it?" he says glancing down at a piece of paper that he has in front of him. Maya nods. She silently wishes that time could stick like a clock so that whatever was about to happen, wouldn't happen. "Maya, did you know that your mother has been sitting dead in her wheelchair for about.. 2 months?" Maya only blinks. This can't be happening. She blinks and blinks and blinks but it's still happening.