Page 42 of Thick

“Of what?” Becker asked.

“Of your crimes. You’re a free man, Mr. Wallace. These men are taking you to a plane. You’re going to Houston. The MD Anderson Cancer Treatment Center, I believe.”

Becker’s mind attempted to process what he’d heard. He glanced at the two men standing outside his cell. One stood on each side of a stretcher.

“Exonerated?” he asked. “How?”

“You were granted a new trial. New information was presented, and there were new witnesses. You were found not guilty.”

Becker felt faint. “But. I didn’t. When?” he stammered.

“You’ve received mail about the trial’s date, but you’ve been too weak to read it,” the warden explained. “For medical reasons, the board elected not to have you attend. The verdict was read this morning.”

Becker steadied himself against the steel bedframe, looked at the stretcher, and then at the warden. “I’m free?”

“You are.”

If Becker was truly a free man, there was something he needed. Something he’d been deprived of for longer than he could recall. “I want to talk to Officer Anderson. Allison Anderson.”

“I’m sorry,” the warden said. “She resigned. She no longer works here.”

Becker’s heart plummeted. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, swallowed heavily, and released the upper bunk from his grasp. He collapsed onto the rubber mattress on the bunk below.

Lacking energy to oppose, and feeling that very little now mattered, Becker lay motionless as the attendants lifted him and strapped him to the gurney.

Swiftly, they pushed him through the cellblock and to the elevator’s doors. In and out of consciousness, he caught glimpses of lights and faces, but nothing he saw gave him reason to change his state of mind.

Becker had given up. Freedom, without the one woman he’d grown to love, meant nothing to him.

The elevator doors opened. The men hurried toward the double doors at the end of the corridor. The prison’s final guard, standing post at the doors that separated Becker Wallace from freedom, pressed the button on the wall and opened the electric doors.

Becker’s eyes fluttered open at the feeling of the warm humid air as it rushed past him.

Fifty yards ahead, a fueled airplane waited, running.

Becker closed his eyes.

“Mr. Wallace. We’re going to push you up the ramp.”

Becker opened his eyes.

At the top of the ramp, a woman stood. With her blonde hair pulled into a bun, she raised a shaking hand and waved.

Becker, weakened from the night’s happenings, managed to do nothing but blink in disbelief. After convincing himself his eyes weren’t deceiving him, he parted his dry lips. “Allis…Allison?”

Overcome by emotion and incapable of speaking, she simply nodded. Her dream, at least in part, had come true.

“How?” His thought swirled in his head. “What…what happened?”

She smiled at the thought of it all. “I cashed in my retirement account. I hired an attorney, and I’ve got doctors waiting in the best cancer center in the United States,” she blurted. “It’s in Houston. They’re expecting you.”

The attendants pushed him up the ramp. As he rolled past her, he raised his hand. She reached for it, folding her fingers gently over his.

Although they had touched each other’s hearts, this was the first time they had touched one another physically.

“They say they can help you,” she said.

He swallowed heavily, feeling ill from the morphine that had been administered while he waited outside his cell. The best he was able, he gripped her hand in his and said the only thing that came to mind.