Elixir by Ruth Vincent

depressingly institutional. Long rows of fluorescent lighting cast a harsh white glow over everything. The building was bustling with officers, even though it was almost 1:00 a.m. A few heads rose as we walked by, but most barely paid attention to us.
    I looked around in the crowd for Obadiah, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he was already being questioned?
    “Come this way,” Officer Diaz said. Mutely I obeyed, walking slowly behind him, down a long, dingy corridor all the way to a door at the very end. Diaz opened it.
    It was a small, windowless room. A lone fluorescent strip cast a dim flickering light over its contents: a battered Formica desk and two blue plastic chairs.
    “Wait here,” Diaz said gruffly to me, gesturing to one of the chairs. “The detective will be in to speak with you.”
    I glanced in at the Spartan interior. Obadiah was probably being held in a room similar to this—perhaps very close by—but it might as well be across the universe.
    Diaz was glaring at me so I entered the room. The door shut behind me with a loud click, leaving me alone.
    I sat down and waited, trying not to let my fears get the best of me, trying to think my way out of this. But every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was Eva—her splayed-out limbs, her blank, unconscious face.
    I continued to wait. The chair was stiff and uncomfortable. I kept shifting my body around in different positions, trying to find a comfortable one, but there were none. I felt like some sort of animal in a holding crate. There was nothing to do in the room, nothing of visual interest, not even a clock on the wall to mark the passage of time. I could only stare down at my hands and listen to the buzzing of the fluorescent light strip, which was starting to get to me.
    How long was I going to have to wait here? Maybe I hadn’t been sitting here that long, and it just felt that way—time passed so slowly in this stuffy windowless room.
    The image of Eva’s body—limp and broken in the middle of the street—kept flashing through my mind’s eye. How bad were her injuries? Had she hit her head when she fell? Was she going to wake up? What was she going to be like when she woke up? I was so numb from shock I could barely even process these thoughts.
    That was the problem with this room. There was nothing in here to distract me from my worst fears.
    I rubbed my eyes.
    I needed to be at the hospital. I needed to be with Eva. I wanted to call the hospital, to see if she was still in the E.R., to see how she was faring, but I’d had to surrender my phone to the cops when I went into this room. I felt handicapped without it.
    Then the thought occurred to me—that they kept people in these windowless rooms with no clocks and nothing to do precisely to make them more anxious. By the time the detective comes in, the suspect is so cowed and vulnerable they’ll say anything.
    The thought only increased my anxiety.
    I jumped as I heard the door click open. A man walked into the room—fifty-something, African American, his hair shaved close to the head, wearing a slightly wrinkled suit. He gave me a brief nod of acknowledgement and held out his hand.
    “Miss Jones, Detective Shawn Foster,” he said, his voice crisply professional. He took a seat in the chair opposite me.
    I attempted to give him a friendly smile, but all I managed was a grim twitch of my lips.
    “Miss Jones, I just spoke with Officers Diaz and McCleary, who brought you here, and the detectives we dispatched to the scene. They told me the whole story.”
    His voice was devoid of emotion.
    I didn’t know what to say. What “whole story” had they told him? They didn’t know the whole story—only Obadiah and I did.
    Detective Foster gave me a pointed look. “You said that your roommate Eva Morales’ fall was an accident?”
    I nodded.
    Foster’s brow furrowed, and he jotted something down on a small pad.
    “Was Eva on the roof with you and Obadiah Savage?” the detective