There was less than 5 minutes left.

   She didn’t wake this morning thinking that she had 5 minutes left and what the sudden impact of that moment would have on her.

   She awoke to gentle kisses from her husband as he gently whispered his lips against her eyelids and caressed her face like he was committing her to his memory. It had been their ritual for nearly 2 years now. He was off to save the world, the face of danger just another one in his day and she was there when he got home, to wipe away the horrors that he saw, day in day out. It was her face that helped him get through every day.

   It was only after a solitary breakfast and a sigh, with mundane, routine tasks running though her mind, being mentally checked off her To Do List that she found herself inside the bank just after lunch impatiently shuffling her feet in a line that took even more precious minutes from a life that always expected a tomorrow.

   ‘He doesn’t know!’
She shuffles forward slowly as she unconsciously strokes her flat belly.
‘But he will tonight. Tonight I get to show my total commitment to him by introducing our daughter’
She realizes that she hasn’t moved in line even though there is no longer no one in front of her anymore. For some reason they are all laying on the floor like they’ve turned to jelly and when she is seized roughly from behind she only just notices that she is the chosen one because she remained standing and it’s that defiance that will be punished.

   She is left standing, strapped inside a hideous contraption with a timer that is blinking at her silently, mocking her by quietly saying This Is The Time You Have Left

   And now there is less than 5 minutes left. All the bad men have gone, all except the one or two that bleed silently on the floor. The rest of the bank patrons have been moved out, single file, through the front door and through the floor to ceiling glass windows she can see the crowd gathered, staring at her, standing alone in the middle of the floor, studying her with pity in her eyes and she all of a sudden feels small and so terribly alone.

   Until the cavalry arrive. Overly padded men, moving slowly, encumbered by their protective suits and moving with unhurried movements toward her. She wants to shout at them to hurry but she can’t even move her lips. One breaks away to move slowly towards her until she can see his eyes behind the mask. They look at her with sorrow but they really say ‘I can free you. Feel the confidence in my power. I am here to save the day’

   He bends close to her body to work feverishly at her trappings all the while the timer is shouting You Have Even Less Time To Stay. She doesn’t know why she feels a connection to her savior but she gently lays her hand to his bowed head as if to say

‘I believe in you’

   He turns to the rest of team with a small shake of his head and they instinctively melt back outside the doors like mist on a cloudy day. She understands that all hope is gone and she prepares herself to say goodbye to her only hope and make him understand that she doesn’t blame him and she’s sorry that it will be a bad day for him but surely he also has someone he needs to go home to.

   He removes his helmet and looks down on the face of the only women he has ever loved with a passion that he has never known. He instinctively brushes a gentle hand across her stomach and spreads butterfly kisses across her eyelids and crushes her tightly into an embrace that will commit to his memory a body that was his for a such a short time.

   She didn’t go alone.