Dorian Martínez

At 4:30 a.m. the police informed Dorian's parents that their son was dead. The car had gone through a barrier outside Kingston Road & burst into flames before emergency crews arrived. His girlfriend survived. Enya spent  weeks under sedation before detectives questioned her. By then the story already existed without her. Bad relationship. Public fights. Threats overheard outside bars. Dorian trying to leave. Enya refusing. I was the psychiatrist assigned to evaluate her competency. She sat across from me with burns climbing her throat like fingerprints. “I do not remember the crash,” she said. The court accepted my report. Malingering. Antisocial traits. Preserved cognition. 10 years. No body was recovered from the wreckage. The prosecutors said the fire explained everything. After that, the city moved on. I did not. Years later, near midnight, someone followed me from the hospital parking structure. I heard shoes behind mine, steady enough to avoid panic. “Dr.” I turned. Dorian stood under the streetlamp, hood damp from rain. Alive. Inside my apartment he stayed near the door, watching the windows more than me. “She planned it,” he said quietly. “I found out too late.” He told me he jumped before impact. Enya escaped from the opposite side. The fire covered the rest. He disappeared before police arrived. “You let her take the sentence.” “I was scared.” I hid him after that. Then he met someone else. A waitress from Texas. No questions asked. After that, he looked at me the way people look at old receipts. Enya was released on parole in March. A week later Dorian called from an unknown number. “She knows.” “Go to the police,” I said. “You signed the report.” The call ended.