Tonight wasn't the first time Kate had witnessed someone being beaten.
Once in college she'd watched two frat boys get into it at a party, an event that she and her freshman friends had found horrifying at the time. The faded memory still dredged up the scent of stale sweat and PBR, with an accompanying soundtrack of thumping bass and a girl drunkenly screaming "Stop it! You're killing him!"
Now as Kate sits on the floor of her kitchen, hands shaking and neck sore, she finds that the years since have lent their perspective. The altercation at the party had been nothing, ending in less than a moment, with the boyfriend of the screaming girl getting in maybe, two or three hits before his victim puked up some jello shots and passed out with a bloody nose.
It's been nearly fifteen minutes since Alejandro first pointed his gun at Ted, fourteen since her assailant had backed away in a panicked crawl, as though Alejandro were a wolf stalking him across the linoleum. (Kate can still feel the phantom brush of his pant leg against her cheek as she lay gasping.) Ten minutes since Alejandro had delivered the first hit, and who knows how many since.
Maybe it was the lack of Oxygen, but now Kate wonders how her mind could ever have found the two incidents to be similar. The frat boys had been fueled by vodka and jealousy, the resulting blows both brutal and sloppy. To see Ted being beaten is like watching a perfectly choreographed film, each hit measured and precise.
Twenty minutes have passed before Kate realizes that Ted won't get to pass out. Instead, he'll be forced to feel each smack of flesh against bone, every corresponding burst of pain, the thick trickle of blood and snot.
Alejandro will make sure of this, and later Kate will thank him for it.