Three days of nail biting and pacing. Three days of torturous thoughts and nightmares of negative responses. Three days of prayers, even though he had long given up on praying. Despite the ease in his anxiety when he saw Jamie Morton again, it was short lived. The tightness in his chest returned with a vengeance as soon as closing statements were complete and the judge handed down his final directions to the jurors. He had watched on, noticing how two or three of them had glanced his way. Too afraid to dream that was a good sign, he waited with bated breath and restrained frustration that this trial would come to a speedy end. Every minute was torture. He had to wait for three long days. Luckily Smack kept his distance out of fear of Andrew’s reaction. In fact, nearly everyone on his block stayed away. Even the corrections officers took some sympathy on him. Because of the rarity of a retrial, the local media had picked up his story and made him into some type of prison folk hero. Almost everyone followed the trial in any manner that they could, and it seemed as though everyone was on edge waiting for the announcement to be made.
