1.0
I feel the heat.
It singes my skin at this distance. I don’t care. The burning in my chest is worse. I grip my body tightly, trying to restrain the surging vibration ripping through every cell and atom. The anger, the fear, the disbelief all mixed is like molten lava coursing destructively through my chest as it makes its way from my stomach to my heart.
“Are you okay!”
The guardian shouts over the sirens, but the raging inferno behind him overshadows his mechanical voice to almost a whisper. He grips both of my arms as he crouches just before me. His face shield slides up, and I see that it’s not a man after all. She has soft eyes that scan me for awareness and strong hands that search me for damage. Both actions are in vain. Even with the stinging in my lungs and the throbbing of my leg, the only thing I can feel is the pain in my heart.
“Sir, can you hear me?”
No, it’s not really pain; it’s something worse. A tearing of the fabric of my being in methodical strokes like paper ripped slowly. That final snap, the one when the material is teetering by strands just before complete separation, is more frightening than anything I’ve ever experienced. I’m hanging on by a small weary thread.
“Were you in the building, sir?” she shouts urgently, now free of the face shield’s microphone, “did you see anyone else get out?”
I nod shakily, but she does not ask to which question I’m responding. I’m stricken with images that flood my mind. A brightly lit corridor slowly fills with kids - teenagers, as they pour into the hallway like brooks and streams flowing into a wide cement river. Their voices chatter into a mix of unintelligible sounds, their faces emoting beyond words. They smile, pout and grit. Emoting all the emotions I’ve become accustomed to seeing from people their age.
“This is guardian three-two-four,” she says into the helmet as she presses its side next to her ear, “I have a survivor on the south end of the school.”
You are bleeding. Tell her so.
My head snaps down in shock. I look to my stomach and see an amassing red forming with a warmth that is almost soothing. Then the pain starts. A pinching that quickly turns into a stabbing and screws through from front to back.
I reach out and grab her arm. Her mind turns from the voice in her helmet to me. It must be the look in my eyes because she instantly puts all her attention on me and begins to search closer until she comes to the red patch dripping steadily onto the curb.
“I need a medvac now!”
Do not be concerned with the wound. You will live.
Somewhere between the smoldering fire glowing in the dusk, the reoccurring snaps of electricity in the rubble and the sirens now accumulating in herds, I’m looking for the steady voice.
The guardian is kind. She lies me on the curb just as raindrops begin to drip in random methodical heavy taps. Her hands find the wound almost instantly. She tears my shirt open just as I feel my body go cold.
“Where the hell is the medvac,” She says loudly enough to be urgent but quiet enough not to show all her concern.
It’s enough to draw a white-robed responder to her side. His dark eyes and beard are like a single drop of black paint on a blank white paper. The sight makes me smile and even giggle under the pain, but my thoughts turn to hallways, the classroom- my kids. My mind slowly sweeps through the horizon of faces. They sit with eyes fixated on me as I speak to them.
My voice is faint, as if echoing from a great distance. I’m speaking to them about starlight traveling through time and space to reach us. Their eyes are filled with wonder and my heart with happiness. In the crowd of forty, I look deeply for the hazel eyes and sandy skin that I favor so deeply.
He is not there. Do not dwell on what will only bring pain.
Suddenly my body begins to convulse, and I lose what steady breath I have. I can’t hold a straight thought or clear perception of the words as every bit of reality is caught between the jarring of my body and the voice coming from some unknown space.
“Shit!” The medic shouts at the Guardian, “Hold him! I’m injecting a stimulant.”
The sharp pinch doesn’t even make me flinch because I’m already convulsing as I’m getting colder.
“Just listen to my voice,” The Guardian says with a concern written in her eyes, “stay with us.”
“The…schoo,” I mumble with a jittery breath.
“Focus on my voice, sir,” the guardian says as she holds my hands, “you’re all that matters right now.”
Her words are meant to be kind, reassuring, even uplifting - but they aren’t. How could they be?
How can she know that my son is in that burning school.
