The thick dust hanging in the air makes it nearly impossible to open my eyes. Even after I manage to squint them open, I can hardly make out my surroundings in the few beams of light shining through the cracks in the wall and ceiling. I raise my hand to rub my eyes and a sharp pain assaults my right side. “Shit that hurts!” I try to yell, but the pain is so bad it comes out as a whimper. What happened? Something is laying on my legs. I try to move and it’s then that I remember the explosion. Oh my God, it was a bomb. A wave of panic clouds my mind for several long moments before I can shake free and think straight again.

Despite the pain, I sit up, pushing debris off me. I hear a soft sob from somewhere in the room. Bia, she was in here. “Bia! Where are you?” I still myself so I can listen for any movement. There’s nothing. “Bia! Talk to me!” I hear the sob again coming from the far corner of what used to be the conference room. “I’m coming, Bia! Hold on.”

I move gingerly, pushing shards of steel beams off my legs. As I shift, blood drips in my eye, dimming my vision even more. I wipe it and feel for where it’s coming from - a laceration the length of my brow. I press firmly against it with the heel of my hand to keep it from bleeding. When I remove my hand there is blood dripping down my wrist. Wiping the blood on the end of my torn blouse, I turn my attention back to freeing myself and manage to shove free of the beam that has me trapped. There are cuts and scrapes all over my lower body, but nothing seems to be broken, other than maybe my ribs. I steady myself on a piece of concrete and force myself up. Pain sears through me again, causing me to buckle over in pain.

Bia’s soft cry for help makes me stand up straight, oblivious to the pain tearing through my whole body. “Keep talking, Bia.” I stumble over the broken leg of a table, but catch myself before I crash into a large piece of glass protruding from what used to be the windows that divided the rooms.

A soft, tiny motion catches my eye. I turn and see her little hand sticking out from under a tabletop buried under chunks of concrete. “I’m here, Bia. It’s Aedon. I met you earlier, sweetie.” I pull pieces of the room off her as I talk.

She can barely open her eyes when I uncover the rest of her. She holds them open wearily, looking at me behind a haze of confusion. “Aedon?” her voice whimpers.

“Yes. Let me look at you.” I touch her upper body looking for any injuries. She doesn’t wince when I press on her stomach. Her legs are still buried. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

“What happened?” she asks with tears slipping from the corner of her eyes.

“I’m not sure, but I think the building exploded.”

“Daddy!” she cries.

“We’ll find your dad, but for now I need you to tell me if anything hurts?”

“My left leg is throbbing.” Her hand reaches down to touch it. When she can’t reach it, her head comes up and she realizes for the first time that she’s still partially buried. Her cries grow louder.

“It’s okay, Bia. I’m going to get you out of here,” I say, trying to calm her. “You’re going to have to stay still so nothing else falls on us. Do you understand?”

She nods and slows her breathing.

“Good girl.” I move further down, removing what I can as I go. My side hurts so bad that it doubles me over for a moment while I catch my breath.

“You’re hurt, too.”

“I’m alright, just give me a second.” I push back the pain, standing to lift the heavy broken conference table that’s crushing her legs. “When I lift this, do you think you can push yourself out using your arms?”

“I’ll try.”

“On the count of three. One, two…three!” On three, I lift with everything I have in me. Bia cries out in pain, but she’s able to move enough to get out from under it. I slowly let it down to prevent it from moving any further.

“My leg!” she cries.

“Let me see it, Bia.” I sit down at her feet and slowly start moving my hands down her legs. Her left leg is broken below the knee and her left ankle is pointed outward at an awkward angle. I feel for a pedal pulse and there is none. If I don’t set her foot, she will lose it.

“Is it broken?” she cries, again.

“Yes, it is. I need to set the bone in your ankle. I know you probably won’t understand this, but there is no blood flow to your foot and if I don’t set it, you may lose your foot.”

“No!” she screams.

I crawl up to her so that I can look in her eyes. “Look at me. Who is the strongest person you know?”

Her tear-filled eyes are on mine. “My dad,” she sniffs.

“Is he like superhero strong?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to be a superhero, like your daddy.”

“Like Wonder Woman?”

“Yes, Bia, like Wonder Woman. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s going to hurt really bad for a split second. Do you think you can handle it?”

She takes my hand. “It’s okay, I’ll be brave.” Her little lip quivers.

I crawl back down to her leg and gently take her foot in my hand. “Grab the end of your shirt and ball it up. Put it in your mouth and bite down on it.” My hope is that she will pass out. She does what I tell her. “Are you ready?”

She squeezes her eyes tightly and shakes her head. I position my hands. “One, two…” I snap it quickly. She screams out in pain and her eyes roll back in her head as she passes out. I lean over holding my side and let my tears fall. I hate hurting a child. Forgetting about the cut over my eye, I lay my face in my hands and the bleeding starts again. I apply pressure and close my eyes for a second. Something crashes down behind me.

I have to get us out of here. There is no telling how unstable this building is – the whole thing could crumble down on top of us if we wait too long. I stand and wince. The side of wall that was lined with windows is completely open. It looks like the floor of the room above us fell so that it braced the area we are in. That’s the only reason we’re alive. If it would have collapsed completely, we’d be dead.

The glass crunches beneath my feet as I make my way to the opening. I briefly stop to check the pulse of a woman buried under bent steel beams and chunks of concrete, but there is none – not that I expected to feel one.

“Aedon.” I hear Bia’s weak cry.

“I’m here, Bia.” I make my way back to her, careful not to step on the broken glass, some of which remained in thick shards large enough to puncture straight through a person’s foot.

“Is my foot going to be okay?” She lifts her head to look at it.

“It will be once we get you out of here. I need to find something to splint your leg with.” I stand and look for anything I can use. It’s then I remember what I came back for. “My purse. I have a phone in my bag.” I scramble trying to remember where I left it. The entire room is foreign now and my head spins, wondering how the hell I am going to find it under all the debris. I take several slow, deep breaths and close my eyes, trying to get my bearings as to how the room looked prior to the explosion. “Damn it.” The biggest portion of concrete laying around is on the exact spot I was sitting.

“What’s wrong, Aedon?”

“I can’t get to my phone,” I tell her, pushing thoughts of the phone to the back of my mind and scanning again for something to improvise a splint out of. The window frames splintered from the blast, but several long, straight pieces remained intact and are laying on the floor near us. Not ideal, but they should do for now. I gather up the longest of the broken pieces and lay them beside her. “I need to find something to tie around them.”

She sits up and looks around. “Over there.” She points.

A tattered curtain flutters lazily in the air currents blowing in through the destroyed wall. On my way to it, I glimpse my purse handle sticking out from under some concrete. I tug hard on it until it slides out from underneath, causing a large pile of concrete to shift and sending up a cloud of dust. I quickly rifle through the contents to find my phone, but it’s something sharp jabs my finger. I gingerly wrap my hands around it and withdraw my phone. It is completely crushed, the screen now crisscrossed with jagged chunks of glass. I turn it upside-down and empty it on the floor, looking for anything of use. I grab the smashed candy bar I took from my dad, a pair of nail scissors, and a flashlight Ashe gave me. Why couldn’t I be more prepared, like a boy scout?

Part of the curtain is caught underneath an upside-down filing cabinet. I push hard, but it won’t budge. I use the tiny nail scissors to cut a piece of the fabric so that I can rip it apart. I’m able to remove just enough fabric to use on her splint.

I make my way back over to her. “I’m going to place this wood on either side of your leg and then tie this around it. It’s going to hurt when I move your leg.”

“It’s okay, I can take it.”

“Your father is going to be so proud of you.”

Her head falls downward at the mention of her father. “Do you think he’s still alive?”

“I think your daddy is a brave man and he would do whatever he could to make it to you. He’s probably looking for us right now.” God, I hope I’m right. My mind flashes for the first time to Ashe. He’s got to be frantic knowing I’m in here. He will find us, even if it kills him.

She is braver than most of the adults I have worked on, barely uttering a sound when I splint her leg. “You’re not going to be able to put a lot of pressure on this foot. I’ve braced it the best I can to hold it in place.” I move to the right side of her and help her up. My side throbs as I place my arm around her waist. I take her hand and place it on a fallen beam to lean on, then pull up my torn blouse to look at my ribs. There is a bruise running down from under my breast to my hip, spilling over my side.

“We need to get you help too,” Bia says watching me.

“I’m okay, just a couple of broken ribs. Now let’s try to find a way out of here.” I wrap my arm around her waist again. We make our way around and over destroyed desks, filing cabinets, broken glass, and concrete walls, coming to a stop where the dead woman lays, crushed. “I want you to keep your eyes forward, don’t look around.”

“Why?” She asks.

“Because there are some people that weren’t as lucky as we were. I don’t want you to see them.” She starts to look around anyway and I take her face into my hands. “Listen to me. You don’t want to see.”

“It’s not my daddy, is it?” Tears run down her face.

“No, honey. It’s not your dad. I promise.” I wipe away her tears with my thumb. She nods in understanding. We only make it a short distance before there is nowhere else to go. There is no opening over here, no way out and even less light spilling inside.

“Aedon, my leg really hurts.”

“Okay, sit here and I’ll look for another way out.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not going to leave you. I promise.” I run my hands down my slacks and feel the candy bar I put in my pocket. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah. My dad was going to take me to lunch, but…he never got the chance.” Her voice catches.

“Here, I hope you like Baby Ruth bars. Evidently, it’s my dad’s favorite.” I hand it to her and feel my heart racing. I hope to God my parents stayed outside the gate, out of harm’s way.

The wrapper crinkles as she opens the candy bar. “My dad told me one time that this place has a secret floor underneath the building that’s made of steel.”

“Did he ever mention where it was?”

“He showed me once. I think it was on the other side of the room that we were in.” She bites into the candy bar.

“We’ll rest here for a minute and then we’ll find it together. Let’s hope it’s our way out.”