Where Are You Now?

78

T he ceiling was falling around us. I pulled myself up and tried to throw my body over Leesey, who was now barely breathing. I felt a chunk of plaster hit my shoulder and then my head and arm. Too late, too late, I thought. Like Mack and those other girls, Leesey and I were doomed to end our lives here.

Then I heard the sound of the outside basement door being pulled open, and shouting voices approaching me from above. That was when I let myself drift off and escape from the pain. I guess they sedated me pretty heavily, because it was two days before I really woke up. Mother was sitting on a chair by the window of the hospital room, watching over me as she had done on 9/11. As we had that day, we cried together in each other’s arms, this time for Mack, the honorable young man, son and brother, who had died because he wanted to accept his responsibilities.