hardly see halfway down this row, so I place Ella up against a rack of food that is still partially intact. “I’m going to be just a few feet down there. Wait right here so I can see if there is anyone down here. How old is your brother? And what is his name?”
“He’s eleven and his name is Danny.”
“Okay, wait here.”
Ella grabs the sleeve of my coat and pulls me toward her. “He’s the best big brother in the whole world. You have to find him for me. I need him. He told me he’d always be there for me, and he’s not right now.”
“I will find him,” I assure her. I shouldn’t assure her. Please don’t be one of the dead, kid.
I dig my way through the shit blocking me from getting down the aisle. The screams from the woman are closer and it makes me move faster while turning to look for Ella every few seconds. She’s watching me intently.
I see others digging from the other side now, but I get to her first—the woman screaming. Her hand is pressed against the side of her face and blood is pooling out between her fingers. I tug at her hand to pull it away from the damage, finding more than damage. It looks like the side of her face took a lot of shrapnel from the explosion. The flesh is burned off, and there are minuscule pieces of metal lodged over several spots across her cheek. I drop my bag to the ground and reach in for supplies. The left side of her face was barely impacted at all, and her eye that isn’t swollen shut is staring at me. She can’t be older than twenty-two or twenty-three, not that age matters in this situation. Her gaze is filled with shock, so I offer her what I hope is a reassuring smile and say, “You are going to be okay.”
“Danny,” she croaks out in a hoarse voice, her throat undoubtedly raw from the explosion. “Where’s Danny?” Shit.
“Auntie!” I hear Ella yell from the other end of the aisle.
“Don’t come over here, Ella,” I shout back. “Stay right there. I’m helping your aunt.”
“Where is Danny?” the woman cries.
I wrap the woman’s face up with thick gauze. “What is your name?” I ask her.
“I need Danny,” she cries faintly.
I begin to dig around more of the fallen debris and the charcoaled boxes of what looks like cereal. I push my way around, creating more dust and smoke, but my hand sweeps across a limb, and I push everything out of the way as I uncover a body. Danny. With each part of him that is unveiled from the masses of dirt, I see that he must have taken the direct impact of the explosion.
I find his small neck, and place my fingers over the spot where his carotid artery would be pumping blood if he were still alive—if he were to defy all odds of surviving an explosion this close by. He’s gone. I look back at his aunt, who isn’t looking at me. She appears like she might be going into a state of shock, her frozen gaze set on the devastation on the other side of the aisle. Then I see Ella walking toward me slowly, with a fearful question in her eyes. “Stop, Ella!” I yell. “Go back to where I told you to wait for me!”
But she doesn’t stop. She keeps walking, and I desperately want to cover her brother back up so she doesn’t have to live with this image burned into her mind for the rest of her life. I should not have brought her in here. What was I thinking?
“Auntie,” Ella shouts as she drops by the woman’s side, gently shaking her shoulders to pull her out of the haze she is lost inside of.
“Ella, your aunt is going to be okay,” I say, hoping I’m not lying. God, I hope she’s going to be okay.
“Auntie!” she screams. She drops into her aunt’s lap and wraps her arms around her neck. “What happened to your face?”
I scoot back toward the woman and check her pulse now too, afraid what I initially thought was shock might be something worse.
“Is she going to be okay?” Ella asks. “Is she? Where’s Danny? Is he okay? Is he outside with the policemen now?”
With my fingers still pressed against her aunt’s neck, I look up at Ella and the tears filling her eyes. I know how to say