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Photo: www.news.com.au
A Mile Away
from Tragedy
By Aprill Brandon
When tragedy strikes, heroes emerge.
By now most people have heard of the heroism that came in the immediate
aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. The journalist who put down
his camera to help an injured woman. Spectators who ran toward the
explosions to help, instead of running away from them. The runners who
after making it through a grueling 26 miles continued to run all the
way to the hospital to donate blood. The police and EMT's. The
volunteers. All of them doing whatever they could in the chaos to help
save lives.
Heroes. True heroes.
All of them.
But it's a different story a mile away.
I watched the horror unfold probably just like you did. I was gathered
around a TV with a group of people surrounding me, all of us trying to
make sense of a world that no longer made sense. The only difference is
I was in a bar along the marathon route. A place where the bartender
refused to turn up the volume or turn on the closed captioning for fear
of inciting panic. So instead of hearing an anchor give details, all we
heard was speculation coming from a dozen different directions at once
from confused patrons.
"Oh my God, is that purple stuff blood? Oh God, it's blood."
"I heard there are still bombs along the route. We should all leave."
"No, the police are telling everyone to stay where they are."
"They're shutting down public transportation."
"Don't use your cell phone. That's how they're detonating the bombs."
"My cousin said one hundred people are dead."
"No, it's a only about a dozen."
"I heard only two, but one is a kid."
A mile away there is no smoke. No blood. No severed limbs. No screams.
There are only large groups of scared people trying to sort out the
information from the misinformation. We were far enough away to
probably not be in any danger but it still felt like we were in danger.
We were all desperately trying to get hold of our families to let them
know we were OK only to realize with growing panic that our phones
weren't working. As agonizing minutes ticked by, we watched our phones
blow up with calls and texts we were unable to answer.
A mile away, there isn't much you can do to help. All you can do is
hand out cigarettes to people because if there was ever a time to
smoke, now would be it. You hand them out to the two guys who can't
stop talking about how two people died and how they happen to be two
people and how by that logic it could have been them. You hand them out
to the guy walking down the street who is looking for his friend whom
he lost a few hours ago and is worried he left him closer to the finish
line. You even hand one out to the young, drunk, scared girl who won't
stop talking about how if a bomb was going to go off, they should have
done it at Fenway where there was a game because somehow in her young,
drunk, scared mind, blowing up baseball fans is better than blowing up
marathon fans. And you just shake your head and forgive her because
she's young, drunk, scared and alone.
A mile away, there is a frat house that turned their lawn party into a
way station, offering passerbys water or food or cell phones or cell
phone chargers. Or probably, if you asked them, they'd even offer you a
much needed hug.
A mile away, there is a former EMT who keeps reassuring you that
everything will be alright, she promises, when you hear that another
possible bomb went off in a building close to your husband's work and
you start to freak out that he's now in danger and as an afterthought
that you're all still possibly in danger and the terror isn't over.
A mile away, there is a someone who lets you get snot and eyeliner all
over his shirt as you cry on his shoulder in front of another TV in
another bar farther away from the finish line because you don't know
where else to go when the president makes his address about the
tragedy.
A mile away, there is a friend who presses a crumbled $50 into your
hands and insists you take it so you can hail a cab home instead of
taking the subway since the police are advising everyone to avoid
crowds.
A mile away, there is a cabbie who lets you tell the story of the first
time you ever went to the Boston Marathon two years ago when you first
came to Boston and how moved you were that so many people would stand
for so many hours cheering on runners they don't know and cheering just
as loudly for the last runners as they did for the first.
And five miles away, when you finally get home, there is a husband who
lets you collapse into his arms sobbing because you both made it
through this horrific day alive.
Yes, heroes emerge in a time of tragedy.
But a mile away from tragedy, there are only people doing whatever they
can, whatever gesture, big or small, to help each other get through one
of the worst days in American history.
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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