Ch. 3

"PLEASE HELP ME!"

The sound came from within the building and my mind and heart did a back-flip. It was a little girl's voice! 'Casey!' my mind screamed. A figure appeared behind the window of the department store. It was her. She was screaming for help, for someone to get her out of the dangerous building. The doors had been blown open from the first explosion, but the roof section around the door had collapsed and there was no way out except for the large window.

I took off in a run for the little girl, but was stopped by another explosion. The ground shook and I watched in horror as the back of the store was engulfed in a huge fireball. I stood there, numb, as the fireball reached Casey. The blast impacted her body and threw her through the large window, shattering the glass and sending her flying fifty feet through the air. Her scorched body hit the pavement awkwardly and she flipped many times before coming to a stop. I finally could move, and I ran as fast as my legs could take me. Her body was a bloody and blistered heap, and I could already see many injuries that would have been fatal. I put two fingers up to her now-scarred neck and tried to feel for a pulse. There was none. She was dead.

** ** ** **


I bolted up in my bed, breathing heavily. Looking around wildly, my mind slowly registered that I was still in the hospital and I calmed myself down. The latest in my string of nightmares was one of the most disturbing yet. They had gotten worse in the past few weeks. The "Department Store Bombing," as it was coming to be known, was still fresh in my mind. Ever since I had woken up in this hospital bed, I had been having nightmares of that day, about what could have gone wrong. The dreams usually ended in everyone dying. The firefighters had died in one; the EMTs had died in another. But in all of the dreams so far, I had not seen the death of Casey. Seeing her death, even if it was only an image created in my mind, was enough to seriously break me.


Trying to shake myself out of the last vestiges of my haunted sleep, I turned to the person sitting in the chair on the other side of the room. She was looking at me with a combination of fear and concern. "Casey?" I said. "Can you come here, sweetie?"

She got up right away and bounded up to the side of the bed. "What's wrong? You want me to call the nurse?"

"No, nothing's wrong. I just wanted to know you were alright." I pulled her in for a hug.

"Of course I'm alright. I've been here with you since Tuesday."

"I know." I hugged her closer. "I guess I just like to give you a hug every once in a while." I let go of her.

She smiled. "Can I come up there with you?"

I hesitated all of .379 seconds before saying, "Sure."

She came up onto the bed and we had our cuddle time. When I was little, my parents always had cuddle time with us kids, and when I told Casey about cuddle time, she practically begged to have her own cuddle time. I was a little hesitant at first, but a persistent Casey asked Dr. Tiecher if it was okay. He had said that it should be fine, as long as she was careful. So we had our cuddle times every time she came to visit, which was every day.

I had been up and about for a few weeks now, on crutches and going through physical therapy to get my strength back. But the doctors still kept me under close observation. The place was driving me insane. Of all the places to be stuck in for almost two months, it had to be some hospital in Colorado Springs. The only thing that kept me from totally freaking out at the staff was Casey and her constant supervision. It was cute how she picked up on some of the doctors' sayings. 'Okay, people. Visiting hours are over.' Or, 'You, mister, need to watch your blood pressure.' Her presence was quite comforting. She was always the first one here in the mornings and the last one to leave. Earlier this week, I had gotten a bit of a cold. I insisted that it was nothing, but when, in one of my coughing fits, I started coughing up blood, I had to admit that something was wrong. The doc gave me the old "you're overdoing it, take a few days and just rest" speech. Rest was the last thing I wanted.

Casey's squirming brought me back to the present and I let go. She sat on my lap and looked at me, concern playing across her features. "What's wrong?"

I smiled and gave her nose a wiggle. "What are you, a mind reader?" When her giggling stopped and she looked at me again, I could see I wouldn't be getting out of this one. "Sean just had a bad dream, that's all."

"What was it about?"

"It doesn't matter." Oh no. There was that look again. She really wasn't going to let me off that easy today. "I dreamed about the 'bad day' again."

"Oh."

She knew what the "bad day" was, and knew about my nightmares. She insisted I tell what happened this time. "You died," I said, my voice catching.

A comfortable silence stretched out for a few seconds. "Need another hug?" she asked.

My eyes were starting to wet at the prospect of losing this little girl whom I had come to love like my own. My voice wavered again. "Yeah. Come here, sweetie." She jumped on me like a lion taking its prey and hugged me tightly.

"I love you Daddy." The slip caught me off guard.

"I'm not Daddy."

"I know," she replied. "But it sounds right."

She was starting to tense up and I asked her, "You want to talk about your parents?"

I remember when Richard told me about her family from the records that could be found about them from their house. They were older when they had her, and most of their relatives had died by then. At the time of the attack, they were the last vestiges of the Harmon family. The only ones to come to their funeral were the people who fought to get their bodies out of the building.

Speaking into my shoulder, she talked for an hour about her father and mother. Hearing about the small bit of who they were from Richard was one thing, but hearing what they were like from their daughter was another thing altogether. She was crying by the time she finished, and I just held her tight and let her cry on my shoulder.

I knew that for both of us, the road to healing would be a long and bumpy one. But this was the first step down the road, and I knew that, eventually, we would both be okay.