SUSAN BAILEY<br/><br/>I think there's only so much a person can take, obviously soldiers and police and extreme sportspeople can take a lot, ER doctors and nurses too I don't doubt.<br/><br/>But I'm not one of those people, to me extreme sports means extra lemon in my Sangria while I'm on the beach watching those nice muscular surf dudes. And being in a city that was coming apart in panic was a little more extreme than too much lemon. A fair bit more.<br/><br/>I'm just an ordinary girl, I guess and ordinary girls I have decided are happiest with ordinary lives...<br/><br/>The details of the drive to Mission Street are hazy. All the hundreds of cars, many abandoned in the jammed traffic and lack of gas or I guess overheated engines and the thousands of people on foot going north was... just more of the stuff that was well beyond ordinary. I remember sitting at the wheel of Steve and gripping the rim with white knuckles and Todd physically prising my fingers one at a time off it. We were at the hospital.<br/><br/>Around the hospital were police, SWAT guys, fire fighters, reporters... everybody. We took Syeda in and sat with her in a corridor for what felt like hours until a frazzled looking doctor with mussed hair, grubby clothes and what looked horribly like spots of blood on his coat waved us in and checked the unconscious Indian girl. He asked what happened and the boy we'd met up with in Coach Winters' truck I think said something but I wasn't really listening.<br/><br/><strong>"She was... I'm not sure... We all got mixed up in a crush in the high school trying to get out it was..."</strong><br/><br/><strong><em>"What's wrong with the girl please? How was she injured?"</em></strong>The doctor pretty much ignored me and looked over my head at the football coach.<br/><br/><strong>"She got trampled. I think. I don't know. I just... I didn't see it. She might have broken ribs or something..."</strong>I turned away, I felt like I might throw up.<br/><br/>* * *<br/><br/>The doctor took Syeda away. Todd and Katie waited with us for a while but there was no more news and the place was getting more and more crowded and chaotic. Eventually I couldn't bear it.<br/><br/><strong>"I'm going outside. Need some air. Catch you later."</strong><br/><br/>Outside on the patch of lawn beside the hospital entrance drive was the only piece of free clear space and that had quite a few people crashed out on it. I plumped myself down on the grass and leaned back on a tree trunk. I had grabbed a bottle of water from a vending machine in the lobby and gasping for liquid downed half of it in one go. When I looked round the boy and Coach Winters were there.<br/><br/><strong>"So. What now?"</strong>I asked, holding my arm out stiffly, the bottle in my hand, towards the young Afro-American guy who's name I still didn't know,<strong>"And what the hell is going on?"</strong><br/><br/>