Tornado Warning ("Disaster Strikes" Series)

Chapter 6: Now What?

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief and grimaced as pain raced through her body. Her head throbbing, she clenched her fist (her left one, obviously) in an attempt to keep her voice steady.

"Is anybody hurt? It doesn't matter how minor, if you are hurt, please let me know." The sound of her voice shocked her. Despite managing to keep it from wavering, she could clearly hear and feel the pain that was projected with every word. Her lungs were on fire as she struggled to catch her breath. Between the blow to her head, her arm, and her back, Sarah knew that she was in trouble. Years of watching Grey's Anatomy and Sherlock told her that she was in shock, and that adrenaline was currently coursing through her veins. Even though she could barely stand the pain as it was at that moment, she could tell that things would only get worse once the adrenaline wore off. If she was going to take care of the students, she'd need to act fast.

A couple kids answered "me" when Sarah asked if they were injured, so she quickly looked them over. Luckily, the injuries were only minor or moderate; no one was mortally wounded, not even Caleb. Apparently, a piece of debris had flown into the bathroom through the hole where the door had been, and grazed his back. His shirt was torn into pieces, but the wooden plank only gave him shallow cuts to his actual skin.

Still, with difficulty due to her broken arm, Sarah took off her blouse (leaving herself with only a camisole on) and pressed it against the boys' back. She then asked another student for their sweater, which was tied around their waist. Pressing the torso of the sweater against her blouse and Caleb's back, she tied the sweater's arms around his body, applying pressure to the injury to stop the bleeding.

Next, she checked the other students. She knew that she could not provide emergency medical care besides simple first aid, but even then, Sarah didn't know where the nearest first aid kit was! It wasn't in the bathroom, that much was certain.

She saw that Maria had a pretty deep cut on her forehead, narrowly missing her right eye. Taylor had a cut on her left cheek and took nearly five minutes to stop crying, despite Sarah's comforting words. Andre was bleeding slightly from the back of his head, from a minor scrape. The list of injuries just kept growing and growing; it seemed that everyone had at least one part of their body that was bleeding, no matter how lightly. Finally, after "examining" everyone, Sarah stood up, smoothed out her blouse, and addressed the group.

"All right, don't move. Most of y'all are hurt, so I'm going to leave the bathroom and go into the classroom to check that it's safe outside." She turned towards the door, which was blocked, not only by the table, but by the mountain of debris that had piled up behind it, reaching higher and higher until it was almost at her chest. But, she could still see out of the restroom, but what she saw took her breath away.

Walls were knocked down, debris and broken glass were everywhere. A lump formed in her throat as she realized that there were definitely injuries and probably even fatalities. She could see that there was obvious damage to the conference room, but that it was semi-stable, compared to the classrooms that surrounded it. Those were completely flattened. Where there used to be desks and chairs and walls and whiteboards, there was now... nothing. Stretching forward as far as she could, the only things left standing in her current building were the second grade conference room, and her bathroom. Sarah couldn't even see the third grade half of the building; one of the walls that had fallen had completely obscured her view of that side.

But she'd have to worry about clean-up efforts later; at that moment, all that mattered was getting the kids to safety. First though, she had to find some way to move the table that blocked her path. During the tornado, it had been useful as a shield. But now, it was just another obstacle that her injured-self had to find a way to cross.