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hand.
    It was impossible at this point to account for everyone who had been on the bus; they couldn’t even know how
many
people had been on the bus.
    Lacy Olsen had wandered across the street. The thirteen-year-old girl remembered that the boards of the bus floor had “come up, and I was under them. People were yelling and screaming and crying, and I guess I kind of pushed [the boards] out of my way. I looked around and saw that the bus was basically split in half and I jumped out a window. I couldn’t find Brandy. My eyes were blurry and I felt shaky, and I went across the street. There was a lady on the ground, and I was talking to her. Another lady came over—she lived around there—and she asked me if I was O.K. I said ‘I think so,’ but my ear was bleeding and my back was sore. It was hard for me to walk. I asked ‘My friend? My friend?’ and they said she was across the street. She was all cut up, and I just couldn’t stand to see that.”
    Sixteen-year-old Brandy Boling had suffered severe abdominal wounds, a lacerated liver and kidney, but she was conscious and lucid. When Byron Juliano, who was employed by the U.S. West phone company, came upon the scene, he asked her what he could do to help. She replied, “Call my father,” and she gave Juliano her dad’s cell phone number.
    Robert Boling answered his phone to hear a man’s voice attempting to be reassuring, “Your daughter was in a bus that just went off the Aurora Bridge,” Juliano said, “but she’s O.K. She was on the bus, but she’s O.K.”
    “She’s
where?”
Boling gasped. “She’s
what?”
    Both Brandy and Lacy would survive. They were taken to different hospitals and were both admitted in critical condition. Lacy had a severe back injury.

    Judy Laubach, who wished she had never decided to go to work that day, was admitted in very serious condition with a flailed chest, a fractured scapula, a ruptured left lung, and a broken back. Like everyone else on the bus who had survived, she was covered with cuts and scrapes. Still, she felt lucky.
    Francisco Carrasco had crawled out an emergency exit with his cousin Jose Navarrette, nineteen. They had wandered to another bus stop, waited, and then gotten on the Number 6 bus headed downtown. The two cousins went to a relative’s house, unaware that they were in deep shock. Only then were they taken to the hospital, where they were both admitted.
    Leanna Miller, who had tried to help others get out of the bus, was injured herself and was soon loaded into an ambulance. Her brother Shawn remembered, “I held on tight and I wasn’t thrown from my seat—but Leanna couldn’t hold on and she was thrown out of hers.”
    Laethan Wene, twenty-four, who had been on the way to a writers’ conference, had escaped with minor injuries. So had Jerome Barquet, whose hand and arm were painfully, but not critically, injured.
    Craig Ayers, thirty-seven, had severe abdominal wounds, Henry Luna had a fractured right leg and head cuts, Regina King had right leg and rib injuries, William Holt, forty-two, had a fractured femur and chest injuries. Catherine Tortes, thirty-nine, had a fractured spine, a broken leg and pelvic fractures. Amy Carter, eighteen, had a fractured femur and a broken pelvis.
    Their cries for help had mingled together, as had the blood that flowed from their wounds. Fourteen of the most seriously injured passengers were taken to Harborview Medical Center, including Jian Suie, forty-two, with left shoulder and back injuries, and Charles Moreno, thirty-two, with crushing injuries to his arm and leg. Herman Liebelt, who at sixty-nine had still loved to walk three miles around Green Lake and discuss philosophy, was grievously injured with back, head, and pelvic injuries.
    It didn’t seem to matter where they had been sitting; their lives became dependent on chance the moment the bus they rode soared off the bridge. Those with young bones had done a little better than older riders, but all of