Anything

Many years ago, I think it's over ten years now, there used to be a sixteen year old girl working with me in the same division. She was an intern who didn't know much about life but was incredibly bright and cheerful. She learned things quickly, was full of mischief, and was starting to put her life on the right track. We all grew to like her a lot. One night she was stabbed by the mother of a girl that was bullying her sister, and just like that she vanished from the face of the earth. Her body was cremated and I eventually lost the photo that I had of her somewhere. I can't say why I kept that photo, maybe I thought it preserved a part of her somewhere. Anyway today it is as if she never existed.

When we were told what had happened that next morning it took an instant for the news to sink in. I couldn't understand how somebody I had only said goodbye to the previous evening was now gone forever. I had to go away to the bathroom and choke away the tears so that nobody would see. Death is so...final. I thought to myself is there anything I wouldn't have done to see her alive and well again, to bring her back. I was surprised to find that I would have been prepared to do anything, to go as far as it took, if it would bring back that girl. I absolutely meant it. But there was no shining light from the sky, no magic fairy, only a quiet bathroom and the dripping of water somewhere. There was nothing, and nothing was all I could do.

When I see people screaming with grief at the loss of a loved one, or trying desperately to pull out their children from the rubble of a bombed house, I see and feel that same anguish. If I was there I would do anything, side with anybody, to bring back those whom I love and to protect them. To hell with everything and everyone else.