“You’re doing amazing,” I said. “Like a superhero who happens to be nine.”
She risked a sideways smile. “I’m ten,” she whispered back.
“Even better. Double digits is serious business.”
Another child came, then another. The chain found a cadence: June’s hands, the steady pass, Doc’s quick scan—color, breath, voice—then the slide along arms to the bank. We were a machine made of people. The rain tried to seize our gears. We kept turning.
“Window latch is stuck on this side,” June reported, pressing the narrow rectangle. “I need a wedge.”
Rook tossed her a plastic chock from a motorcycle stand—a triangle of bright red. “Not elegant,” he said, “but it’ll do.”
June slid the chock into the frame and leaned her shoulder. The window gave with a tired sigh. Tiny hands appeared, one set after another.
Not everyone on the bridge could climb into the water. Not everyone should. It turned out, there were a hundred ways to help without wading in. Someone opened the back of an SUV and laid towels in a row. Someone else held umbrellas over kids like small tents. A teenager ran to a nearby house and came back with a laundry basket full of dry socks. The woman with the phone who had put it away earlier took names as Ms. Patel called them, writing carefully on a pizza box with a coffee shop pen. The ink bled, but the names held.
