Adira ducked as another bomb was dropped down behind her. She covered her ears as she ran, trying not to hear the screams of pain and terror behind her. She cried out as her sandal got caught on a piece of rubble, nearly making her fall to the debris strewn road. She glanced around as she sprinted to anywhere and nowhere. She panted harder as her panic resurfaced. A local terrorist group was bombing her middle eastern village, and there was nowhere to go for safety. She had been separated from the rest of her friends when the first bomb dropped down no more than three hundred feet away from the small café that they were eating an early lunch at. What if they were caught? Adira chanced running blind so that she could swipe furiously at her burning tears. As her chocolate eyes once again scanned the area around her, she wished that she had just let the tears fall. While she had been drying her tears, a building ahead of her had been caught in a blast and had begun to fall. Adira knew that she didn't have enough time to get away from the tons of concrete that were falling toward her. In vain, she turned and tried to escape her undeniable fate. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, but she wasn't fast enough to fully escape the falling building. Shadows fell over her, they grew as the rocks and metal frame grew closer. She closed her eyes, weeping because she knew this was it, she could already feel the embrace of death. To say that Adira was surprised when 'death' told her to drop to the ground and cover her head, would be an understatement. However, Adira was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and she promptly dropped to the rough ground and curled into herself in fetal position barely even caring that the stranger dropped down right on top of her. Suddenly, all the light was cut as something covered her and the stranger. She felt the stranger's hands move beside her shaking form and his heaving chest on her back. Suddenly, a loud hiss echoed by her ear and a gush of air blew her dark locks in every direction. At nearly the same time, she heard what sounded to be concrete hitting the ground around her, but the killing blow never came. She laid still as silence rained down on her and this mysterious stranger. She heard heavy breathing coming from her left as the weight that was on her rolled off. Adira, after taking a few seconds to mentally check herself, slowly opened her hazel eyes. And was met with piercing blue eyes and a dazzlingly white smile mere inches away. She pulled back in fear, after all she had no clue as to who this man was. From what she could see in the dim lighting, he had pale skin and could be no older than her twenty-three years. The man, sensing her fear, smiled and held up slightly shaking hands in the universal surrender sign before speaking in halting Arabic.
"I'm not going to hurt you. Do you speak English?" Adira nodded; grateful that she had taken up English has her foreign language.
"Yes. I learned it a few years ago. Who are you and why are you here? What is an American doing here?" The man smiled, albeit weakly, and took a shuddering breath.
"My name is MacGyver and I work for the American Government. We are here to stop the men that are dropping these bombs, but as you can see, we were a little late."
"who is this we you are referring to?" She said skeptically.
"My partners, well they're actually my best friends, but we-"Adira sat straight up and interrupted him with a sharp gasp.
"My friends! What if they were hit!" MacGyver, from his awkward position on the ground, wrapped shaking arms around her as she began to cry. He rubbed small circle on her back until her tears dried up. As she calmed herself, Adira began to look around. She noticed that the blue tarp covering her and the American was in a dome, almost as if it was being blown up like a balloon.
"How did you save us?" The man smiled faintly and began to speak.
"I saw you running down the street and I noticed that the building was beginning to collapse. I grabbed a bottle of Permanganate crystal that came out of the blown hospital some ways back and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I just snagged this tarp and covered us with it. When the first rocks weighted down the edges, I combined the two chemicals. The react with each other to create steam and oxygen. It blew the tarp up like a balloon and the rocks bounced right off." Adira gazed open mouthed at the genius before her. He must be very intelligent to have done all of this.
"Well, شكرا; Thank you. I am most grateful. How do we get out now, though?" MacGyver made no noise and Adira inferred that the young man had shrugged his shoulders.
"We wait. My friends will notice that I'm missing soon enough and I know that they saw me running this way." Adira nodded in the darkness and hugged her knees closer to her. She was beginning to feel the effects of her forced marathon and the stress of her current situation.
She must have nodded off because a cry made her shoot awake and hit her head on the roof of the makeshift tent. Her wild eyes roved around the dark hollow in search for what had awakened her. Suddenly, two arms wrapped around her.
"Wha-"
"you had a nightmare. It's O.K. Just go back to sleep, cause' I got you. I promise that I will keep you safe." After a pause he spoke up again.
"How is your head? You hit it kinda hard, and I would never forgive myself if any injury went untreated." Adira smiled and touched the tender spot on her head.
"It hurts a bit, but nothing too bad. My gosh, not as bad as it could have been. If it wasn't for you, I would be dead. So, no. My head is fine." She felt him squeeze her shoulder reassuringly before he gently pulled her to the ground.
"If your head's fine, then I want you to sleep…O.K.?" Adira nodded and smiled as she settled into a peaceful sleep, after all, she had a kind, smart man to watch over her.
When she woke next, it was because she heard yelling. Her sleep fogged brain told her to stay quiet in the case that the voices belonged to the terrorists that had bombed the city. She stayed silent and blindly reached out to grasp MacGyver's hand. While she reached out for the hand, she recognized what was being said by the voices outside.
"MAC! Where are you buddy? MAC! MACGYVER! Come on kid… MAC!" Adira's face broke out into a goofy grin.
"Did you here that MacGyver? Your friends are here! MacGyver, we are saved! MacGyver! Macgyver?" at this point, Adira had just found what felt like a hand. The problem was that the hand was slick with what could only be assumed was blood and was as cold as ice. Adira gasped as she realized that she had missed all the signs of her new friend's pain. He must have been injured. And she hadn't noticed.
"WE ARE HERE! MACGYVER IS HERE! HE NEEDS HELP! PLEASE! HELP!" She heard a commotion on the other side of the tent and what sounded like pieces of concrete being pulled away on her side of the shelter. It didn't take long for a ray of light to show through the blue mesh to her right. The glint of a knife cut into the material cutting a door out. Adira shielded her eyes from the blinding mid-day sun, after all, she hadn't seen light at all since just before the building fell. Soon enough, her auburn eyes adjusted to the light and she found herself face to face with an older American man. He smiled before helping her out of the hole. As she turned to thank him, her eyes caught a startling sight. Inside the tent she could see the man who had saved her. He was very pale and his eyes were closed as if he were sleeping. His hands lay next to his left shoulder as if he were holding it, which would make sense since it was oozing blood from where a piece of rebar had cut through the tent and impaled his shoulder. Another thing that suddenly made sense was how MacGyver had been comforting her from such an odd angle. The boy's body was only half in the tent. From the waist down, he was no doubt crushed by the building that had fallen on them. Adira's hand came to her mouth as she stifled a pained cry. MacGyver had been worried about her and how she fared through it all, and he never once complained about the pain that he was no doubt in.
She watched as the man who had helped her out ran around the tent to help free his friend. Along with him, there was a girl and an African American man. Both seemed to be about the same age as she and the blond that she had been stuck with. They, along with the aforementioned man, all wore matching masks of fear. Adira jumped as a hand wrapped around her wrist. She turned with a cry of surprise. Her fear was replaced with joy when she found herself face to face with her friends, the ones who she feared had perished. She wrapped shaky arms around them as she cried tears of joy. Suddenly a doctor came over and began to lead her to a makeshift triage center that was in the center of town. At first she began to follow, but she then remembered MacGyver. She quickly spun around and tried to run to help him, after all, she owed him her life. Her friends and doctor, however, had another plan for her. They grasped her arms and began to pull her toward the triage center to be checked out. She struggled and cried out, but her friends were stubborn and would not release her. The last thing she saw of the man who had saved her was his limp body being pulled out of the wreckage by the middle aged man who had helped her, both barely making it out of the way of a mini rock slide. Adira cried the whole way to the triage, hoping that MacGyver would be alright and thanking whatever higher power there was for the kindness of strangers.