As I walk towards Emily’s office, I feel the ground shaking violently. It throws me off balance and I fall to the ground. As I get up, I see people running towards the stairs. In between all of those people, I see Emily. Somehow, I manage to push through the crowd of people surrounding her. I hand Emily her lunch that she left in the kitchen.
“What  happened?”, I asked.
“ I have no idea. When we make it out of here, we will find out.”said Emily. As we run down the stairs, we start to see smoke surrounding us. The smoke is making it harder and harder for me to breath.
I look in my purse for my inhaler. A few second after I found my inhaler, it falls to the floor because people were pushing us, telling us to go down the stairs faster.
Emily sees the inhaler fall to the ground and tells me,“ Don’t worry. You can get an inhaler when we get out. Just remember to keep going down the stairs and try to  breath.” We were almost there but everything suddenly started to fall around me. As everything started to fall, all I   heard were the screams of people .The last thing I see before I black out is Emily falling to the ground.
When I wake up, I see dust and debris all around me. I also see rocks and rubble is surrounding me. How is it possible that I am alive right now? I try to move, but I feel a sharp pain in my right leg and decide to stay still. I start looking around me and I find Emily lying close by  me unconscious. I try to move my arm to touch her, but I can not reach her.
“Emily, wake up. I need you,” I say coughing. I say it again three more times and each time I say it weaker. I have no clue if she is just unconscious or if she is dead. I don’t want my sister to die. It is getting harder to breath by the minute but somehow, I manage to keep breathing. How can it be fair that  I am still breathing, while Emily could possibly be dead right now?
Then, I hear boots hitting the ground. I try to yell, but all I manage to do is weakly say “Help us, we're here!” I put my left hand up through a hole between two rocks, but in less than 30 seconds, my hand falls to the ground with a loud thump because I am too weak. I hear the footsteps getting louder. Then I feel them taking away the rocks, debris, and rubble that surrounds me and then someone lifts me off the ground. The woman who picked me up said,“ You are strong. You have survived all of this horror. Keep fighting. Keep breathing.” I keep fighting and I keep breathing, all though I feel weaker  with every breath I take.  I also see a man carrying Emily, and I wish I could see his face through the smoke to see his reaction to see if she is alive or dead. We finally exit the building. I know this because I finally feel some fresh air entering my lungs , even though there is still a lot of smoke surrounding us. They keep walking, and about one block later, they stop and put Emily and I in two different ambulances. Then, the  woman that rescued me leaves to rescue others trapped in the building, leaving me to another woman that is inside the ambulance.
I try to move towards Emily but the pain in my body makes me scream.Then, I start crying softly, because I am so scared that they will tell me that my sister is dead. I allow myself to be scared for ten seconds, and then I force myself to stop. I need to be strong.
“My sister..” I say very weakly.
“ You shouldn't talk right now. You are very unstable,” the woman said.  She checks my vitals and puts an oxygen mask on my face and then keeps looking back and forth between the road and me.
  The ride towards the hospital felt hours long, even though it was probably only about twenty minutes long. Once we got to the hospital, there were doctors already waiting outside to take me inside. The ambulance woman told the doctors what was wrong with me. I try to hear what they are saying. That fails because I barely hear any of the words she says to the doctors and I am barely able to stay conscious. The doctors put me in a room with a bed and a table with a computer. They pop my arm back into place because it was dislocated. When they did that, I wanted to scream, but I am to weak to even speak anymore. Then, the doctors put me in an x ray rom. Once they are finished, I see that there are several x rays of my body. I see an x ray of my right leg and my ribs. The doctors take me to  a room that looks just the last room and then a nurse enters to gives me some medicine to help with the pain. A doctor comes in 30 minutes later and tells me what is wrong with me.
“Good afternoon Christina, I am Doctor Smith.”,the doctor says with a warm smile. I can't  believe it is already the afternoon. “You have two fractures in your right leg and two fractured ribs. You should come back every month to check on your leg and ribs. Also, you have cuts, bruises, and burns on your face, legs, and arms.With  burn and scarring medicine, you should heal in a matter of months.Also, your asthma has gotten worse from all the smoke and fire you took in. I am going to give you some medicine to help control your asthma again. I am going to put a sling on your arm and put a cast on your leg right now.“
“What about my sister? The last time I saw her, she was unconscious,” I say, my voice breaking. I need my sister. I am surprised I can talk now. The medicine the nurse gave me must have worked.
“We need to put a cast on your leg and a sling on your arm. We can talk about your sister and go to her later,” said Doctor Smith.
“Okay,” I say nodding. I want to Emily right now, but I have no other choice except to wait. It takes Doctor Smith a while to put my leg into a cast and to put my arm into a sling, but once he is done, I feel relieved.
“ So now can you talk to me about my sister and take me to her please?” I ask impatiently. Who wouldn’t be impatient to know if your sister is alive or dead?
“Your sister was still unconscious when she got here. However, she was very unstable...and she died about ten minutes ago. I’m sorry, truthfully,” Doctor Smith said. I could tell that he meant it because he had tears in his eyes, but I didn’t understand why. He sees people die everyday.
Tears filled my eyes.  My sister is gone, and I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
“Can I see her please?” I ask, my voice breaking.
He nods. He  takes the handles of the wheelchair and takes me to my sister. The ride there feels like everything is going in slow motion, because  a million memories are racing through my mind. The most powerful memory that goes through my mind is the day we  moved into our apartment. Then it hits me. She is gone forever. Every We finally get there and my mom, dad, grandparents, Sebastian, Mateo, and my aunts and uncles are all surrounding her. Everyone has tears in their eyes, and my mom is crying the loudest into my dad’s chest. Once they finally realize I’m there, they all come rushing towards me. My mom says in a relieved voice, “You're alive...you're still alive.”  The doctor moves closer towards Emily, and I see her, I see my sister. She looks nothing like the person I talked to only this morning. Could it have really been only this morning? She is pale, with dark lips. Her body looks so stiff. She looks so restful, yet she has so many burns and wounds all over her body. I grab her hand and  start I crying. “It should have been me,” I say. I repeat this over and over again. My mom comes over and hugs me and says while crying,”You're alive. God wanted you to be alive. I love you. Never forget that.” Then I cry and she starts crying, and I felt like I would never stop  but eventually I do. When we leave, reporters are surrounding us, asking us so many questions. They don’t answer anything. I have no clue what's happening, so I don't either. My grandparents, aunts and uncles go in one car, while we go in another.
What happened,” I ask. I am so confused, and I really need some answers.
“Two planes hit the twin towers. Then, the towers fell. They were terrorist attacks. There were also two other attacks,” said Sebastian, my brother.
“Oh okay,” is what I say because it's the only thing that comes to my mind, because I am in shock that someone has hurt so many innocent people. While we drive to my apartment, everyone is silent. My dad and brothers help me up the stairs, and my mom is in front of us. She opens the door, and walks in. Once the rest of us make it in the apartment, I don't see my mom. I see that my sister’s door is closed, and then realize that my mom is in there. My brothers and I sit on the couch. Mateo talks on the phone to our family and my friends. Sebastian and I are watching the news,and dad is cooking dinner. My mom leaves Emily’s room a while later, and it is obvious she was crying. That is when it hits me. My family will recover, but it will never be the same. The funeral was two weeks later.During the funeral, it takes all of my strength to keep myself from screaming and crying in pain. It takes almost  two years for my leg, arm, and ribs, scars, and burns to fully heal. Even after years of therapy, the pain I have inside still exists years later, just less. I don’t think I will ever get over the death of my sister completely. Even today, I haven't stopped feeling angry, sad, or guilty, knowing that there was something that I could have possibly done to save her, but it’s too late now. So now, I just have to live with the fact that she’s gone, and that my life has changed forever.