When they bombed the childcare center, the war should have been over. No sane person sits comfortably by and watches the young be slaughtered. Other countries should have swooped in, pushed the invaders back as a united force against tyranny.

They didn’t.

Instead the gunfire is popping in the distance as we run directly into the rubble, no time to spare thoughts of fire or collapsing cement. I recognize my neighbor’s char-smudged face through a broken windowpane. Her daughter is the same age as my sister. They would have been in class together.

I start to force my way through toward her, desperately wanting someone, something to guide me, but think better of it. We’re more likely to find them if we’re covering different ground. I see her digging through wreckage—if anyone is trapped underneath, she’ll find them.

I work my way to the other side of the building, the side still mostly standing. This building was beautiful, formidable, welcoming. The perfect place to send your child. Now it’s gray with ash, a gaping bite through the side as if a monster has chewed it through.

I never bothered to get new boots last year when the soles of these wore through, and now I can feel the crunching of cinderblocks and glass and broken pencils burning through to my feet. A doll lies in a pile of dust, missing most of her insides. I try not to focus on the scorched hole of her abdomen, try not to think about how dolls are just insentient babies and if that’s the case, there’s not much difference between a toy baby and a dead one who was once real. In the memories, yes, but not in practice. Not when you want to hear them laugh once last time and are met instead with unbreakable silence.

I make it to the stairs, still mostly in tact. On the level, a man is sobbing, cradling his child. My stomach flips until I see her arms move to wrap around his neck. She’s probably 11 or 12, too old to be carried like a baby, and alive. Blissfully, perfectly alive.

If I find Ella—when I find Ella—I will never put her down. I’ll let her grow to be 30 and I’ll still hold her in my arms. I’ll make up for all the time that might have been lost if we had been less lucky.

Because we will be lucky. I have not come here to find her corpse.

I bound up the steps, faster, faster, undeterred by the slices in the soles of my feet. I can’t remember where her classroom would have been and I think that’s better. I don’t want to already know that I have no chance.

No sign of life in the second floor hallway. Up, up higher. Third. Fourth. I’m out of breath and my lungs are gasping for air not polluted with smoke. I don’t stop.

“Don’t move! I’m coming up!” Someone is shouting from outside. I run to the window, trying to see what they’ve found, trying to tell them that I’m already up here. A group has gathered, yelling up to a window above me. I lean out and twist so I can see upward, a one perfect pink shoe in dangling down from another two stories up.

I laced that shoe this morning. I start to scream.

“Ella!” I’m hollering, her white stockinged leg so far out the window that I know she’ll fall if she tries to come out anymore. I don’t know if she hears me, but I race again to the stairwell. Time is a blur. I’ve never moved so fast, with so much purpose.

She’s there, seven floors up, her blonde hair sweaty on her back as she sits on the window ledge. She’s listening to the people below. She hasn’t moved.

Something in me has the sense not to yell again, not to startle her, even though the sound is boiling in my chest. Instead I approach her quickly, as gently as I can, making sure I have a steady grip on her shoulders before pulling her back towards me.

She yelps and we fall, but it’s in the right direction, a few feet down to the floor behind us instead of seven stories forward. My body cushions her fall. She’s sobbing, but in her crying, her face contorts like laughter.

Suddenly I remember her at 3, trying to play Superman from our home’s upstairs balcony. I’d realized it a second before she jumped. She had her arms out to her sides, and my throat seized as she launched herself off the side, and directly into my arms.

She had no fear. She knew I would catch her.

She laughed, and I hadn’t been so relieved to see her alive, I might have laughed too.