All is Found

30

"Thanks" I said and gave him a smile in return.

"I bought my daughter tickets for her birthday and she insisted I take her. Now she keeps babbling on about your new music, it's all I hear coming from her room these days." David said as we moved into another room.

Just as I was about to respond Thea stopped in her tracks and I almost walked into her. The room before us was full of desks and had various officers working and standing around. Her eyes were locked on one desk in particular though, off towards the windows. My response died on my lips as she walked over to the empty desk and touched the exposed table top.

"This was my dad's desk." Thea said and took in the personal pictures of the officer who now claims it.

"It was, Paul sat in that desk." David said and pointed to the desk opposite us.

"This is a lot." Thea said and pulled her hand away from the desk and took a breath.

David put his hand on Thea's back and walked us to an office. His name is on the door with Captain written in gold letters underneath. Thea and I took a seat in front of his desk while David sat behind his desk.

"He was a great man your father. Preston pulled me inside the North tower as the South tower fell to escape the debris that fell outside. When the dust settled a little he told me not to go back up the stairs, that we needed to get out of the tower because it was going to come down as well. We stayed outside around the base of the building for about another 40 minutes trying to help any civilians around get away from the building because we knew if one tower came down, chances were the second tower wasn't going to be that much far behind it. 

"Then we heard it. The booming could only be described as a bombs going off and we watched as the top of the building started to pancake in. We grabbed a hold of each other and ran for our lives. We both knew if we didn't get far enough from right outside the tower we would die. As we were running down a block your dad saw your moms ambulance. He pulled the door open and we jumped inside and told her what was going on. Her partner drove down the block as the cloud of smoke started to follow us but it didn't take long before we were surrounded but the dust cloud and he had to stop. 

"We waited in the back of the ambulance for what felt like hours just waiting for the dust to settle. It was probably about a half an hour before the thick dust started to settle and we were able to start to see through the dust. Addie used some water she had on the ambulance to get the dust off our faces and out of our eyes. Once we were cleaned up she gave us protective glasses and face masks. Preston just looked at me and we both knew we needed to go back out there and start to help. Preston kissed your mom and we jumped out of the back and started to walk back into hell to try and help find anybody who survived." David said.

Thea didn't say anything as we listened to David. He talked some more about working with Thea's dad and she listened to everything David said. David showed Thea some pictures of them together and it put a smile on Thea's face. As we finished our visit Thea got to talk to some other officers who were on duty. They traded patches and challenge coins and it was nice to see her smile again after talking about her father for a while. I made sure to get a picture of Thea and David together and then David asked if I could get in the picture to brag to his daughter. I just laughed and agreed.

Before we left David pulled Thea back into his office. He pulled a windbreaker off the coat rack and handed it to Thea. Thea looked at him in question but he just nodded. When Thea opened the windbreaker written in silver numbers was her father's badge number.

"When you guys moved to Salem, he left this on my desk. You guys left already when I came by the house to return it. It's been on my coat rack ever since but I think it's time for me to finally return it." David said.