To be honest, she didn’t want to go back and get caught up in helping others, either, as horrible as that thought made her feel. She didn’t want to miss any chance at finding Patricia, and oh the guilt she would have to endure if her sister died somewhere, helpless, while she herself had been aiding somebody else. Thinking like this made her sick to her stomach, but she didn’t know what she would do if anything happened to her big sister.

She couldn’t stop thinking of all of the ways Patricia could be harmed. What if she wasn’t as lucky as Carmen had been in not getting more than a little banged up? What if she was bleeding to death? What if something was broken? What if she was in the water?

Oh, shit. No. The water! The one place Carmen hadn’t checked, other than the plane itself.

"This is fucking insane," she told herself, scrubbing her forehead against the back of her arm. Breathing deep to calm herself, she turned and started jogging for the shoreline.

"Patricia! Patricia!"

Shane McCutcheon

"I’m fine…"

She forced the words out in spite of the confusing realisations that were starting to reach her brain from different parts of her body. Most of them were related to pain; the stinging sensation coming from the bleeding wound in the left side of her back and it felt like she had cracks in a rib or two on the other side. The strange feeling in her chest that she didn’t quite know what to make of. Her face, her head…

Then she became aware of the sounds that were surrounding her and the taste of blood in her mouth. She must have bit her cheek.

The plane. It crashed.

Everything hitting her at once was more than she could handle and she collapsed back down on the ground and tried to repress a groan. She didn’t recall being in this much pain ever since she’d given birth to Shay.

Shay. Realising she had closed her eyes again, she opened them and looked up at her son. He was sitting next to her and so was a woman she had never seen before. Worried and scared, she took a close look at him, desperately trying to figure out if he was okay. That was when she saw the blood on his leg.