The small cut from the luggage that hit her in the head caused blood to trickle down the side of her face. Worse was the pounding inside her head and the slight blur in her vision from an obvious concussion. "Relax, Paige," she said aloud to herself. She stood still for awhile and waited for the beach to stop spinning. "Deep breaths. You’ll find him."

Slowly now, Paige looked around. She took note of where various survivors had made a temporary respite in the sand and scanned each group for her son. It felt like it was taking forever so while she looked she kept chanting to herself the word patience.

The most movement she has witnessed since she slowed down was a small boy around Jared’s age running from the edge of the water towards what must have been his mother. Beyond them was another boy. Paige squinted in the sun and started to step closer, instinctively realizing. "Jared!" She started to run, continually yelling to get his attention.

Carmen Morales

Just a bit further, Carmen. You can do it.

Despite how close she was getting to the dark-haired woman in the water, and how obvious it was becoming that this woman’s hair wasn’t quite dark enough to be Patricia’s, and her skin wasn’t quite the same, Carmen refused to believe that it wasn’t her sister. She couldn’t let herself down like that, not after searching damn near everywhere and exhausting herself to the point she was scared they might both drown.

No. Nothing was going to stop her. Nothing at all.

Not until she felt somebody’s hand close around her ankle.

"Whoa, slow down chica," came a voice from behind her, and she screamed. Not because she was surprised, but because she was frustrated.

Carmen kicked and screamed, yanking her leg free and twisting around to pound her fists against whoever it was that was stupid enough to force her to stop, stupid enough to keep her from Patricia.

So strong was her sense of panic that she didn’t give herself a chance to recognize just who it was she was attacking.