Boston First responders still in grip of Marathon’s horror

First responders still in grip of Marathon’s horror
The Boston Globe
By David Abel
GLOBE STAFF
OCTOBER 15, 2013

The trigger can be unpredictable, but when the flashbacks come, they feel like spasms, rippling through her mind and body, rending her as she relives that day with harrowing clarity.

They take Nicole Fluet McGerald back behind the thin canvas walls of the medical tent, where she hears the thud of the two Boston Marathon bombs. She feels sealed in, trapped, an easy target. She braces for a third blast, expecting to die.

She relives the screams and the chaos, sees the severed legs, inhales the acrid smoke of the bombs. She watches the torso of one victim slide off a gurney as doctors try to revive her, while a soldier tries in vain to wash all the blood off his hands and face, as if he just left a battlefield.

“The pain I felt was so deep that it felt like the worst thing on the face of the earth,” said McGerald, 31, who was so distraught that she had to take a leave from her job as a physical therapist. “Imagine the hardest emotional moment you’ve ever had in your entire life, and multiply that times 200 . . . It felt like it would never end.”
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