Did you....?

Did you feel the sting of dust, sand and mortar against your arm....
And the avalanche of brick pounding into the ground?

Did you see the remains of the young, charred and grotesque...
And the sorrowed strain in your colleague's eyes?

Did you hear the wail of a mother in the middle of the night...
As you cut her child from a tangled mass of steel?

Did you feel your skin start to burn...
As the room grew dark and hot in an instant around you?

Did you get threatened by a crowd on a stormy, rainy night...
As you gave up the shooter for dead, to save the girlfriend he shot?

Did you get cursed and threatened by a drunk...
As you kept his alcohol-diluted blood from spilling over the floor?

Did you hear the pleas of a wife of many years...
Asking you to "do everything you can" for her dying husband?

Did you feel your body tense when they asked "what took you so long"...
As you responded to the "leg pain" they've had for three days?

Did you ever feel guilty, going home to a normal house...
After leaving a community that had been reduced to sticks and splinters?

Did you smell and taste death in the salt air...
And told the doctors that help simply wasn't available?