“When the doors open, I’m going to pick her up and run. Stay close behind me, okay?”

“But what about the others?”

“They’ll make it on their own. She’s my top priority right now. Angela, if we don’t get her out of here, she’s not going to make it.”

Angela nodded once, simply, quickly, her lips a thin line across her pale face.

With her gaze pulling to the couch that her body had been using as a crutch, once a haven in the women’s restroom but now stained beyond repair in a deep shade of crimson, the sleeping face beneath her fingers was so far removed from pale. The grey, ashen hue of skin matched the sweaters that Angela herself wore on a stable basis. Muted colors better suited her, and were less flashy, anyhow. But this dull grey screamed at her from the body it had consumed, mocked her almost for only being able to do so much. She tried to focus on something else, but the blood matted curls that were once a honey golden color did little to distract Angela from the sickening drain of life from the poor girl’s face.

As Dwight had predicted, mass chaos began to echo throughout their building. After the power was cut, smoke filled the bullpen, gunfire rang, and screams that would typically be identified to Kelly and Kelly alone emitted from the lungs of several. But it was all dull and distant, as if she was underwater. Dwight had been prepared, already propped with arms latched underneath the small body on the couch that, although Angela mocked and ridiculed, was actually not so much bigger than her own. Dwight lifted her out of the air as if she weighed nothing.

There was a moment where Angela was distracted by that dull grey, a color she once welcomed and thrived upon. The color seemed to trance her, pull her in when all--dare she say it, hell--broke loose.When the color disappeared, and thick, dark red hues replaced it in her field of vision, she was snapped, having to take long strides on short legs in order to make up the space that Dwight had already covered. She latched onto the back of his shirt where it had long since been untucked from his work pants and clutched that patch of fabric for dear life as he propelled them past screaming bodies, masked men in black, and incoming members of the SWAT team, down three flights of stairs, and past doors whose glass had long since been shattered.

The fresh night air--or was it early morning? She had lost track of time in there, truly--hit her so violently, after being surrounded by gas and body odor and blood for so long, that she was almost ill. But there was simply not time for that. She raced across the parking lot to where ambulances waited in triage already, trying to signal towards Dwight who had a body wrapped in a sheet stained in the blood of at least three different people, limbs limp and skin more grey than the sky that hung above. She grabbed the arm of the nearest paramedic, trying her hardest to drag him along with her despite their severe differences in weight, pointing desperately across the parking lot because words were escaping her at this point in the night.

Or was it morning?

It all happened in slow motion, her arm jutting towards Dwight, towards the clearly perilous woman who was limp in his arms. Dwight’s face, soot-stained and raw from where the butt of a gun had conked him earlier, had sweat lines dripping through it, painting in odd criss-crossing patterns. His mouth was agape, as if trying to sigh or cry or say something incoherent enough to probably, maybe be words, which was odd. In all the years she'd known him Angela had never seen him as anything but confident and in control. She saw exhaustion pull his knees to the ground. They’d both run the same flight of stairs, but then, she realized, he’d had an extra 125 pounds of weight attached.

There was a one-hundred foot gap between Dwight and her and the door, and a one-hundred foot gap between them and him. He’d been out on a sales call. Not around at the end of the day. Locked on the other side of the doors, on the other end of the countless phone calls that had been made. At first, she’d expelled jealousy that he wasn’t locked inside, but in the time she’d had to just fester in her thoughts, she realized that he had been tortured and broken in a different way than the rest of them had for the past twelve hours. It wasn’t evident in dirt and blood or cuts and bruises, but by the lines in his forehead, the bulging of his eyes, the way his shoulders were sunk so low on his body, she wasn’t too sure how his arms were still attached.

As soon as they’d barreled through the glassless doors, and he’d seen them, he was breaking through the holds of several police officers and darting across the parking lot, his long, cartoonish legs closing the gap quickly as her name rang out in a blood-curdling shriek. Arms pumping, teeth clenched, the veins in his forehead straining against his skin, Angela watched in awe, horror, exhaustion. She wanted to call out to him, to remind him that the building was wired to explode any second now; hadn’t they gotten Meredith’s warning? She was safe, Angela noticed for the first time since stepping foot outside, standing under the same tent where he’d begun. A fleeting thought registered to thank God for answering her prayers that Meredith make it out safely. A positive thought about Meredith, for once. Maybe she should have those more often.

It didn’t hit her ears, the PAM! that ripped apart his lungs, until the rest of the windows behind Dwight positively popped in the background.

She would think about the terror later, how the fact that their building, their place of employment literally detonated with several of her coworkers still inside, with Dwight barely two car lengths away, was something straight out of one of those action movies she refused to ever watch because the violence terrified her, was so inhumane that it made her blood boil. Why would someone want to observe the suffering of others?

But as hues of red, yellow, and orange lit up every window, as glass rained down atop the parking lot, as explosions rang true in the atmosphere, it was hauntingly beautiful. It reminded her of the Fourth of July, or the fireworks from the Scrantastic Spectacular. The power of the blast was too far to do much but blow her hair black. The shards of glass that bit her skin and dotted her with cuts didn’t register above the feeling that pierced her veins when Dwight positively flailed forward. Somehow though, in the midst of it all, in the way his body carried another thirty feet forward, he still held onto her, cradled her against his chest as if his life’s mission was to save her. On any normal day, Angela would be green and red with envy, would probably say something or do something to make it known. It would be striking and blatant, probably a touch embarrassing, nit-picking at the whatever would go straight to her core.

But as she watched the tall, gumby-like man, with grit in his bloodshot eyes, propel himself across the parking lot, only to be blown back on his ass, professing her name to the skies, she knew it wasn’t her place.

For those next fleeting moments, an eerie quiet overtook their small bubble of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Next to the shimmering of glass that still rained to the pavement, all was still. She feared for a moment that this was the calm before death finally overcame you, but as quickly as quietude had settled, it was broken, like coming to the surface for air. Sirens and shouts fought for dominance, but it paled in comparison to the blood that rushed quickly to her ears as she beat the medics to where Dwight lay unmoving across that still shrinking body.

It was difficult to manifest real words as his name fought to exist outside of her head, but when her small hand clasped his shoulder and his eyes lifted, she breathed for what felt like the first time all night. He nodded once, speaking silently in their long used form of silent communication that had been recently unearthed tonight: I’m okay. It’s okay, before hoisting his body up slowly but carefully, one knee first, then the other, all the while taking special care to protect her.

“This woman was shot. She was operated on by a civilian and stitched together with fishing line and duct tape. She needs immediate medical attention.”

Paramedics took over immediately, the fragile body going limp in a fashion that reminded her of death. Though exhausted beyond repair, Angela’s fire remained in the way that she refused to be separated from Dwight for one more moment. The paramedics could examine them together or go to hell for all she cared. As they attended to a large gash on his bicep, the contusion on his head, she lay on his shoulder, and his free arm wrapped around her instantaneously.

It was haunting, the way that bodies tumbled bloody and black from the building like clowns from a VW bug, the way a rainbow cascaded from the pump of a fire engine’s hose, the way the sun rose blood orange over the horizon.

“Is Pam going to be okay?” Her words were absorbed by his soot-covered shirt, once mustard yellow in color, but now a deep brown with an occasional hint of bright red.

“We...we did everything we could have. She’s in their hands now.”

He needn’t gesture at the gurney that she was being strapped to as it loaded into the back of an ambulance; her eyes had been glued there all along.

They were silent for a while, watching as their co-workers and police and criminals alike filtered through the doors--doorways; the doors were long gone. Phyllis was being lifted by Kevin, Oscar, and Ryan, while Michael had Kelly tucked protectively under his arm. Still, several people had yet to make an appearance. Men were being led out by their wrists with heads hunched low, while struggles could still be heard from three floors up. Angela observed dolefully as Jim hoisted his lanky body into the ambulance, watching his large hands absurdly cover Pam’s before the ambulance doors closed and the vehicle sped towards Geisinger Community.

In a way, it was as if their issues from the past twelve hours were evacuating, too. Her relief was fleeting, however, as guilt panged in her gut. She wanted desperately to climb into her car, follow the ambulance, and watch over the woman who had kind of become her friend in their night of peril. But police wanted statements, and paramedics kept saying You should really get those cuts looked at, ma’am, and Dwight was bleeding through the bandage in his shoulder, and suddenly, it still seemed far from over. Her chuckle was ironic, hidden by a breath. The explosion should have expelled their problems, right?

She felt helpless, truly, as quiet chaos continued playing out like a scene from ER, or those glimpses of Grey’s Anatomy that she had heard Kelly blithering on about but refused to ever watch herself because of the immorality and scandal. Dwight’s hand tightened at her waist and she leaned into him, letting her nose brush his shoulder, not caring at all that others, heaven forbid, might see them together.

“Hey, D?” she asked, in that still small voice.

“Yeah?”

“Could you...would you pray with me?”