Sarah lifted her foot from the pedal and the sewing machine came to a halt. The clock on the wall confirmed what the commotion of young women, girls really, leaving their machines and heading towards the back of the shop had already told her … it was quitting time. If she hurried she could still get home before sunset and eat with the family.

Her pay envelope clutched in her hand, Sarah waited in crowded vestibule for her turn for the watchman to search her purse. Those misers made sure that not even a scrap of cloth left the shop! However there was little choice, one could not reach the freight elevator without getting past the watchman. So she impatiently waited her turn. She was still waiting her turn when smoke from the elevator shaft first started drifting into the ninth floor.

Sarah ran back towards the shop. People were crowded everywhere and smoke and flames were rising through the windows from the floor below. Many girls were scrambling to climb over the tightly packed machinery to escape. As Sarah made her way towards the elevators at the front of the shop, she could see they were still operating and carrying people to safety, but she knew that they would not make many more trips and the dozen people that packed into the car barely made a dent in the hundreds of people waiting.

Smoke was coming from the shaft and the car was stuffed dangerously full of people. Sarah knew that would be the last trip that it made and she had to get on it. It was no use, the car began to descend and there was simply no room for even one small girl.

People were holding the doors open even after the car had departed. In desperation, Sarah jumped and grabbed onto the cable that ran down the center of the shaft. Half climbing and half sliding she quickly descended the rope and crashed into the top of the car. Women and girls, some climbing, some falling and some jumping began to pile on top of her. “I have never gotten to ride the front elevator” thought Sarah as she slipped into darkness.

******

“Form a line.” shouted the Chief. “Clear those bodies. We need to get upstairs and get this fire under control!”

A line of Firemen and Police Officers began to pull bodies from the shaft and hand them off like a bucket brigade towards the street. “What do we do with them?” asked someone near the back. “Just line them up on the sidewalk” answered another voice “somewhere out of the way.” Everyone focused on just doing the job and trying not to think too much about the ‘debris’ that they were clearing.

******

Almost an hour later, two sweaty men in filthy clothes arrived to load more bodies into the wagon for transport to the makeshift morgue. More than a hundred bodies already had overwhelmed city resources.

“Hey, one is still alive.” Said one of the men, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The other man quickly called over a doctor.

******

Sarah had refused to go to the hospital, so the Doctor set her broken leg and broken arm, bandaged the burn on her hand from the rope, and gave her mother careful instructions on what to watch out for from the head trauma. Then her father carried her up the stairs to their apartment on the fourth floor. Sarah still had her pay envelope clutched in her fist.