We stopped the bleeding of her leg and performed CPR as we got her into the ambulance. She was missing her left leg and she started to go into shock. I saw a young Asian girl with another Boston Firefighter, Neal Mullane, trying to check her pulse.

I bandaged around the shrapnel and tried to make him as comfortable as possible as me and a Boston cop put him into an ambulance. I saw a guy on the ground with a long piece of metal frag impaled through his leg and out his back. Firefighters, cops, EMTs, marathon workers, family members were stripping off their shirts to tie tourniquets. You're taking in the whole scene, scanning to see if there was someone not making noise, laying there lifeless, limb-less. It's hard to differentiate who was hurt the most. People were wailing on the ground in agony. Closer to the bombsite it was a war zone. People were running with horrified looks. We jumped on the trucks, drove through the barricades and hauled ass down Boylston Street to get the gear as close as possible. Twelve seconds later, there was another blast. But then we all looked toward the sound and saw the smoke.

We thought for a second it was part of someone's celebration. It sounded like one of the muskets they fire at the Patriots game after a touchdown. There were a lot of runners because it was the four-hour mark, peak finish line time. We were positioned outside the firehouse watching the runners. He told his story to her she told hers to Esquire. His fiancée, Michele McPhee, is a reporter in Boston. Tim Freda is a 38-year-old Boston Firefighter assigned to Ladder 15/Engine 33 on Boylston Street-just yards away from the explosions, four blocks from the finish line.

Maximum Harm by Michele R. McPhee