runners and there s so much momentum in that herd, and everyone stopped. there was a little bit of a dead silence right after it happened. there weren t screams for help. there weren t people crying. everybody had their mouths kind of open, like they wanted to say something, to scream, and nothing was coming out. their eyes were wide open and they were just in faraway trances, as though they were in complete shock. chris and kayla, natalie and her dad were all safe. hundreds of others were not as lucky. it was a process not fast enough for me to say, wait a minute, that guy s leg is gone, that woman doesn t have a leg. where is her arm? it was scattered. it felt like 30 feet across just of carnage, blood, body parts. then, what started as a race to a finish became a desperate race against time to save the lives of the gravely wounded.
steve silva and john elias were standing nearby watching the finishers. you see cheers, you see people yelling yes ! there s a lot of raw emotion at that finish line. a lot of those are people we know from the neighborhood. we re literally rolling of people coming across the line and high-fiving and cheering them on. everybody cheers them on. natalie knew she was close. so there s this marker that every runner looks for in a race and if you re a marathoner, you know what it means. it says, you have one mile to go. my dad and i had passed that marker. chris and boyfriend brian were already within sight of the finish line. the crowds were just absolutely crazy and, you know, everybody was cheering and kayla s doing her hill shaky shake. steve was rolling on the finishers. then
i went up to the mountain because you asked me to alongside the broken hearts, people from all walks of life are part of the healing. in the face of those who would visit death through ponce upon innocence, we will choose to save and to comfort. i could see all around me natalie stavas, the marathon runner, plans to donate the medal she earned for crossing the finish line to one of the victims families. they were there at the finish line to cheer me. me as part of the group across the finish line. and should i say that they that they died because of me?
this, we re going to finish it because one shot to do it and we re going to do it. natalie, too, had a special running companion. i was with my father who was running the marathon with me. he had put in a lot of hours and dedicated a lot of time to training. by the time they reached the starting line, the air was electric. the pulse of the crowd at the starting line is just there s so much excitement and happiness. when we got to hopkington and she got in her chair, you could just see the excitement. she was just hugging people and high-fiving people and any opportunity to kiss somebody, she was. wave after wave of runners started the race. nearly 27,000 people running for the finish line. we did our you know, our duty at the starting line, got everybody off and running and i jumped in the car with my intern and we headed for the finish line. on the course, natalie was
we ve had an attack. it was a deep feeling that almost just penetrated you to the core. dr. natalie stavas was running the race with her father. i could immediately sense that something was terribly wrong and chaos broke out almost immediately. they tried to stop us and they were actually trying to barricade the rest of us back. i leapt over the bar kay, actually. i just went. police officers were yelling at me, stop, you must stop. and i kept going. finally, as a police officer actually grabbed my arm and he said, ma am, ma am, you must stop. and i said, i m a pediatric physician. i m a pediatric physician. you have to let me go. you have to. dr. stavas sprinted towards the finish line and straight into a war zone. the crowd screaming and