If you had asked me earlier in the day who the luckiest person in this situation was, I’d have said Chuka. I will later find out that I was wrong.

We were all in the office when we heard the noise. It was like the noise of 20 different gunshots were combined into one. Nobody knew what it was but soon enough Mr. Tola was rushing out of his office to figure it out. “Where did the noise come from?” he asked, looking around to get answers from the seven of us that were in the main office. Nobody answered, we were all still in shock. As he turned to look for where the sound came from, Susana spoke “Upstairs”. Her words came out like a whisper but not exactly; how a child who was just scolded would speak. Even in Shock, Susana’s core still manifested.

Susana was the kind of person who was excited to tell bad news. No, I don’t mean that she would be excited that something bad happened but she would be excited to tell it. I think it’s about the exclusivity of being among the first people to know. I found it weird but her humor covered for that; a sad thing we didn’t need the humor at that moment.

Anyway, Chuka had wanted to order food but because he wasn’t sure what he had a taste for, he decided to go to the restaurant himself. So when we heard that the building was collapsing and we needed to find a way to get out of the building without rattling it further, I wished I hadn’t told him to help me buy that eggroll, I wished I had gone by myself.

Mr. Tola said we needed to move slowly and quietly but I wanted to run out as fast as I could. Mr. Sam beat me to it, he ran out screaming. I can’t tell if he slipped or the floor gave way but I can tell that one of his legs slipped into the crack he made and was wedged in there tightly, the other leg was in a kneeling position. When I think about everything that happened at that point, it plays like something that happened so fast but at that moment, it felt like it was in slow motion; the scream coming from Mr. Sam even had that slow-motion bass undertone.

We had an ongoing joke in the office about Mr. Sam whose full name is Samson. Unlike the biblical Samson, he was a coward. He always found a way to exempt himself even if it meant throwing the next person under the bus. He, however, never threw Martha under the bus, he even sometimes took the blame for what she did. Everyone knew he liked her, Martha included. Being a cunny person, she’d intentionally do something stupid so he takes the fall. She was vying for his position and he had no idea that he was serving it up to her on a platter.

Collins has always been one to be level-headed in extreme situations so when he rushed towards Mr. Sam, removed his tie, and tied it just above the part of his leg that wasn’t inside the ground, it was expected. Two obvious things; Mr. Sam was bleeding all over the floor and I have a crush on Collins; maybe the latter wasn’t obvious to everybody at that point.

Every other thing after that moment, I remember vaguely because I was too busy having my life flash in front of my eyes.

I was jerked back to reality by Lilian’s loud cry. I looked around and realized I was outside the building already. Till today, I can’t tell how I made it out of there. But I can tell that it was Chuka who took the brunt of the first piece that collapsed.