12.Sydney Corcoran — Direct

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Sydney Corcoran, S-Y-D-N-E-Y C-O-R-C-O-R-A-N.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I'm 19.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I live in Lowell, Massachusetts.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I live with my mother and my father and my brother.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Celeste Corcoran and Kevin Corcoran.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I do. I go to Merrimack College.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I am a sophomore. And I study psychology.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I did.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: No; it was my first time going.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I'm very familiar with that area. My mother works on Newbury Street. She's worked in Boston for a long time, and I usually -- I made a habit of going into work with her and just shopping in that district. So I was very familiar with the area.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: No.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: My Aunt Carmen Acabbo was running, and it was the first time she'd ever ran. And it was her first marathon ever. And we just wanted to support her. We were so proud of her. She had never done anything like that before.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: We left really early in the morning. We were afraid that we weren't going to find a parking spot and that -- we knew that the city was going to be, like, chaotic. So we wanted to make sure that we got there fairly early so the streets weren't too bad, and we just wanted to make sure that we got a good spot.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I went with my mom, Celeste, my dad, Kevin.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: When we first got into Boston, we spent the morning by the harbor. And we were out on a dock just enjoying the day. We just had to kill time, so we were there for a while. And as the day went on, we met up with some friends, we went shopping with them for a little while, we had lunch. And then we were tracking my aunt through our phones. So once we got the alert that she was getting close, we made our way down to the finish line.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: We made a point to meet up under the really big screen, the Jumbotron. We met there, and then we made our way to right in front of Marathon Sports. We were a little bit a ways from it at first, and we were trying to get as close as we could so that we could see her cross the finish line. So once we got there, people were shuffling in and out, and whenever we could, we would like weasel our way in to try to get closer so we could see her. So we got fairly close. We were right across from the stands.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I was 17.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I was a senior in high school.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: That day was a holiday, so I did not have school that day.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I was with my iPhone, and my mother was I think with her Android.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: We weren't even there for ten minutes. We had just, just made it to that spot, and it was a very brief period of time that we were there and then everything went up in smoke.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: So I remember -- I remember having my mom to the right of me. And she was so happy for my aunt, that she was just trying to get any kind of view. So she was holding onto my shoulders trying to peek over the heads of people. And my dad was a little bit behind us to our left. And we were just waiting for her to cross. And the next thing I know, we're immersed in smoke and our ears -- it's like leaving a concert and having this ringing in your ears and everything is muffled and you just hear stifled screams of people you can't see because if you put your hand in front of your face, all you see is smoke. And I immediately lost my family. Even though they were probably feet away from me, I couldn't see them. It was like everyone around me was gone. I was in shock. I didn't know that I was injured. And I remember feeling like half of my foot was gone, half of my right foot, and I tried to put pressure on it thinking, like, "Why does that feel funny?" And I actually started to like limp. I couldn't put pressure on it. So I managed to limp over to a rail and I grabbed onto the rail. And I passed out for maybe a minute because the next thing I know, I'm laying flat on my back on the ground and there's these men around me putting massive amounts of pressure on my thigh, they're taking off my shoes because they're bloody, and they're trying to figure out where I'm bleeding from and they're tying tourniquets to my thigh. And I can remember a man putting his forehead to mine and telling me that I was going to be okay and that I just needed to hold on. And I remember another man knelt down beside me and he told me to hold onto his shirt, and he wanted me to squeeze as hard as I could. And he was telling the people around me that he could see that I was going white and that my eyes were going white, and I could feel my body going tingly and I was getting increasingly cold. And I knew I was dying. And I remember having moments of panic where I would look around and see carnage and just blood on the street and I still had no idea that -- I had no idea what had happened; I just knew that it was bad. And I would have moments between that and just kind of going back into myself and thinking, like, "This isn't real. How can this be real? Everything was so happy two seconds ago." And the next thing I know, they're putting me on a gurney to be wheeled into the medical tent.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I had no idea where they were. I had absolutely no idea if they were alive. When I was being wheeled to the medical tent I thought, "This is stupid. We're going to be killed by something else. I don't know why we're moving." And the man that brought me into the medical tent -- they were very frantic and they kept saying, "She's got a femoral artery break. She has to go. She has to go now. She's not going to make it. We have to get her out of here." And I didn't know what that meant. I thought that they were saying that a bone in my thigh was coming out or just protruding, and I thought that that's why they were applying the pressure.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: So a femoral artery break meant that my femoral artery was severed. I was bleeding from one of my main arteries. I was bleeding out. And I had minutes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: When I came to, I wasn't sure how I'd gotten on the ground because I didn't remember laying down or sitting down and I didn't remember falling. I knew that I was still on Boylston but I was completely lost. I had no idea what was going on around me.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yup. There was a railing right outside of Marathon Sports. I grabbed onto the side of it. And when I had fallen, I had ended up on the side of it that was closest to the door of Marathon Sports.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I do.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I am right where I circled.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: At the time I had no idea who they were. They were perfect strangers to me. Since then I've come to know them.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Before the blast I was probably about right here

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes, I do.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: That's my father, Kevin Corcoran.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I'm not sure if she's being covered but -- oh, no, I think I can see her. Right there, I think that's her head.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I was limping along. I walked -- I walked back to that railing and I made my way to that corner. If I can just circle right here. I mean, I went to the back corner, and I believe that that's where I most likely passed out and fell.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Okay.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes. Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Absolutely.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: That's me.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: No.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: No.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I was dying. The blood was leaving my body. I was bleeding out.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: The right leg.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: That's Ron Brassard. We met up with him, his wife, Karen Brassard, and their daughter Krystara Brassard, and her friend, Victoria.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I do.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: The policeman came up to me. He was trying to get me out of there. He was trying to get me onto a gurney. After they placed me onto the gurney and brought me to the medical tent, he -- I can remember him being panicked and frightened, and I remember everyone in the medical tent being so scared. And they were ripping off my clothes and cutting through them because they knew how severe I was. And once they strapped an oxygen mask to my face, they put me on a stretcher and they led me into an ambulance.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: No.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I remember thinking that this was it, I'm going to die. I'm not going to make it. And I remember feeling like I was just going to sleep. And it just felt so cold. And I almost felt peaceful because I just felt like I was going to sleep, and I knew I was fading fast.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I remember being brought to the ambulance, and on our way to the hospital the ambulance was cut off by a driver, and I remember we had to come to such an abrupt stop that the EMT in the back with me was actually thrown to the front. And because I was strapped in so tightly, I was jostled. And I can remember feeling blood pool out of my leg. And I remember once we got to the hospital, they brought me into the operating room and everyone around me was trying to ask me what my name was and if there was a phone number that they could have so they could contact someone for me. And I remember telling them, "You don't understand. My parents are both there too. They could be dead. I don't know." And at that moment I thought I was an orphan. I thought that my parents had been violently ripped away from this world and that I was all alone. I remember feeling so panicked because I couldn't remember my brother's phone number. He wasn't there that day. And I thought that he was the only one that I had left. And in that small amount of time I can actually remember thinking, "Oh, my God. My parents are gone. I'm going to have to live with my brother. We're going to have to go live with my aunt." But luckily, I was able to calm myself down thinking, "You'll be okay. Your brother's old enough to take care of both of you." And I can remember asking them when they were going to put me under because I was just in so much pain. At one point they were applying so much pressure to my thigh that I actually yelled out and screamed out in pain. And one man took down my mother's phone number. He just got a pen and wrote it on his pants. And after that, I remember they told me that I was going to be okay and that they were going to do everything that they could.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes, I did.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: They wheeled -- they then wheeled me away and into where they were going to operate. And the next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital room. And I was intubated, so I had tubes in my throat and I couldn't speak and it was difficult to breathe. And I remember my father was in the room. And I had motioned for a pen and paper because I wanted to ask him if my mother was even alive. And once he had seen what I had written, he just started to cry softly and he looked at me and he was like, "She's okay. She's alive." And he had told me, "But she doesn't have her legs anymore." And I can just remember telling him on the paper that I thought I was an orphan. And he put his head down to mine and he kissed my cheek and I fell back asleep. And when I woke back up, there was a nurse in my room and she told me that they were going to wheel my mother into the same room as me because they wanted us to be together. And she told me that she wanted to prepare me. So she said, "We're going to bring her in but I just wanted to let you know so you're not scared, your mother doesn't have her legs anymore."

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Both legs. And I just said, "I don't care. I just want my mom. I just know that she's alive and I just want to see her." And they wheeled her in and we held hands and we were crying. We were just appreciating that we were both still alive.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: No.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: It's hard to keep track. I would say about seven or eight.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Yes.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I have a scar on the bottom of my foot, the top of my foot because there was a hole blown through my foot, and I now am missing bone and tendon in my foot. They had to do a fasciotomy on my leg so I have two scars running down both sides of my calf, I have a scar on my thigh from where a piece of very large shrapnel entered my thigh. On the other side of my thigh there's another one where they had to take it out. I have another one running from mid-thigh to a little above my hip where they had to go in and fix my artery, and I have another scar on the other leg from where they had to go in, harvest a vein and put it in the other leg to repair my broken artery. And I have other less severe shrapnel scars.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: I used to have a BB that was stuck in my thigh but I've since had that removed, and the only shrapnel that I'm aware of is the little flecks of metal and dirt that just got lodged in my skin.

SYDNEY CORCORAN: Thank you.