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In seat 14C, a former Army medic named David Chen d id not push toward the exit. Instead, he turned back, toward the flames. He found a mother struggling to free her teenage son from a twisted seat frame, the metal bent by the force of the impact into a cruel trap. Working by touch in the thickening smoke, Chen used his body weight as leverage, ignoring the heat blistering his hands and the chemical taste of burning insulation filling his lungs. Three rows behind them, a flight attendant named Sarah Okafor stood in the aisle, her voice somehow steady as she directed passengers away from the compromised rear exits, her training overriding the primal scream in her own mind to run, to save herself, to survive.
