Beth Roche and her husband were in Boston to cheer on daughter Rebecca who was running. As Rebecca crossed the finish line, Beth turned to walk away and the first bomb exploded right in front of her.
It was a moment of pride for Beth Roche when her daughter Rebecca crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon, beating the time she intended to run.
Beth was going to deliver the good news.
"I was so excited to be able to tell her, so I'm looking at the time, turning and telling people that were with us, 'I want to tell her the time. I get to tell her this special moment, this is the time she got.' Turning, and the blast happened," she said.
Roche was standing just feet from where the first bomb went off. She looked down at her leg and noticed she was hurt.
"I'm looking down at my knee and my pant leg is wide open, and my skin like a sardine can, it's like peeled away, it's like curled. In one corner, I see bone sticking up," she said.
One of the first responders rushed to her aid, helping bandage her leg and transport her to a medical tent. She only remembers bits and pieces from there.
"I remember hearing these sounds like, 'lower extremity injury over there, burn injury over there,'" she said.
She woke up in the hospital, recovering from surgery to a welcomed sight.
"I woke up and my daughter and my husband were there and what a relief to know they were there they were alive, they were okay," she said.
Roche has screws in her leg bone and will have to undergo yet another surgery Friday, followed by weeks of rehab.
But if you think she's devastated by what happened, she wants to make it very clear that she is not.
"It's something that just happened," she said. "I feel that I'm strong and I feel that I was healthy. Thus, I can look at this as being a journey. I'm on the journey and I still have a ways to go."
Roche says she feels like each day she is getting stronger.
She knows that because she says she can relive the details of that day without crying.
She hopes to be back home in Indiana in a few weeks.
