The girl, still dressed in her school uniform, raised a limp hand from her hospital trolley and gestured towards her mother, writes Carl O'Brien in Drogheda.
"It's OK, Mam," she said. "I'll be fine." The mother, whose daughter's face was framed by a neck-brace, managed a painful smile.
It was a scene repeated dozens of times in the A&E unit of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital yesterday evening as trolleys containing schoolchildren were rushed through the hospital's narrow corridors.
Parents and school friends gathered in shocked silence, waiting for news of the condition of their loved ones. Some hugged each other when they heard an update of a child's condition, while others stood silently, still waiting for news. The father of a girl with serious head injuries said shattered glass had caused widespread damage to many of the children.
"Many kids were injured as shattered glass flew into their faces," the father said.
"One young girl's face was riveted with glass such was the impact of the crash."
The tragedy of yesterday's accident has been underscored by the fact that most of the 50 students on the bus were from the same parishes of Beauparc and Yellow Furze.
Two school friends who would normally have been on the Navan bus, Shane Finegan (18) and Graham Crosby (17), were still coming to terms with the scale of yesterday's tragedy. "I knew two of the girls from Loreto who were killed," said Shane.
"They were really nice, always cheerful, always full of life."
He added: "This is going to be devastating for the area, especially with all the funerals in the days ahead."
Fr Richard Goode, a parish priest attached to the hospital, busily attended to many of the relatives who were still numbed by yesterday's events. He said everyone was praying that the remainder of the casualties would survive.
In the midst of the chaos of the crash, Niall O'Connor, a spokesman for the hospital, said staff had responded "magnificently" and added that six students were still in a serious condition last night and would be closely monitored over the coming hours.