“Stop her!” I barked out orders, pulling my mask down over my face and running toward the house.
I barreled onto the front porch and saw the smoke curling out through the crack around the front door. I knew what that meant. The fire inside was starving for air.
My gut clenched hard as my panic rose. The second I broke through the door, the fire would flash. It would burn a million times hotter as it fed its hunger with the rush of fresh oxygen, consuming everything in its wake.
Backdraft.
A firefighter’s worst nightmare. The thing that killed more of us than anything else.
But I didn’t have a choice, Frankie was in there.
I braced, throwing my shoulder against the door, and the second the chain broke, swinging in, the world exploded.
Flames blasted outward, a fireball rushing over me in a roar, the pressure slamming into my chest like a truck. My mask rattled against my face, my tank straps dug deep into my shoulders.
For a second, I couldn’t see anything but orange and black.
And then the fire rolled back inside, clawing for more fuel. Through the smoke, I saw her.
Frankie.
She was on the floor just inside the front door, collapsed, with her legs on fire.
“Frankie!” My voice echoed in the mask as I dropped, shielding her with my body, the heat hammering my back.
I swept my arms under her, lifting her onto my shoulder and running from the house. She was limp as I jumped from the porch and fell into the knee-deep snow on the front lawn.
I flung her off my shoulder and into the snow, using the ice water to extinguish the flames feasting on her feet and legs.
A broken scream erupted through her lips as the wet cold snow assaulted the fresh open wounds of her burns, but it was her best chance at limiting the burns. I had to cool her skin to stop the burns from spreading, even after the fire was extinguished. Her skin was black, covered in soot and ash, and I couldn’t see what was actually burned and what was just scorched.
“Easy, baby,” I cried, ripping my mask off and dodging her swinging arms as the pain became too much for her to bear. “Don’t move, baby.”
My team split, half going to contain the fire even though the house was a total loss, and the other half joined me, using the snow to encapsulate Frankie’s broken body until EMS arrived.
Sirens blared around us as more fire squads rolled up, dispersing and working around us. I glanced up and locked eyes with Lucy, who was fighting off my Sergent, trying to get to Frankie.
Then Trav was there, barreling his truck directly at the fire and stopping in the snow next to us, racing around his truck to collapse at Frankie’s other side. His face was covered in shock as he stared down at our girl, beaten, and broken but alive. Almost as if he was expecting to show up and find her dead.
Not on my fucking watch.
“Shh, Shade.” Travis stared down at her with a broken look in his eyes. “We’ve got you, I’m so sorry, baby. We’ve got you now.”
The fight in Frankie’s limbs lessened, falling limp as the trauma of it all took over her body, shielding her mind from it before she fell unconscious.
“Is she alive?” Trav barked, leaning over to listen for a breath, as EMS arrived. “Frankie!”
“Trav, let them in.” I said, letting go of Frankie’s hot hand and stepping over her to push him back into the snow when he snarled at the medic like a rabid animal when they tried to get to her. “Let them work. They’re her best chance right now.”
“I can’t—” He gasped, shaking his head, sitting in the snow with my arms around him, I expected him to jump back up the second he was free as the medics started working on her. “I can’t lose her.” He turned and looked at me, that broken look in his eyes. “We can’t lose her, Sunshine.”
“I know.” I said, grabbing the back of his neck to hold him still as he tried to look around the medic as they started intubating her, forcing straight oxygen into her black lungs. “I know.”
And we sat there, watching them do their work until they scooped her body out of the snow, revealing the angry red skin on her lower legs, open and brutal as they laid her on the stretcher.
My team said things that were only partially registering in my broken mind.
Trauma Alert.
