I crossed toward the front door. Stopped.
The hospital fire-safety drill. Every year, the whole staff. Two years ago, a tenant on Elm Street opened her front door on a corridor fire, and the backdraft killed her. The post-incident training ran the entire hospital through the rule: if you smell smoke in the hall, check the door first.
I pressed my free hand against the front door.
Hot. The wood radiated heat through my palm, steady, deep, the heat of something that had been burning on the other side for longer than a few minutes.
The corridor was on fire. The thing between my apartment and the stairs was burning.
I stepped back. For one second, the room tilted—the kitchen, the string lights, the plants from Astrid's bungalow—and then I was the nurse again. My hand found my phone on the counter.
I dialed. Gave the address. "The corridor is on fire. I'm on the third floor. I have a baby. I'm going to the window."
"Ma'am, stay on the line. We have units on the way."
"Tell them I'm at the window facing the street. I have the baby with me."
I walked to the bedroom. Set the phone on the dresser, speaker on. The dispatcher's voice: “Ma'am, are you still with me?”
"Yes."
I unlocked the window one-handed. Pushed it up. November air came through, cold and clean, and the smoke that had been thickening behind me started pulling toward the open window instead of filling the room.
I leaned out. Looked down. The street below was empty. The streetlights running for no one.
Then a Hartsdale Fire engine turned the corner, lights going, no siren—late-night protocol in a small town. The red and white coming through the dark with the weight of something I recognized in my whole body.
Duke was on that engine. I knew every shift rotation at the firehouse because my daughter's father worked there. Tuesday into Wednesday. His crew.
I pulled back from the window. The blanket off the bed. A second one from the closet. I wrapped Nova—face out, blanket tight around her body, head against my chest. She was crying now, the real cry, the scared one, the one I'd never heard from her before. I held her tighter.
Smoke was coming under the bedroom door. The carpet at the threshold had started to discolor, the edge of it darkening in a line that meant the hallway beyond the bedroom was catching.
The dispatcher: "Ma'am, the engine is on scene. They're going to come up to your window. Can you stay there for me?"
"Yes."
I turned back to the window. Leaned out again.
Duke was in the street. Off the engine, helmet on, gear on, looking up. His body went still for half a second—a man lookingup at a building and seeing, in one of the windows, everything he had in the world. Then he turned to the crew, pointed, and said something I couldn't hear. They moved.
The ladder started to come up.
Two minutes. The ladder climbed the side of the building. The smoke under the bedroom door was thicker now, the carpet edge glowing in a faint orange line, the wood of the door starting to blister where the heat was pushing through from the hallway.
I held Nova against my chest. My arms were shaking. I was holding her too tight, and I knew I was holding her too tight, and I was going to keep holding her exactly this tight until someone took her from me.
The dispatcher, still on the line: "Ma'am, the firefighters are at your window. Hand the baby to them first."
"I know."
Duke at the window.
He came up the ladder in a helmet and mask, his bare hand reaching through the open sash. He'd been at this window once before in a T-shirt. He was at it now in turnout gear with smoke coming out over his shoulder.
"Aud."
I gave him Nova.
