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The house was a two-story. It was in a nice section of town. But the house was rather old and historic. The wiring was probably old as well. That was a common problem we often ran into. Of course, the root cause of the fire had not been determined yet by the Marshall, but I would have been willing to bet it had something to do with electrical.
From the report we had that was called in, there was a young child trapped in the upstairs bedroom. I ran up the stairs towards the bedrooms and began to search through each and every one. There were five in total. Of course, I found the child hiding under the bed in the last room I tried. She was about eight years old, cuddled up with a stuffed animal, choking from the smoke, scared out of her mind.
The smoke was black and thick. It was so heavy that I could barely see through it myself. I hoped the child did not suffer any lasting effects from the smoke inhalation. She needed medical treatment right now.
“It’s ok,” I called out to her. “I’m here to help you. Just give me your hand.”
I reached out to her. The child was scared, but brave. She reached out to me slowly and grabbed my hand. I pulled her to me and once she was out from under the bed, I scooped her up and held her close to me. Then I hurried out of the room and down the stairs towards the door.
Right before I got to the bottom of the stairs, I heard something breaking. I looked up just in time to see a large beam crashing down in front of us. It missed landing right on top of us by mere inches. Dammit. This was getting close.
The child was screaming in terror. I quickly turned around and jogged back up the stairs. I would have to find another way out. When I got to the top of the stairs, I entered the first bedroom I came to, and ran to the window. The child was screaming in terror now. She had lost all hope of getting out of this fire alive. But at least she was breathing and still ok. That was a good sign.
I tried to open the window, but it would not budge for some reason. It was jammed. I kicked it in, and the glass sprayed as I tried to shield the child from the debris. I looked out the window and realized that there was really no way down. At least not any safe way down. I did not see the truck or the ladder anywhere close to me. I reached for my radio, but it was gone. What? Where the hell did it go? I had it earlier I thought. Shit. That was it. I had no way to signal for help here.
Well, this was going to suck. “Hold on tight to me,” I said. The child clung to me tightly. I climbed out the window onto the ledge and began to inch my way down the side. This was going to be a rough landing.
I just had to ease myself out there, move slowly, and do my best to inch along. My heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. This was going to be very delicate. I could afford no mistakes here. I had to get to the edge so that I could ease myself down maybe along the eave spout. I reached it with no problems. So far, so good. I just might make it through this.
I grabbed the eave spout and began to climb onto it begging the thing to hold my weight. I knew the second I was on the thing that this might have been a mistake. I’d only climbed down about a foot when the thing started to break. Shit.
The child screamed loudly in my ear as she clung to my back and squeezed my neck cutting off my air. I tried to ignore it, but it was already affecting my muscles. I could tell her to ease up, but there was no time. We had to get out of there.
The eave spout was falling from the side of the house, detaching itself until we were starting to free fall with it. I had to do my best to land on my feet or at least brace myself before I landed right on the child. But my hands were in the air now. My feet were touching nothing. We were freefalling through the air.
The ground was coming up at us so fast… I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. All I could do was brace myself for the impact.
Suddenly, there was no ground there. A tarp was in front of us, just in the nick of time. We landed on the tarp and bounced up in the air before coming back down on it. Finally, we came to a rest.
The other guys had seen me climbing out of the window and had the presence of mind to grab the tarp before we fell and hit the ground. It was almost miraculous. We’d trained for this sort of thing, but sometimes in the field, things didn’t work out the way you expected them to and you had to improvise.
I climbed off the tarp with the child who was still hysterical but very relieved to be alive. Her mother ran up to us, frantic as could be. She embraced the little girl and thanked us all profusely as she held her baby. That was what it was all about. Saving lives and helping people. That was why I did this. I’d almost died myself just now, but I had put my life on the line, and it had paid off.
I just wish I had someone to comfort me right then. No matter how many times you come close to death, it never gets any easier to let go of. The fear stays with you and you find yourself thinking about all you missed, about everything you’ve done and haven’t done in this life. You don’t want to leave the world with any regrets. I sure as hell didn’t.
I wished I had Kat there, my sweet Kat. What was she doing right now? Would she have any idea that I’d almost just died? Would she care?
Of course she would. What if I was married to her and we had a child? What if I’d died just then in this fire and I’d left them alone? I couldn’t do that. As important as my job was to me, I didn’t want to be a burden to my family. I had some things to think about. I might have to walk away from the career I loved,
for the woman I loved. Would that have made a difference to Kat? I wasn’t sure. She was a million miles away, at least in her mind, she was.
I missed her like crazy.
When I got back to the station, I showered and went to the break room to grab a bite to eat. I was starving now, and still a bit shaken up from the fire. As I sat down, I saw a few of the rookies who were just starting their shifts gathered around someone’s phone watching something. I wasn’t too interested, but then I noticed that Peters kept looking up at me and giggling. After a few minutes I decided I had to find out what was so damn funny.
I marched over to the group. “What’s going on, guys?”
“Oh, nothing Lance,” Peters said. “Say, isn’t that your ex-girlfriend?”
I wasn’t sure how he would have even known who Kat was, but word got around pretty quickly in this place. It was like people had to keep tabs on what was going on in your personal life, since at the station we weren’t allowed to have any fraternization among the crew. We were stuck with each other enough that it was just natural that sort of thing would end up happening.
I was mortified by what I saw on the screen. There was Kat with her shirt off, wearing just the bra, and she was dancing with some naked stripper on a stage in a bar. The guy kept trying to get her to kiss him and to grab his cock, but she kept laughing and walking away. It was obvious she was drunk off her ass and trying to get off the bar, but then her friends were pushing her back up there to get her to keep jumping around like an idiot. I could tell it was a setup of some sort just by watching. The title of the video read “Ex-girlfriend of business tycoon Roger Dow’s son Lance caught with stripper.”
I was instantly infuriated.
“She’s hot. You banged that bitch?” Peters asked. “Guess, she is onto bigger and better things, right?”
The others laughed as he high fived them.
