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But I remembered everything. Every second with Ambri was imprinted in my heart. He had been here.Wehappened.
Then I began to run.
I ran until my lungs were on fire in the cold air, and a stitch stabbed me in the side. It was insanity—Chelsea was hours away on foot. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, than I saw the twenty-two bus rumble to a stop. I jumped on, and it took me to Sloane Square where I jumped off and ran again. I sped through the early morning that was hazy with clouds.
And smoke.
Clouds of gray smoke were billowing up a few blocks away and the sirens broke the early morning quiet.
Ambri…
I rounded the corner to see the entire Chelsea Gardens building engulfed in flames.
“No,”I cried and raced toward the inferno that several firetrucks and a host of emergency vehicles had surrounded. Terror practically blinded me, and I crashed headlong into someone.
“Oh dear!” a woman cried.
Instinctively, I’d tried to cushion her fall, grabbing her and rolling to take the brunt of it on my shoulder as we went down in a heap.
When I could breathe again, I helped her to sit. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, darling.” She sat up like Alice in Wonderland after landing in the rabbit’s hole—legs splayed and smoothing down her blue dress. She was mid-thirties but with a delicate, almost childlike face and pretty eyes. Her blond hair was messy and tied with a blue bow.
I sat beside her, watching the building burn, huge chunks collapsing. Nothing—and no one—inside could have survived.
“I’m too late,” I whispered, the pain wrapping around my heart in an iron grip. “I’m too late…”
“Now, now, that’s no way to think. Help me up, dear.”
I got to my feet and pulled the woman to hers.
“You mustn’t think like that,” she said. “It’s never too late, mein Schatz.”
I jerked my head to look at her. “What did you say?”
She smiled coyly and leaned in to kiss my cheek. I smelled perfume—old and expensive—as she patted my coat. “Go to him, darling. He’s waiting for you.”
She tilted her chin over my shoulder, and I looked behind me. The firefighters had pulled someone from the building and were carrying him by his feet and under his arms. I saw a flash of red coat and blond hair, and then I was running again.
“Whoa, whoa.” A police officer barred my way from getting close to the scene that was a chaos of flames, smoke, and water-slicked streets from the fire hoses’ steady streams. “You can’t be here, son.”
But I could see Ambri, soot-covered and unmoving. Eyes closed. A crowd of paramedics circled him, working with an urgency that made my blood run cold.
“Please. I have to get to him. Ambri…”
He followed my gaze. “You know that guy? Don’t know what he was doing in this building; it’s been condemned for years.”
“Condemned…?”
The officer walked me closer—close enough to see that Ambri wasn’t responding. The men were doing chest compressions, and another had an oxygen pump over his face.
Then one paramedic shook his head at another who said grimly, “I think we lost him.”
“No!”I tore past the cop and pushed into the circle. “Don’t give up on him. Please.”
“He’s been in there for too long,” said a paramedic.
“Keep at it, Wilson,” said another, and the CPR began again. For long, agonized moments, I hung in limbo between fear and hope, until a third paramedic shouted, “I have a pulse!”
