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Then, to her surprise, both the North brothers embraced her. “You’re a special girl,” Chuck said, “And I’m glad that you’re with Trent. I’ve seen the positive change you’ve made in him. He’s a different man.”
“Yep,” said Duke, as they pulled apart. “You know the other day, I saw him smiling. Actuallysmiling.”
Patti grinned and said goodnight to the brothers. The lambs were asleep and they were stable. Patti needed sleep now. She wanted to get a few hours of rest and then make sure she was ready for any other animals that might need her before Trent returned.
Later, in her room, combing her hair, she replayed the conversation she’d had with Chuck and Duke. She’d made a positive change in Trent. That’s what Chuck had said. And she was family. Her heart swelled as she hugged Chunky tightly to her chest.
And that’s when she saw it.
Smoke.
Patti stared in disbelief from her window as thick plumes of the stuff billowed from the barn. Her heart raced, and she could feel the heat of panic rising within her.
She didn’t think, didn’t change out of her pajamas. She just ran.
The closed she got, the more obvious it became that it wasn’t just the barn that was on fire. There were other inky smears of smoke, curling up from other ranch buildings. This couldn’t have been an accident. Patti kept on course, and it wasn’t long before she was in front of their makeshift quarantine hospital.
The scene outside the barn was pure chaos.
Duke and Chuck were nowhere to be seen—they had to be tending to other fires on the ranch. Other staff members, as well as a crowd of Littles, milled around the scene with terror etched onto their faces. The ranch foreman, Benjamin Blake, was in some semblance of control.
“Benjamin!” Patti called out as she dashed toward the burning barn. The tall, thin foreman was barking orders, trying to organize the chaos. He corralled everyone into a line and was coordinating buckets of water that were passed from person to person, toward the blaze. “What’s happening?”
“The fire started just after you left,” Benjamin replied grimly. “We don’t know how it started.”
“Who’s going to save the lambs?”
The foreman looked at her like she was crazy. “No-one’s inside Patti, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay. We’re lucky it’s only animals in there.”
“Only animals?” Patti said. She thought about everything she’d sacrificed over the last few weeks for the animals on the ranch. Whether they died from cryptosporidium, whatever had killed Thunder, or from this fire, what difference did it make?
“Let me go in!” Patti cried. She glanced up at the blaze. “It’s not out of control yet. I’m their doctor, their protector. I can’t just let them die without trying to help!”
“Absolutely not! We can’t risk our lives for the sake of the animals.”
“Can’t risk our lives?” Patti’s voice shook, and a surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins. She couldn’t stand by and do nothing while innocent creatures suffered, not again. This time, she would make the right choice. She took a deep breath. “Alright, you’re right,” she lied. “I wo—“
Then, without even finishing her sentence, Patti sprinted into the fiery inferno.
Inside, the barn was a hellish nightmare—acrid smoke filled Patti’s lungs, making her eyes water and her throat burn. She stripped off her pajama top, and wrapped it around her mouth to filter the air, pushing forward despite the suffocating heat.
“Come on, Patti, just a little farther,” she encouraged herself, her voice muffled by the makeshift mask. The terrified bleats of the trapped lambs cut through the crackle of the fire, spurring her on.
The heat and the light was almost unbearable. Patti could hear cries from behind her as the staff of the ranch tried to beckon her back. She hoped that no-one would follow her in here.
Finally, she reached the sheep pen. The animals looked terrified, cowering in the corner of their enclosure. She unhooked the latch with trembling hands, allowing the frantic sheep to bolt past her and escape the blaze.
The sheep were very fast, and Patti knew that she should follow them out as quickly as she could. Her heart was pounding in her chest, harder and faster than she’d ever felt it before. “Time to run!”
But the moment that Patti stepped forward toward the exit, disaster struck. The flames had been licking up the walls, and had reached the beams up above. With a sickening crack, a heavy roof beam split and fell, encased in flame. The beam blocked Patti’s path. Panic swelled within her, trapping her just as surely as the fallen debris.
“Think, Patti, think!” She urged herself, her mind racing for a solution. For a moment, all her progress, her newfound confidence, seemed to hang in the balance along with her life.
But it didn’t matter how hard she thought. Thoughts couldn’t put out fire. There was no way out.
Desperate, Patti screamed, “Help!” knowing that every second counted. “Someone, please help me!”
The fire roared around her, drowning out her cries for help and threatening to consume her entirely. Patti’s breath came in ragged gasps, her chest tightening with fear as she searched desperately for a way out of the flames.
