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The wail that crawls from my chest is the worst sound I’ve ever heard anything make, heartbreaking. Lanston cries with me. A few firefighters kneel beside us and urge us to move back to the ambulances.
How Lanston finds the strength to stand and carry me is beyond me. Medical staff lay out tarps and stretchers, anticipating to fill them with injured people, but as the hysteria fades from my shaky mind, I realize they’ve not extracted a single person yet.
Jericho, Yelina, Poppie, Liam, Dr. Prestin, Mrs. Abett, all the other patients and staff inside… There are easily fifty souls inside Harlow. And not a single one has been saved yet?
I lean over and vomit off the back of the ambulance. Lanston holds me desperately and rubs smooth motions over my back in an attempt to calm my whimpers.
How could this happen? Why did this happen?
A man limps from the building with two others on his shoulders. Everyone animates and a team of emergency personnel run stretchers over. I watch as they try resuscitating one. The other they set on a stretcher for immediate treatment and transportation. I break free of Lanston’s hold and run to the stretcher.
It’s not Liam. They’re much smaller than him, but that’s all I can tell. Despair and shock consume me as I stare at the burned human before me. Their skin is gone. All the hair has been singed from their body.
I don’t know who this was.
All I know… is death would be kinder than this cruel fate.
My eyes trace back to the other two. Lanston is at my side, sobbing as he stares down at the person I just verified isn’t Liam. The putrid smell of burned flesh stings my eyes but I blink past the urge to vomit again.
We walk uneasily to the man who carried the two people out. He kneels, mainly unscathed, but covered in soot and coughing horribly. I recognize him as the night guard. An ambulance takes him off site immediately.
The paramedics cover the person they were trying to resuscitate with a white sheet.
I stare at the body before us with hazy eyes—whether it be from shock, smoke, or tears, I’m uncertain.
Lanston grabs my hands and shakes his head. “No,” he whispers, the sound so raspy I know my voice will sound the same.
I don’t listen. Foolishly I don’t listen.
The white sheet has already turned red from the blood. I carefully peel back the corner. A twisted and severely burned woman lies on the stretcher. Unlike the other person, she still has her hair. And I instantly know who she is. The skin on her face is mostly unscathed but the rest of her…
“Yelina?” Lanston asks with an absent, heartbroken tone.
My stomach churns and tears fall unwarranted. My lips are numb and my fingertips sting. My chest hurts from the shock, the pain of loss, and my illness. I take staggered, wheezing breaths and shake uncontrollably.
“Hey, stop fucking around,” Lanston says softly, as if she is sleeping. “You’re transferring to a different treatment center tomorrow, remember? You can’t… You can’t—” He chokes and sobs.
I pull Lanston close to my chest and cry with him.
“Wynn, you’re pale. Hey, what’s wrong?Wynn?” Lanston jostles me by the shoulders.
“My h-heart.” I barely manage to get the words out. My hands clench and grab viciously at my chest of their own accord. It hurts.It hurts.
He lifts me in his arms so effortlessly, even though I know it’s no easy feat. His warm scent wraps around me and instills warmth through my veins. He murmurs soft, comforting words that are empty of fear, calm and reassuring. The physical pain starts to fade in my chest, but heartbreak is a distinctly different type.
Lanston takes me to the ambulance staff and they check my vitals. They insist on taking me to the hospital due to my blood pressure, but I refuse to leave until they extract more people from the building. They agree, only because I’ve calmed enough for my levels to lower.
But as the minutes pass, as the hours do, we realize no one else is coming out.
We cry together, wrapped in a tight embrace, until no more tears are left.
We sit like ghosts on the blackened lawn of Harlow until the sun rises. Until the firefighters have extinguished the fire, and all that remains are the stones that framed the building.
Police have long since taped off the area. A few detectives tried speaking with us only to receive hollowed eyes and raspy breaths.
They transport us to the hospital without another word.
“Did you catch the arsonist?” Lanston asks the officer tasked to watch us. The man shakes his head. “It was Crosby,” Lanston says in a low, hateful tone. His beautiful hazel eyes are sunken and dark. They don’t shine like they did last night. He looks like an entirely different person. Part of me wonders if I do too.
