Chapter 19 #2
I ran out of the front door, coughing, coughing, coughing.
I could barely see as I tried to make it down the steps, tripping and missing the bottom one, which sent me flying down the sidewalk, landing hard on my knees.
The cat went running away from me and the fire as I hacked up a lung, panicking, knowing I needed to get away.
Knowing the neighbors on either side of Miss Pearl needed to get away too.
But my legs weren’t working. Neither was my brain. I was too busy trying to get my lungs to breathe.
“You fucking idiot,” a voice exploded—angry, so angry—from somewhere nearby.
A split second later, two arms were around me, one under my knees, the other across my shoulders, and then I was up in the air, cradled against a chest as I hacked up coughs so strong my stomach hurt.
“You stupid, stupid idiot,” the voice hissed as I felt us moving.
I couldn’t even muster up the energy to figure out who the hell was carrying me, much less tell them I wasn’t an idiot.
My lungs wouldn’t work, and I only coughed harder, my entire body into it.
The male voice right by my head cursed and cursed again, “fuck” and “shit” and “goddammit.” The tone as bitter and harsh as the smoke had been.
But I couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t care.
My hand was starting to throb unbearably, and I still couldn’t catch my breath. There were other things to worry about.
I felt myself being lowered instead of actually seeing it.
I felt the grass under my legs and bare feet—when the hell I lost my shoes, I had no idea.
I heard Josh and Louie’s voices mixed in with other unfamiliar ones.
I heard the wail of a fire truck’s siren most importantly, and maybe I heard the ambulance too.
But I was coughing too hard, trying to shield my hand.
Something soft swept over my eyes and mouth—a T-shirt. And still I coughed.
“Josh, get a glass of water,” the male voice ordered, low and grumbling against my ear. It was Dallas. It took me a second, but I knew it was him crouched by me, a weight around my back as a supporting gesture. He was the one who had carried me. Of course it was him. Who else would it be?
“Can you tell…” I couldn’t catch my breath. The side of my face was pressed against something hard and warm and steady. I closed my eyes, trying to catch my breath. “Miss Pearl… I got her cat, but… she jumped out of my arms?”
“Fuck the fucking cat,” the voice by my ear spat out.
What had to be his arm around my back moved lower, slinging around my hips.
I was pulled in closer to what had to be his body at my side.
Something pressed against my cheek, his words almost muffled.
“You stupid little idiot. You stupid fucking idiot—”
“I had to,” I whispered to him, lifting my head. Had his lips been on my cheek?
“Had to? Had to? ”
It was Louie, my poor wonderful Louie that explained it to him.
“Daddy fell and hit his head, and nobody stopped to see him,” he told him, word for word in the same way I’d relayed the story to him in the past, minus a few details.
“That’s why you gotta help people who need it,” he ended, his little chest shaking with emotion at the memories I was sure he was living through right now because of me.
Dallas glanced back and forth between Louie and me, his own body continuing with the tremors I’d originally felt. I was pretty sure he muttered, “Jesus fucking Christ,” but I couldn’t be positive.
“Dallas?” Miss Pearl’s soft, creaky voice managed to tear through my coughs.
“Don’t move, Diana,” Dallas barked. Something tender pressed against my temple and cheek.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I guessed it was his nose to the side of my eye, his mouth at my cheek.
“The ambulance will be here in a second. Don’t fucking move, ” he told me one last time before his support left me.
In less than two seconds after he moved, he was replaced by a much smaller body. One that was as familiar to me as my own. One that crawled onto my lap and pressed itself against me, whimpering and shivering just like poor Mildred the cat had been when I found her.
“Are you dying?” Louie asked against my ear as he tried to bury himself inside of me, squishing my hand against my stomach, making it hurt even more.
But I couldn’t tell him to move.
I shook my head, gritting my teeth at the pain. “I just inhaled… a lot of smoke, Goo.” I coughed some more, lowering my forehead until the side of it touched the back of his soft-haired head.
“Are you gonna live?” His voice broke, and that shredded my heart and made me feel like a selfish asshole.
I nodded again as my lungs tried getting rid of more smoke. “I’m gonna live.”
He shivered and he shook even more. “Promise?”
“Promise,” I rasped out, wiggling my arm out from between us to wrap around his back.
The sirens got louder and louder, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the flashing, bright lights as they stopped in front of Miss Pearl’s house.
Before I knew it, the firefighters were circling the home, and neighbors from all over the neighborhood suddenly appeared on the streets close by.
Josh came back and nudged a glass of water into my hand before promptly coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my neck, his face pressing against the side opposite of Louie’s. He held me tight.
I gulped down the water and watched as the ambulance pulled up a couple of houses down.
The paramedics went straight to Miss Pearl, who I barely noticed was right where I’d left her, next to Dallas who was holding one of her hands with Jackson hovering close by.
It only took a few minutes for them to put her on a stretcher with a mask over her face, and it was about that time that another ambulance pulled up the street.
“I was so scared,” Josh admitted into my ear as Miss Pearl was loaded into the ambulance.
There was no way I could tell him I’d been just as scared as he had been.
* * *
I knew it was late when I finally woke up.
Too much light was coming in through the curtains when my eyes finally cracked open, my hand giving more than a gentle throb at me finally being awake and able to comprehend the pain radiating from it.
It wasn’t too surprising that I was alone in bed when I remembered all three of us piling on to it in the middle of the night.
The paramedics had checked me over to make sure I was going to be fine—making me breathe through a mask that had the boys both crying in a way that I never wanted to see again—and bandaging up my hand after I told them there was no way I was going to the hospital.
It was after four in the morning when we finally trudged inside, and I took a shower, coming out to find Josh and Louie waiting for me in my bed already under the covers.
It had been years since Josh slept with me.
Years. But now… well, I understood and, honestly, I was more than a little grateful.
Last night, I had gone to bed confused about Dallas’s reaction to my toolbox, and the next thing I knew, I had run into his grandma’s burning house to get her.
I was freaked the fuck out. The entire night before had scared the shit out of me. I could admit it.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t not do what I’d done, but… I could wish it hadn’t come to it. What would the boys do without me?
Sliding out of bed, my shoulders screamed in protest at what I’m sure had been their usage when I’d helped Miss Pearl out of her house.
My hand started throbbing even more painfully at the burn gracing its palm.
My knees only stung a little as the sheets brushed against them.
I hadn’t bothered with Band-Aids on them. They were scraped, but I’d had worse.
It took me a few minutes to use the bathroom, dab some honey on my scrapes, and brush my teeth awkwardly with my left hand. My head and throat were achy and raw from the night before.
And it was right then, as I was trying to brush my teeth with the wrong hand, that I realized what the hell I’d done.
I’d burned the hand I used to cut hair.
Flipping my hand over, I looked over the area that was covered by gauze. “Fuck. Fuck!” Most of my fingers were fine, but… “Motherfucker!”
My head throbbed. My eyes got watery. I’d burned myself.
What the hell was I supposed to do? I used my right hand for everything.
Everything . With so much gauze on it, I couldn’t cut hair, or even hold a brush for color.
I had a feeling that anything that required me to stretch the skin on it was going to cause a world of pain.
“Fuck!” I cussed again, clenching my teeth together for all of a minute before I made myself think of Miss Pearl and what would have happened if I hadn’t intervened. My hand for a life. My hand for a life and the life of a cat. It hadn’t been for nothing.
But, I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid to touch the doorknob with my right hand. Fuck .
“Aunt Di?” Josh’s voice came from the doorway.
I swallowed hard and plastered a smile on my face that wasn’t completely fake. He was still in his pajamas from the night before, and he looked like he’d been awake for a while. “Hey. I just woke up.”
Josh glanced between the hand I was holding and my face. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, not trusting my words.
“Does it hurt?”
I didn’t like to lie to them, so I nodded again.
“A lot?”
“I’ve had worse,” I told him softly, also still not lying. It was the truth. I’d been in worse pain. It hadn’t been physical, but that didn’t matter.
He didn’t look like he entirely believed me, but he let it go.
“Did you eat already?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did Louie?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What?”
“Cereal and a banana.”
“Good.” I gestured toward him, calling myself an idiot for what had happened. “I’m pretty hungry,” I said.