Chapter Thirteen
Trish
The smoke is thick as I crawl on the ground. My brother is a firefighter, I know what to do in a situation like this, but I wasn’t prepared for how hard it would be to see, how hard it would be to breathe.
There are so many things going through my head. Where is Cora? She was here with her class. Where is Gunner and Mark. Are they here yet? Are they coming in? Will they fight the fire so that I can go home tonight?
There is one other person with me, and I’m following them as I crawl on the floor. It’s loud, the sound of the fire, the crackle of the building going up. The person in front of me stops as they reach up and feel the doorknob to the door in front of us.
“It’s hot, there’s more fire out there,” she yells back.
This absolutely can’t be the end. I have things I want to do. I need to see Cora, need to tell Mark I love him, actually know what it’s like to have sex with him, live the life I’ve always wanted to live. “No,” I cry. “This can’t be the end.”
There are so many things going through my head. Where is Cora? She was here with her class. Where are Gunner and Mark? Are they here yet? Are they coming in? Will they fight the fire so that I can go home tonight?
There is one other person with me, and I'm following them as I crawl on the floor. It's loud, the sound of the fire, the crackle of the building going up. The person in front of me stops as they reach up and feels the doorknob to the door in front of us.
"It's hot, there's more fire out there," she yells back.
This absolutely can't be the end. I have things I want to do. I need to see Cora, need to tell Mark I love him, actually know what it's like to have sex with him, live the life I've always wanted to live. "No," I cry. "This can't be the end."
That’s when I hear another person. It’s Sandra, my coworker of three years, the woman who brings homemade kolaches on Fridays and keeps a photo of her grandkids on her monitor, turns back to look at me from where she’s met up with us on the floor.
Her face is streaked with ash and her eyes are red and streaming, but she's thinking. And thinking is better than anything I have going on right now. I couldn’t think myself out of a paper bag right now.
"The window," she says, pointing.
It’s what me and the other worker completely forgot about. Recognition flashes with hope in my chest.
"The window in the copy room. It faces the side street, not the alley. If we can get to it…"
A section of ceiling tile drops somewhere behind us and we flinch flat against the floor.
The smoke is a wall above our heads, and I know, I know from everything my brother ever told me, that I need to stay low, that the air down here is the only air worth breathing, but my lungs are burning anyway and my eyes are streaming so hard I can barely see Sandra's shoes in front of me.
"Copy room," I say, looking behind me at my other co-worker. I don’t know her name, and maybe I should’ve learned it, but I can’t change that right now. "Let’s go!"
Sandra goes, and I follow because we have no other option. At least not one that we might actually survive.
The hallway is disorienting in the smoke.
I know this floor. I have walked this floor most workdays for years, know every turn and doorway, know exactly how many steps from the records room to the break room to the copy room at the end of the hall.
I count them now in my head, keeping my hand on the baseboard, Sandra's shoes in front of me, and I think about Cora.
I think about her in that line with her class, hope with everything in me that they got her out.
She would have been scared. She's brave, one of the bravest people I know, but she would have been scared, and I wasn’t there, and that is the thought that is going to undo me if I let it, so I don't let it.
I count steps instead. I follow Sandra's shoes, and I think about how happy I’m going to be when I get out of here.
The copy room door is where it should be, and Sandra pushes it open and we crawl through and she pulls it shut behind us.
The smoke is thinner in here, not thin, but enough so that we can breathe.
We pull ourselves up to sitting against the far wall and I drag in two breaths that feel like the first real ones I've had since this started. It gives me enough energy to do what we need. The co-worker I had originally followed has all but checked out on us, but Sandra? She’s ready to survive this, just like I am.
The window is above us. Sandra is already on her feet, bent as low as she can, moving toward it.
"Help me," she begs, her voice shaky.
I get up. My legs are trembling in a way I have to ignore. We get to the window and I reach past her and find the latch and it resists for one terrible second before it gives, and Sandra shoves the lower pane up with both palms.
The air that comes in is fresh, and I press my face toward it and breathe.
"Here!" Sandra is leaning out, waving both arms. "Third floor, copy room, side street! Help us!”
I lean out beside her and look down, and I can see the scene below. There are trucks, hoses, people, and there’s a water main flowing. It’s controlled chaos, and people in gear moving along the side of the building. One of them looks up, and I scream, hoping they hear me, that they see me.
I don't know if it's him. I can't tell from all the way up here, can't distinguish faces under the masks and helmets, but one of them sees us and raises an arm and radios something immediately, and I feel the first real loosening in my chest since the alarm went off.
I want to cry, but I refuse to let myself.
They know where we are.
"Stay by the window," I tell Sandra, because my brother told me that once and it's the only protocol I can think of right now. "Stay low and stay by the window."
She nods, already braced against the sill.
I don't know how long it takes. It feels like a long time and is probably less than three minutes. I hear them before I see them. The door behind us gives way as a hard boom breaks it in. There are voices and I thank God with everything I have.
"Fire department! Anyone in there?"
"Yes!" My voice comes out wrecked and loud. "Three people, we're here! Help us, please! "
The door opens and two figures come through it in full gear, masks and tanks, moving fast and low, and the first one reaches me and gets a hand on my arm and I grab onto that arm with both hands and don't let go.
"I've got you." The voice is muffled through the mask but I know it. I know it. "I've got you, Trish. You're okay."
Mark.
I cannot speak. I nod against his shoulder and he gets an arm around me, and I hear Gunner behind us getting to Sandra, and the other co-worker.
We’re moving them, like a well-oiled machine.
Mark keeps me low and keeps his body between me and the smoke and I follow every direction he gives me without question because my brain has handed all decision-making authority over to him entirely.
The stairwell is smoky but passable now that they’ve started putting the fire out.
We go down in a tight group, Gunner with Sandra and the other co-worker just ahead of us, and Mark's hand never leaves my arm. He's talking the whole time, short practical sentences that don’t have emotion, and I realize this is how he makes it through this. It’s nothing more than step here, duck your head, almost there, keep moving, and I focus on his voice the way I focused on Sandra's shoes in the hallway.
The lobby is chaos and then we're through the front doors and the fresh air fills my lungs. I drop to my knees on the pavement just outside the entrance and put both hands flat on the ground and breathe.
Mark crouches next to me immediately, his mask pushed up. "Trish. Look at me."
I look at him.
His face is all I see. Soot on his jaw, eyes scanning me fast and precise, the way I imagine he looks at every person he pulls out of a building, checking, assessing, and then his hand is on my face, tilting it up.
"Are you hurt?"
"No." My voice sounds like gravel. "I don't think so."
"Did you hit your head? Lose consciousness?"
"No. I stayed low. I knew to stay low."
Something moves through his expression, relief, fast and unguarded, before the professional focus comes back. "Medics need to look at you. Don't argue with me on that."
"I won't. I love you," I blurt out. “Was so fucking afraid I wouldn’t be able to tell you that so I promised myself I’d say it as soon as I could. It’s fast, but you’ve done everything that no one else did, and you care about my daughter.”
“I do,” he answers, his voice full of tenderness. “I love you, too.”
There isn’t time for us to talk more, but he doesn’t move his hand from my face.
"Cora," I say. "Mark, I don't know where…"
"She's out." His voice is calm and reassuring.. "She's out, she's safe, I saw her in the second group."
The sound I make is not something I can describe. It comes from somewhere deep inside me. I press my hand over my mouth and he puts his arm around me and I let him hold me up for a moment, right there on my knees on the pavement, while my body processes the information that my daughter is alive.
"Mom!"
I hear her before I see her. I look up and she's running across the cleared perimeter toward me, a teacher jogging behind her calling her name, and I get to my feet because my body does it without me telling it to. It’s pure reflex, and I cross the distance between us and drop back to my knees on the grass and she hits me like a small, orange-Converse-wearing freight train.
I wrap my arms around her and pull her in and hold her as tight as I have ever held another person in my life. She's crying. I'm crying. I can feel her heart pounding against my chest, fast and small and absolutely there, and I press my face into her hair and breathe her in.
"I didn't know where you were," she says against my neck. "I called for you and you weren't there and I didn't know where you were."
"I'm here." My voice breaks on it and I don't care. "I'm right here, baby girl. I'm okay, I've got you."
"I was so scared."
"I know. Me too." I pull back just enough to look at her face, to put my hands on her cheeks and make sure she's looking at me. Her eyes are red and her chin is wobbling and she is the most perfect thing I have ever seen in my life. "Are you hurt? Did you breathe any smoke?"
"A little," she says. "Mrs. Petersen made us cover our mouths."
"Good. Mrs. Petersen is very smart."
"She was crying."
"Adults cry sometimes. Even when we're being brave." I wipe her face with my thumb. "Especially when we're being brave."
She looks over my shoulder, and I feel the presence behind me before I hear him. Mark's hand lands on my back, offering me that steady reassurance I’ve never had, and I look up at him.
He is still in his gear, mask hanging from his hand, and he is looking at the two of us with an expression that he isn't trying to hide at all.
He lowers himself to one knee beside us in the grass.
Cora looks at him for exactly two seconds before she reaches out and grabs his coat with one fist.
He puts his arms around both of us.
I feel him exhale. It’s one long, slow breath, like he's been holding it since the alarm went off, and I lean into his side and Cora is between us and his arm is around my shoulders and his other hand is on the back of Cora's head, and the three of us stay like that on the grass outside a burning building while the crew works around us.
I close my eyes. Cora's heart is beating against mine. Mark's arm is solid around my shoulders.
And as I cry, Gunner, Amy, and Rosa come over. As a family we hug, we cry, and we thank God that we’re all safe.