by JD Nixon
Chapter 15
I swiftly pulled my person to safety, my arms shaking in panic, before dashing back in. I threw burning debris left and right, scrabbling through the rubble with my hands, oblivious to the burning pain. I lifted off a sheet of plasterboard to mercifully find Farrell still alive, but with an ankle caught under one of the beams from the ceiling that had fallen with the blast.
“Get the other person out,” he ordered, his eyes brilliant in his sooty face.
“Farrell,” I protested, trying to lift the beam off his foot. I couldn’t. It was too heavy for me.
“Do it now!” he shouted, so I reached for the unconscious man and slowly hauled him to safety over the wreckage and down the hallway. He was big and heavy and it took me a while.
Where were the damn fire fighters? I thought desperately to myself, as I dumped the man on the lawn and sprinted back through the flames, arms over my face to protect it from the burning tapestries.
I wasted a valuable minute trying again to lift the beam off Farrell’s foot with no success. There was another minor explosion from the kitchen and its ceiling slowly caved in.
“Get out, Chalmers!” he shouted at me. “We’ll both die in here otherwise.”
“No! Not without you,” I shouted back and thought frantically. I needed a lever of some type to lift the beam. Then I remembered the fireplace and thought the fire poker might do. Luckily for me it was in a part still accessible and I crawled towards it. I felt around cautiously until I touched the hot tiles of the marble hearth, moving along them until my fingers recognised the fire tools. I cried tears of relief when my fingers closed around the poker.
I crawled back to Farrell. Although I knew it was going to hurt him, I used his leg as a fulcrum, laying the poker across it as a level, wedging it under the beam. I pushed down on it with every scrap of strength I had left in me. He howled in pain and I hoped I wasn’t breaking his leg in the process. The beam lifted slightly, just enough for him to wriggle his foot free. I hooked my arms under his armpits and lugged him towards the front door.
The tapestries were badly on fire by this point, and it was a painful and slow trip for both of us. He wasn’t light, packed with muscle, but tried to help me by pushing on the floor with his good foot to propel us faster. I’d never been so glad as when I reached the front door with him. I dragged him across the lawn and propped him up next to a tree. I realised then that his pants were on fire and rolled him on the grass until it was out. Then I fell on the ground next to him and we raggedly breathed in the clean air, our skin blackened with the smoke, our throats raw.
Oh God, the two in the guest room! I jumped to my feet and ran back to the house.
“Chalmers!” he tried to shout out, his voice weak and hoarse with heat and smoke. “Where are you going? You can’t help anyone else! Come back here, you stupid woman!”
“There are two more in the front room. I think I can get them,” I shouted, equally hoarse, over my shoulder. And I re-entered the burning building, not hearing any more of his frenzied protests.
The guest room was closest to the front door and still reachable. Just. I battled through the hallway into the room where the two remained lying on the bed in the same positions I’d left them. They would have inhaled a lot of smoke and were now probably unconscious from that rather than the alcohol. I crossed my fingers that they were alive.
I made a spontaneous decision to go for the man first because my strength was swiftly running out and I didn’t want to leave him until last. I roughly hauled him off the bed, wincing when he thumped heavily to the ground. But I was pretty sure he’d choose a sore back over dying in a fire any day. With much effort, I slowly dragged him out of the room, down the hallway and out the front door to the lawn. Some neighbours who’d been woken by the explosions rushed forward to drag him away further from the danger.
I considered the burning house, gasping in air, my hands on my hips, almost bent double in an attempt to relieve the excruciating pain in my muscles. It was insanity to go back inside. How many times had I watched news reports of people who’d entered burning buildings to save someone, only to be killed themselves, overcome by smoke and flames? But we had surely lost two guests in the living area, so I felt compelled to try to get one more person out if I possibly could. That’s the only rationale I could later give for my foolish, rash actions.
So I re-entered the house, Farrell’s cries of anger and distress just faint rumbles over the noise of the fire. I’d never realised before just how loud fires could be.
I barely made it through the hallway without my uniform catching fire, the flames on each side of the walls were licking so close together. The woman on the bed was a lightweight, and as I did with the man, I pulled her off the bed onto the floor with no care for her comfort. But as I dragged her to the bedroom door, the hallway exploded into a solid wall of flame accompanied by a huge cracking noise. Shit! I slammed the door to the bedroom shut with my foot and looked at the full-length window. It was our only possible escape route.
I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I half-sobbed to myself in panic as I dragged the poor woman over to the window.
I tried to open the window, the varnish on the timber frame blistering in the heat from the fire, but it wouldn’t open very far without a security key. I slid my fingers desperately around the window frame, sure the key would be hanging on a hook somewhere nearby, but it wasn’t. I remembered from my earlier visit to the room that there was a metal-legged stool in one corner of the bedroom’s adjoining bathroom, so stumbled my way there through the choking darkness, banging into walls and furniture on the way. I used my fingers to guide my way to the stool and picked it up gratefully.
I carried it back to the window and holding it behind me like a baseball bat, swung it violently towards the window, cracking it but not smashing it, so depleted was my strength. Crying in earnest now, I tried again and smashed it this time, using the pad of the stool to push enough of the glass out to give me a decent escape space. The oxygen streaming in from the broken window was sucked underneath the closed door, feeding the flames in the hallway. The searing temperature in the room rose a few more degrees.
I couldn’t pull the unconscious woman out through the window because I’d be dragging her over jagged broken glass. So somehow – and I’ll never know from where the strength came – with much manipulation and struggle, and much precious time-wasting, I managed to flop her over my shoulder. I climbed through the broken window, both of us sustaining some unavoidable glass cuts during the process.
We escaped just in time as the flames ate down the door and burst into the room, swallowing up the free flowing oxygen from the window, devouring the bed linen in an instant. I staggered with my burden to the side gate, which was locked of course.
It wasn’t a good place to be, wedged in a narrow side path between highly flammable plants and a house on fire. I examined the locked gate. Could I climb it with a woman on my back? A quick check behind me confirmed that the side vegetation was on fire at the back of the house, so I couldn’t even run to the swimming pool for shelter. It appeared as though I didn’t have much choice.
The woman was beginning to feel so heavy, even though she was small and thin. I was incredibly glad that I’d left her until last, because there was no possible way I could have rescued the man in these circumstances.
I slotted my boot in the first foothold of the metal gate and hauled us up with shaking, screaming arms, leaving the woman to balance precariously on my shoulder without any support from me. I needed both arms to climb.
One step.
I found a foothold for my other boot and repeated the movement.
Two steps.
And step by step, encouraging myself all the way, I managed to reach the top of the gate.
But as I sat straddling it, planning my journey down the other side, the woman stirred and moved in panic, throwing me off balance. We both fell down onto the ground, a good two metres. S
he didn’t move, and neither did I for a while, my back about to pack it in for the evening, sick of the abuse. I felt physically ill, choked with smoke, aching everywhere and completely unable to move, blinking up with stinging eyes at the evening sky. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. After a couple of minutes rest though, I roused myself and grabbed the woman by her arms, dragging her towards the others. This close to the house, we still weren’t out of danger.
As I rounded the side of the house to the front, there was a huge cheer and it took me a few moments before I realised that it was for us. I stood shakily, surveying the scene. There were people everywhere. The fire fighters had arrived since I’d been in the house and one of them came to relieve me of my burden and help me back to where Farrell was still propped up against the tree. His foot was being attended to by a paramedic and the most incredible look of relief and wonder crossed his face at the sight of me. I crumpled next to him.
“Chalmers! You stupid, foolish, wonderful woman. God almighty! I thought you were gone for good when the front door collapsed,” he croaked with emotion in a raw voice, and leaned over to hug me tightly. Squeezing me so hard wasn’t a smart idea though and I rolled over to vomit onto the grass. “I’ve just rung Heller and left the most terrible message for him. You better let him know you’re all right. He’ll be going crazy otherwise.”
Another coughing fit hit me and my stomach pitched as I hawked and barked my lungs out. I moved over to vomit again, my throat so scorched that it hurt. And feeling as if my brain had been boiled, I looked over to the house where there were now two fire engines and teams battling the fire. The whole front of the house had fallen in. Marty and Gabriela’s beautiful house was a fiery wreck.
I turned to Farrell and wondered if I looked as awful as he did; his face red as if he had bad sunburn, his skin sooty and his eyes watery and red-rimmed.
“Farrell, you hugged me. You do like me, after all,” I accused hoarsely, my throat aching and burning.
He made some noise that I thought might have even been a laugh. “After everything that’s happened here tonight, is that all you care about?”
“Admit it.”
“I was only pleased to see you because I was worried that Heller would kill me for not looking after you properly.”
“Farrell! Don’t lie.”
“Well, maybe I like you a little bit,” he confessed reluctantly.
I tried to smile at him, but my singed face wouldn’t cooperate. Instead I stood up to tell the fire fighters about the last two guests left inside, despite knowing that they were beyond saving. But my legs wobbled and buckled under me, sending me spiralling back down to the lawn. The paramedic attending to Farrell turned his attentions to me. He assessed me, tended to the worst of my burns and shoved an oxygen mask on my face.
“You two will be spending the night in hospital along with the rest of this bunch.”
“I want to go home,” I said indistinctly through the mask, so tired. I was completely exhausted; I didn’t think I’d ever felt this weary before in my entire life. Every muscle in my body quivered like a frightened jellyfish.
“Not tonight, love,” the paramedic said kindly, packing up his gear and moving onto the next patient. “You need to see a doctor.”
I glanced around the lawn. We were a motley bunch. Most of the guests had woken to some level of sombre sobriety, covered by blankets and jackets donated by neighbours, and were trying to work out exactly who were the missing two. Through a process of elimination, they eventually discovered that it was the goatee beard man and one of the single women who hadn’t made it out.
Quiet tears trickled down my cheeks when I saw goatee beard man’s partner and the single woman’s friend lamenting their lost ones. Noticing my distress, Farrell rested a kind hand on my shoulder and then slid his arm around. I leaned into him, propped up against the tree, sucking gratefully on more oxygen while the fireman continued to battle the inferno.
“We did the best we could,” he consoled.
“I know, but still . . .” I gave a soggy sniff, and he rummaged in his pocket to bring out his smoke-drenched hankie. I took one whiff of it and handed it straight back to him.
They finally mustered up enough ambulances to take everyone to hospital. They were forced to push their way through the media contingent that had turned up to cover not just a fatal house fire in a good suburb, but one where there were twenty-two naked people rescued. A sensational story like that didn’t come along every day.
Farrell and I lay low, not wanting to be noticed by the media. I rang Heller, but once again he didn’t answer, so I left him a hoarse, terse message letting him know that I was alive. Farrell had already rung Clive to advise him of the fire.
At our insistence, Farrell and I were the last to be loaded into an ambulance. I didn’t know about him, but I was in a lot of pain by then, my uniform smoky and singed in places where the fire had touched my skin. Although the paramedics had administered first aid to those burns, the stinging was intensifying. I was starting to agree with the paramedic that I needed to see a doctor.
The paramedics dug out some crutches for Farrell because he refused to be loaded onto a gurney and his ankle was too injured to walk on. He awkwardly hopped his way to the back of the ambulance. I stood up to walk over to join him in the ambulance, when my world turned to darkness and the grass rushed up at me.
Chapter 16
When I roused, I was lying down somewhere comfortable, too tired to open my eyes. My nose felt strange and I gently twitched my nostrils. There was something up them and by the feel it was an oxygen tube. I knew that from my previous lengthy stay in hospital. I moved my right arm slightly and could feel the tight pull of an IV as well. Yep, I was definitely in a hospital. But it didn’t smell like a hospital, the acrid stench of smoke hanging thickly in the air. I couldn’t imagine why a hospital would smell of smoke.
I was hot, heat radiating from my skin. I shifted my left hand cautiously over to the other, moving one finger out to touch the skin on my forearm. Eww, there was some sticky gel-like substance on my arm. I tried another spot and there was more. Yuck! I could feel its gooeyness on my face and neck as well. Perhaps I’d been reincarnated and had just been born again? Maybe I had risen from the ashes like a phoenix from its egg, which would explain the smell of smoke.
To take my mind off the fact that I seem to be covered in afterbirth, I concentrated on sounds, hearing the comforting regular beep of the monitoring machine. So I was still alive, which was always reassuring to know. I tuned into the background hospital noises that never stopped regardless of the hour; phones ringing, people walking up and down the corridor, muted voices. No, hang on – the muted voices were closer than the corridor; they were near me. I listened further, discerning two voices, neither of which sounded very happy.
“You should have stopped her from re-entering the house. It was an exceptionally dangerous thing to do. I sent you there to look after her and you let her risk her life. You cannot imagine what I went through when I heard your message.”
Yep, no doubt about it, that cold and snappy voice definitely belonged to one unhappy camper. Unfortunately I recognised his accent, so knew it was my never-answers-his-phone-any-more boss.
“I do know what you went through, Heller. I was there remember – I went through it too. And I would have stopped her if I could. I told her to come back, but she ignored me. And I wasn’t able to physically restrain her because I couldn’t stand up.”
I thought I recognised that voice as my dear colleague who had finally admitted that he did like me a little bit. But it was so hoarse and strained and pissed off that I couldn’t be sure.
“He did try to stop me,” I butted into their conversation, my eyes still closed. For a startling moment I didn’t recognise my own voice, suddenly feeling like a ventriloquist’s dummy. My mouth moved, but the voice that emerged was far too rough and raw to be mine. My throat ached just saying those few words.
“Matilda,” a gentle hand took mine in its own, but it was painful to be touched. I flinched, pulling my hand away. “Don’t talk, my sweet.”
I made a superhuman effort to unglue my eyelids. My eyes were burning and sore, the light hurting them, so I closed them again immediately. I tried again a minute later and was able to roll them over to where Heller was sitting next to my bed. Farrell stood behind him, leaning on crutches.
“You didn’t call me,” I reproached him in a rough whisper. “You knew it would be awful, but you didn’t even bother to check on me.”
It was worth the pain in my throat to express my angry feelings. He didn’t respond, but held a glass with a straw in it to my mouth. I took a small sip of iced water. It was heaven and pain at the same time.
He looked down at the bedspread, anguish crossing his face. “I’m sorry, Matilda. I meant to, but I forgot. I was . . . occupied.”
It was a pathetic excuse as far as I was concerned, so I turned my attention to Farrell.
“You look terrible,” I croaked out and winced as my throat hurt again.
“You look worse,” he croaked back. His skin was glistening with a revolting jelly substance and was bright red, the worst sunburn I’d ever seen. I could smell the smoke wafting from him, and his eyes were as red and watery as mine felt.
“Why am I here with tubes and you’re walking around?” I demanded hoarsely. I took another sip of water.
“Stop talking, my sweet,” Heller requested. “Your throat is injured from the heat and smoke. You need to rest it. A difficult, if not impossible, demand for you I realise.” I ignored his accompanying smile, my attention still fixed on Farrell’s lovely hurting eyes, waiting for an explanation.
“You’re in worse condition than me. You were exposed to the fire for longer,” Farrell answered.
“Oh.”
“The doctor told me this morning that you’re going to be in hospital for a few more days, Matilda,” said Heller. I reluctantly turned my poor sore eyes back to him. “Your throat and lungs are injured. You have a couple of severe burns on your arms and your palms, as well as the general scorching that you’re both suffering. And you’re completely exhausted. You pushed your body to its limits and it needs to rest. You’re not going to start feeling better for a few more days.”