thought this was just a nightmare from which I’d soon awaken. And when I did, I’d be in bed, in our Somerville apartment, with Ruby right there beside me, and it would be B.C., before the cancer, and our life would be beautiful again.
At that moment, a tendril of fire reached down from the ceiling and whipped the ground inches from my face, as if to say, “This is a nightmare, all right, but you’re not dreaming.”
I couldn’t think clearly under the constant roar of fire. My lungs were burning for air. Did I have enough oxygen to make it back out? Still, I moved forward, slithering on my belly as quickly as I could.
I covered my mouth with my arm, as if that would protect me from the smoke. My lungs seemed to laugh at the attempt. A hacking cough exploded from inside me, hard enough to shake my bones. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Above me, I heard the floor moan and hiss as the flames below it converted trapped moisture into steam. I reached a place where the fire burned hotter, and I knew that I was directly across from the wood pallets used to start the blaze.
If I hadn’t just been in the room, I might not have been able to orient myself in total darkness. But I remembered that if I headed in a northwest direction, the pile of debris closest to the pallets was about twenty feet from my current location. I moved ahead, my fingers doing the work of my eyes, and ended up crawling maybe another fifty feet before I found the trash pile. Cardboard boxes, concrete bricks, an overturned sofa, trash barrels, and scraps of sheet metal that had formed a makeshift wall kept me from seeing Winnie while I was dousing the pallets with gas. But I found her. Unconscious. Inert.
I didn’t have time to see if she was alive. The smoke was descending more rapidly. I figured I had fifteen seconds at most to drag Winnie out of the building before we could both kiss the land of the living good-bye. My chest screamed for relief, poisoned by a thirst for pure air. Every breath exited my body as a cough.
Still, I had enough strength to grab hold of Winnie by her wrists. I was on my knees, with my head bent low, crawling backward toward the door, pulling hard. Winnie came along with me, I assumed on her back, but I couldn’t see her through the smoke. I couldn’t see the light of the door, either, but at least I could hear sirens, so I figured I was getting closer.
I’m not going to make it.
Every fiber of my body screamed out for oxygen. How bad my lungs hurt. How hot my skin felt. A deeper darkness overcame me.
This is what forever feels like.
Before I knew what was happening, before I blacked out, I sensed myself being pulled. A human chain had formed—someone (a firefighter?) on one end, Winnie on the other, and me in the middle. I don’t know how long it took to drag us outside, but in that kind of situation, a second passes like eternity.
The next thing I knew, I was on the ground with an oxygen mask on my face.
Rebirth.
I looked to my right and saw a group of EMTs working on Winnie. I could tell she was unconscious. But was she breathing? Was she alive?
Ruby stood with the EMTs working on her mother for about half a minute. Then she came rushing over to me. I motioned to the EMT to give us privacy—it was too hard to say the words. He understood and backed away, but only a little.
“She’s alive,” Ruby said, brushing away her tears. “She’s alive because of you.”
Fire trucks were everywhere: hoses and water and people with oxygen masks, wearing thick fire-retardant coats, rushing into the burning building, doing what firefighters do best. I pulled away my oxygen mask. I needed to feel Ruby’s touch. Her fingers came away black with soot. She was holding on to me, trembling, calling my name over and over. She kissed my forehead and stroked my blackened arms.
“We don’t know her,” I said, coughing out the words.
“What?”
“Winnie,” I said, still coughing. “We don’t know her. We can’t explain that.”
“I know,” Ruby said.
God, how I loved her.
“What did you tell them?” I asked. “The firefighters, I mean.”
“We were passing by and saw the fire. I pulled the alarm. You heard a woman call