he wasn’t in the position he wanted to be in, Gabe cracked open the nozzle on the hose and started blasting the roof to push them back. He could feel 800-degree heat coming down on him over his turnouts as he moved further into the room. This apartment was clearly one of the hot points of the fire, possibly the room it had all begun in, judging by the black/white soot already covering the furniture that hadn’t yet burned.
He stilled as he thought he heard someone calling out, crying for help. With the hose still jammed, he had no choice but to drop it and make a move in the direction of the sound. A white door with a mirror on it was closed and he kicked it open, shattering the mirror beneath his steel-toed boots.
As a new flood of smoke rushed through the door, his vision was impaired for a split second, but even though he couldn’t see anyone in the small bathroom, he knew exactly where to look. He ripped back the shower curtain and found a woman holding her daughter in her arms in the old claw foot bathtub.
He’d found Megan and Summer.
“Megan, you’ve done good. Real good,” he told her through his mask. Her eyes were so big, and so scared, his chest clamped down on itself hard. “I’m going to help get you and Summer out of here now.”
She opened her mouth and tried to say something, but all she could do was cough, her eyes closing as tears seeped out onto her cheeks.
He pulled off one of his gloves to check the unconscious girl’s pulse. Thanking God that it was still steady, he put his glove back on, then reached for her.
Her mother’s eyes shot open and they played tug of war for a moment before she let the girl go. Her lips moved in a silent plea: Please.
He knew better than to let her fear, her terror stop him from doing what he needed to do to get them out alive. And yet, her eyes held him a moment longer than he should have let them. The love she felt for her daughter was as clear in the expression on her face as if he’d known her forever, rather than just a handful of rapidly ticking seconds in the middle of what felt like a war zone.
“I’m going to take Summer and we’re going to crawl out of here. Can you do that?”
She nodded and he gripped her arm to help her slip over the edge of the tub. She was shaky, but she was clearly a fighter. After helping her out of the tub, he pulled an air mask out and moved to put it over her face so that she could take some clean hits of air into her lungs. She tried to push it away, tried to get it over her daughter’s face, but he’d anticipated this movement and shook his head.
“You need to take it first.” He spoke loudly so that she could hear him through his mask. “Otherwise you’ll be dead weight and none of us will get out of here alive.”
She grabbed the mask from him, then, and clamped it against her face. Her eyes widened as she took her first breath and he knew to pull it back so that she could cough a few times before putting it back on, holding it gently in place as she took what she needed so badly.
When she shook her head and glanced wildly at her daughter, he reluctantly removed the mask and put it over her daughter’s mouth and nose. The girl stirred slightly, coughed, then seemed to settle.
They were all flat on the floor to avoid the heat and he was about to tell Megan the next steps in their escape plan when the motion detection alarm on his belt went off. It was second nature for him to reset it before anyone on the crew could be alarmed that he was down. It was dangerous as hell up in the third floor apartment and he didn’t want anyone else on his crew up there unless there was no other option.
With visibility almost completely gone, he yelled, “We’re going to crawl against the wall edge to stay low out of the smoke and heat until we find the doorway.”
Slowly, they made their way along the molding at the bottom of the wall to the doorway. Gabe carried Summer under his left arm, and kept frequent checks on