Page 339 of Redeeming 6

Choking and spluttering when the sudden cloud of black smoke greeted me in the hallway where I’d witnessed both Sean and Ollie take their first steps, I covered my nose and mouth with my arm and staggered through the doorway, only to be swallowed up by the smoke. Momentarily taken aback by the unbearable heat that attacked my flesh, I felt around in the darkness, trying to familiarize myself with my surroundings and locate the staircase.

“Ols?” A fit of coughing enveloped me, and I gasped and clutched at my throat in the darkness. “Seany-boo?”

Blinded and suffocating from smoke, I managed to find the staircase and made it about three steps up when I was roughly dragged backwards.

“Get the fuck off me,” I spluttered and coughed, fighting against the fireman’s hold, as he carted me outside. “I need to—”

“Stand back!” he commanded, pushing me roughly aside as three of his coworkers rushed forward with a hose. “There’s nothing left.”

Nothing left?

Nothing fucking left?

I moved to run forward but ended up staggering backwards and falling on my ass in a heap when someone tackled me.

“We have one.”

“Move aside, move aside.”

“Child or adult?”

“Adult female in the kitchen doorway.”

“And?”

“I think we’re too late.”

“Paramedic! Now!”

“Oh fuck—” Everything inside of my stomach came rushing back up when I watched a fireman place my mother on a gurney.

Her face.

Her hair.

Her burned and blistered hand.

Heaving, I watched in horror as they started to cut her clothes.

“Mam!” I cried out, feeling my tears dampen my cheeks. “Save her!”

Oh, Jesus.

There wasn’t an inch of her that wasn’t burned and blistered.

The fire had ravaged her.

“Mam!” Twisting onto my hands and knees, I scrambled toward her, only to be pulled back. “Is she alive? Is my mother alive?”

“Don’t look, lad,” someone was saying in my ear as they draped a blanket over my shoulders and hauled me away from the scene. “Just close your eyes.”

I couldn’t close my eyes.

I couldn’t take the medics working on my mother.

My mother.

That was my mother.

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