Page 154 of Burn

Maybe this will be the end of the sick joke they call falling in love when life won’t let that happen. But still, something inside me pushes back when my eyes fatefully find Mila on the floor surrounded by smoke.

She’s tied to chair, face down and unconscious, but she’s breathing. Immediately I think of Evan. Images of his body being carried out, the look on Jacey’s face when I saw her. I can’t shake it.

But then I suddenly can. Right now, I can save her. I can.

“Stay with me, honey,” I beg, cutting away the ties and running down the stairs, pieces of the building collapsing around us. “Goddamn it,pleasejust fuckin’ stay with me.”

At the sound of my voice, she stirs in my arms, whispering words I can’t understand, can’t hear over the roar of the flames.

I have her in my arms, Owen and Finn leading the way, guiding me back to the south stairwell.

Mila slips in my arms as I run, moaning in pain. She’s burned. Badly. “You’re okay . . . hold onto me. I got you.”

She says nothing. The black velvet smoke around us curls in heavy rolling sheets, a vapor so dense it feels like tar on my skin. Tangles of orange and yellow surround us as I run through the halls on the first floor.

She’s struggling for breaths, gasping through the smoke. I rip my mask off my face and hold it to her mouth. “Breathe, baby . . . God,please, just breathe . . .” I beg. “Breathe for me! Please just fucking breathe! Don’t leave me . . .” At some point, I don’t even know what I’m saying to her, just that I’m begging.

When I have her outside, I hand her immediately off to the paramedics who take over and get her in the ambulance. It’s the look of her in that ambulance, in pain as her skin bubbles around her chest and neck, that breaks my fucking heart. Those screams are the sound of everything inside of me dying.

I can’t fix burns. I did what I could. I got her out, but I can’t save her. I can’t take those burns away. I can’t take the pain away.

Cap finds me, angry and pointing in my face, the lights of the fire engines and police cars lighting his eyes in red and blue. “You’re on probation. I told you to stay out of that hotel.”

I don’t care. Not anymore.

Mila’s father and mother find me next. I’ve never met her mother, and I certainly don’t want to right now. But she hugs me, clinging to my soot-covered gear as I gasp for fresh air, my lungs full of smoke.

“Thank you,” she cries into my chest. “Thank you for getting to her.”

I don’t have the heart to tell them it might have been too late. Mostly because I don’t want to believe it.

Her father’s appreciative stare lands on mine. “Thank you, Caleb.”

I nod, but again, I can’t say anything. I can’t even breathe.

When I close my eyes, I attempt to breathe, just simply breathe in a little, but there’s no air. There’s only smoke now. Not only had I inhaled a lot of it, but I’m so fucked up in the head, I can’t. My stomach drops knowing that glimpse of her I’ve just had might be my last.

My body shakes, and I can’t stop it. Nothing can. It’s like poison being pumped through my veins. Rage rushes through me as my chest heaves in gasping breaths at the frail hope she will survive. That’s when my knees give way.

Smoke kills. It does. And it’s sometimes not right away.

Will this be it? The night I lose everything?

Backdraft

A fire phenomenon caused when heat and heavy smoke (unburned fuel particles) accumulate inside a compartment, depleting the available air, and then oxygen/air is re-introduced, completing the fire triangle and causing rapid combustion.

Don’t worry. I’m still alive.

In a weird way, I don’t remember much about the fire. Maybe that’s a good thing?

What I have are reminders, some subtle, others more prominent.

Everyone has a story. Some are beautiful, tales told through old souls and meals shared with loved ones.

Some tragic. Stories you wouldn’t believe unless you’d witnessed them.

Some just fucked up. Like sacrificing my life because he couldn’t have me.