Chapter 15
Air had never been such a precious commodity. Alicia rolled out of bed and dropped to her floor, gasping for any tincture of breath she could find. Not much, unfortunately. Smoke poured in beneath her door. She crawled toward the window, choking, coughing, and struggling to remember whether a fire escape existed outside her window.
“Hey!” What was that in the background? Was that fire licking at the door? Alicia couldn’t tell! “Hey, hey! What’s going on? Thanks, bitch!”
Alicia thought of those safety videos shown at the beginning of airplane flights.Help yourself before anyone else.Pete would have to wait.Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Pete.
The window didn’t budge. Alicia’s attempts to pry it open were met with little groans – oh, that was her making those groans. Oh, well.
She fell onto the floor again. The room was so dark. Was it always this dark?
“Hey! Whatcha doin?”
“Get back from the door!” someone shouted. Before Alicia could think too hard about what was going on, the bedroom door kicked open, the biggest body she had ever seen barreling in and swooping down to grab her.
Good thing Dee was so damn big. The window was nothing to her.
“Take deep breaths,” the paramedic coached Alicia. An oxygen mask was stuck to her face, pumping the elixir of life while crews of firefighters yelled at the flames overtaking the apartment building. Evacuated residents lined the closed street, some of them tended to by other paramedics, but most of them sobbing in their bathrobes and pajamas. Alicia didn’t feel much better. Even with a thick blanket on top of her, she still shivered in her T-shirt and pajama bottoms. “That’s it, honey. Keep breathing for me. You’re gonna be all right.”
Dee sat on the ambulance bumper, holding her own mask to her face. Sometimes she took it off to shout at someone – mostly the police that kept badgering her about who the hell she was and what right she had to run into a burning apartment – but mostly she spoke to Alicia. Five minutes later, she had a freaked-out parrot on her shoulder, an animal control officer chasing poor Pete down.
“Thanks much, bitch!” He said it so cheerily that Alicia could only infer the best intentions… even with the slurs that made Dee glare at him. “Thanks, thanks, thanks!” Pete attempted to dance but stopped when he realized he didn’t have enough breath to do so.
“Come here.” The animal control officer caught him as someone else arrived with an oxygen mask for the bird. “Youmay have a foul mouth, but we’ll make sure you breathe right again, buddy.”
Alicia wanted to collapse from the confusion. So happened that’s what her personal paramedic wanted her to refrain from doing. “Alicia, honey?” she kept saying, as if calling herhoneywould get her to cooperate. “Stay with me, baby.” Oh, it got better. “You’re gonna be okay!” Why the fuck was she yelling?
For a second, Alicia panicked about Candice. Where was she? Was she okay? Did someone find her? Did she make it out in time?That’s right. She went to Las Vegas yesterday. Alicia was ready to pass out on her stretcher when she heard some rough, male voices start talking to Dee.
“What’s your name again?”
“Deanne McCormick. How many times do I gotta tell you?”
“Tell us what you saw again.”
“Look, I’m this lady’s bodyguard.” Dee took a moment to use the oxygen mask before continuing. “I’m paid to watch over her. So, I watch over her. I was standing out in the hallway ‘cause she didn’t know I was here, and I didn’t want to freak her out. So when I saw smoke, I did my fucking job. We did this training all the time when I was in the military. You know how many times I’ve run through burnin’ buildin’s grabbin’ unconscious people?”
“You didn’t see how the fire started?”
“Nope. Not my problem, either. Why don’t you go talk to the fire marshal?”
One police officer put his notepad down with a huff. The other took over the interview. “Who pays you to watch over this woman? Why?”
“This woman is Alicia Colbert, or do you not read the tabloids?” Dee scoffed – and coughed. “She’s Danica Moreau’s girlfriend. She’s the one paying me to guard her.”
“Danica…”
“Moreau…”
The policemen exchanged a look before taking off.
“Idiots,” Dee muttered. “You okay back there, ma’am?”
The paramedic looking over Alicia nodded. A huge spray of water lifted into the air as another hose turned on against the fire licking the fifth floor of the apartment building.
“I’ll be fine,” Alicia insisted. Shit, it wasn’t easy speaking.
She closed her eyes. What she would give to have Danica with her now.
