Firemen were barking orders, getting ready to go inside, and pulling out their hoses. But it wasn’t enough.
“Please let me go, please!” I pleaded as I wailed. “Oh my god, my baby and my sister!”
“I’ll get them,” Huntley said, turning toward the house. “I swear I’ll get them, Lake.”
Before he got five steps away, the front door burst open, and someone appeared. In a blaze of glory, my sister, with streaks of soot covering her face, emerged from the house holding Stormi in her arms. It was the most surreal scene I’d ever witnessed in my life.
River wasn’t a big thing, but in that moment with destruction whipping all around her, fire licking her back, she seemed larger than life. Like an angel. Our angel.
The firemen rushed toward them, Bronson and I hot on their heels.
“I’m so sorry,” she cried as one of the men tried taking my daughter from her arms, but Bronson pushed them out of the way and took our little girl.
Before I could register what was happening, River gave me a sad but panicked smile and turned toward the house. She ran like the wind and in what felt like a split second she disappeared back into the burning flames, taking a piece of my frenzied heart with her.
“River!” I shouted but there was no way she could have heard me.
Cursing up a storm, Huntley was right behind her along with a couple other men. Water was hitting the house now and all I could do was pray with everything I had in me.
Dave, my friend and partner I usually worked with, appeared beside me. He coaxed us toward the ambulance. Bronson wasn’t letting go of his baby girl who was covered head to toe in soot and coughing so hard, she could barely breathe. Tears poured from her fear-filled eyes, as she wheezed and gasped for breath, her asthma flaring almost beyond control.
Her strangled cry as she tried to talk to Bronson and me, broke me into a million tiny pieces I wasn’t sure I’d ever put back together again.
“Shh, baby, don’t try and talk, we’re right here,” I whispered to her.
The EMTs burst into action, covering her face with a mask, pushing both oxygen and albuterol into her smoke-filled lungs as they clipped a pulse oximeter onto her right middle finger. They were good guys and knew what they were doing. It helped that they knew Stormi’s history with asthma being friends and co-workers, but It was hard not to take over when it was my daughter’s life on the line.
I’d always wanted to help people, but having a child so young, and one with asthma, made the profession I’d chosen have a double meaning for me. I thought back to the time when she was barely two and had a big attack that I wasn't sure she’d survive.
But Stormi was strong. She’d made it through then.
She will make it through now.
With Stormi on the stretcher, propped up in a sitting position, we stood outside at the back of the ambulance as my co-workers worked to stabilize our daughter. It killed me to not be able to touch her.
“Hey, Muffin,” her daddy whispered. “Daddy and Mommy are right here, you’re going to be okay.”
His voice was soft and soothing, but it held certainty. He was no doubt worried, I could see it in his gaze, but he also believed what he said.
And I believed him.
She was breathing easier now and some of the terror had left Stormi’s beautiful brown eyes. She tried to say something, but I stopped her. “Sweetheart, don’t try to talk,” I told her softly just as people started shouting.
My head spun toward the house as firemen came running out, part of the roof collapsing behind them, sending sparks and ash flying into the night air. I gasped at the burnt wreckage andthen almost crumbled to the cool ground, Bronson catching me at the last second.
River. Huntley.
My sister’s kids were not home for the night, leaving her and Stormi alone to bond, so why did she go back into the house? Sorrow ripped through my body as I screamed, my hands flying to my mouth.
River had to be okay.
Had to be.
I’d just found my sister.
I couldn’t lose her now. Or ever.
“Lake, look!” Bronson pointed toward the side of the house. “Baby, he has her!”
