She took a breath, looked around the darkened room. Her phone. She needed her phone. It wasn’t on her nightstand. But she always left her phone right there. Her mind was muddled, she was panicking. What to do?
Just go. Get out.
Felice slung one leg over the windowsill, then the other, then dropped down onto the ground. Drifts of pine needles broke the fall, but she felt stabbing pains from the soles of her feet where she’d stepped barefoot on glass shards.
She was down on all fours, so she crawled away from the dorm, still gagging and coughing. When she was a hundred yards away she managed to stand upright.
Livvy! Where was Livvy? She looked around. The woods surrounding the dorm were quiet, the nearly full moon the only light breaking through the tree line. She smelled gas.
“Livvy!” Her throat was raw, her eyes burning.
“Livvy!”
Could Livvy have slept through the explosion? Felice wasn’t sure. She had to find her friend’s room, but she was so disoriented, her brain so muddled. She forced herself to look at the window she’d crawled out of, then spotted the next window down. Livvy’s room.
She grabbed the lamp she’d thrown through the window, and made her way to the next window down, battering at it with the lamp base until the screen tore open and the glass shattered.
Smoke poured out of the window. “Livvvy!” she screamed. “Livvy!”
There was no answer. With a rush of adrenaline, Felice somehow managed to heave herself up and through the open window. She dropped to the floor, clutching the damp pillowcase to her face. Through the smoke she spotted Livvy, unmoving on her bed.
Flattening herself to the floor, Felice crawled hand over hand to the bed. “Liv!” she screamed, but her friend didn’t move. She grabbed Livvy’s hand, felt for a pulse. It was warm and there was a pulse. She also spotted her own phone on the nightstand, right beside Livvy’s, and grabbed both phones and stuffed them into the pocket of her pajama pants.
“Liv! Wake up!” She shook her friend’s shoulders. “Fire! We’ve gotta get out.”
Livvy’s head turned slightly in her direction. Her eyelids fluttered. She tried to speak, but was seized with a fit of coughing. “Huh?”
Could she still be this drunk, Felice wondered? How much wine had she had?
Giving up, Felice grabbed Livvy’s arms at the elbow and yanked her off the bed. Once Liv was upright, Felice wrapped an arm around her waist. They were both gagging and coughing in the thick smoke. She took the pillowcase from her face and wrapped it around Livvy’s. “Come on, girl. The dorm’s on fire. We’ve got to get outta here. Can you walk?”
Livvy’s knees buckled and Felice hauled her back upright. She half walked, half dragged her toward the open window. It was like hauling a living hundred-pound sack of potatoes.
“Liv!” Felice yelled. Her friend’s face slowly swung around to give her a blank stare. “You have to jump out of this window. Can you do that? Can you jump?”
Without waiting for a response, she bodily picked Livvy up and shoved her headfirst through the window. As soon as Livvy’s feet were clear, Felice jumped down too, falling with a soft thud atop her.
“Come on, we need to get away from here,” Felice said, yanking Livvy to a seated position. “I think there’s a broken gas line. The whole place could explode any minute.”
Livvy slowly nodded. Her voice was as hoarse as Felice’s. “Okay.”
Felice stood and pulled Livvy to her feet. She wrapped her arm around her waist. “Away. We’ve got to get away from here. Can you walk now?”
Livvy mumbled something unintelligible.
Moving as fast as she could with the dead weight of her friend, Felice staggered away from the clearing where the dorm stood and toward the tree line, still gasping for air. Her legs and lungs gave out when they were about fifty yards away, and they both dropped to the ground at the base of a tall pine tree.
Felice pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped 911.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
“Fire,” Felice croaked. “At the Saint. I think there’s a broken gas line. I heard an explosion, and then the lights went out.”
“Ma’am, where at the Saint?”
Felice coughed. “Staff dorm. In the old golf cart barn. Send an ambulance. My friend… I think there’s something wrong with her.”
“Is she conscious?”
