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KIM BALDWIN. Please, God, she prayed as she turned the knob
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Please, God, she prayed as she turned the knob. She could no longer see, her eyes raw and burning from the smoke. Her heart fell as she groped her way through the deep closet, F nding only clothes, a hockey stick, roller skates. She had almost given up hope when she F nally came upon the boy, curled into a fetal position in the back corner.
He wasn’t moving.
She grabbed him and backed out of the closet.
The F re was spreading rapidly now, closing in on them—one wall and half the ceiling were af ame. The heat was intense, searing her face and neck. She tried to shield the child as she dragged him across the f oor in the direction of the window.
“Gable! Answer me, damn it! Gable!” Erin was at the window, standing on top of the ladder.
Her voice helped direct Gable where to go, and in another moment, she was there. She handed the boy over the sill to Erin and groped her way down the ladder after them. She collapsed at the bottom, struggling to breathe, unable to see.
Gable recognized the sound of tires skidding on gravel as more F reF ghters arrived, then the wail of the F re engine, growing steadily louder.
“I’m going to move you, Gable. Try to relax.” Carl’s voice, just above her. He reached beneath her shoulders and dragged her several feet, then slid off her helmet. “You all right?”
“Okay,” she managed to rasp out between coughs. “The boy?”
“He’s alive. Erin and Tim are working on him. You done good, Gable.” Carl had to shout to be heard over the siren on the pumper as it pulled up near them. “Oxygen’s here.”
The siren died, and a minute later someone set an oxygen mask on her face. Gable still couldn’t open her eyes, but it was a bit easier to breathe. All was controlled chaos around her. She could hear Chief Thornton shouting instructions, and recognized the clang of the ladders coming off the truck. Another siren. The ambulance, she guessed. The other sounds around her began to fade as it wailed louder and louder, stopping very near where she lay. The siren died, car doors slammed.
She could hear the voices of the paramedics as they tended to the boy a short distance away.
“Gable, are you all right?” Erin’s voice, nearby. Kneeling over her.
• 116 •
FORCE OF NATURE
Gable pulled the oxygen mask away from her mouth. “Yeah.
Peter?”
“He’ll be okay, they think. They’re getting him in the ambulance now. Then they’ll bring the other gurney over for you.”
Gable shook her head. “Hate hospitals,” she rasped.
“It’ll be all right. I’ll be right there with you. But I’m going to have to drive your Jeep and meet you there. They won’t let me ride along, there’s not enough room.”
“No,” Gable protested. She started coughing again, and Erin replaced the oxygen mask.
“Leave that alone, and stop talking! Damn it! Don’t be so stubborn!”
“Don’t need…” Gable tried to talk through the mask, but it muff ed her words.
Erin took her hand and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Please, Gable. Please don’t F ght this. Okay? For me?”
Gable absolutely loathed hospitals. Her mother had died in one, three days after her car went off an icy road and struck a tree. But Gable could see it was pointless to try to argue with Erin. She nodded her head reluctantly, and Erin squeezed her hand. “Good. Thanks.”
v
The paramedics f ushed out her eyes with saline at the F re scene, and they repeated the procedure at the hospital, so Gable was able to get a good look at the cluster of familiar faces crowded outside the emergency ward as they wheeled her to a semiprivate room. Erin, Tim, Carl, and a half dozen more of her F reF ghter friends, some still in their turnout gear.
Two nurses fussed over her, getting her an extra blanket, f ufF ng up her pillows. The other bed in her room was vacant. She was still on oxygen and they’d hooked her up to an IV. She had to move the mask to be understood.
“What’s Peter’s condition?” Her voice was still raspy, and it hurt to talk.
“Put that back,” said the matronly nurse whose nametag read Amy. But she smiled at Gable as she said it. “He’s going to be F ne.
We’re keeping him overnight too. Just for observation. You’re the one who got him out, right?”
• 117 •
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