Fiery

Alarms sounded. Heat enveloped the burning house. Windows burst as flames and smoke raged. The winter wind howled. Skica Monet went into her nineteen-year-old daughter Alene’s room who sprawled out on the floor. The mother coughed and crouched low to see if her daughter was still breathing. She looked for a pulse. Nothing. She breathed air into her lungs. Chest compressions followed. Still, nothing.

The fire seemed to intensify like a hot hand gripping the woman. A fireman came to her.

“Is there anyone else up here? Can they walk?!” he shouted. The woman didn’t say anything. “Yes! My daughter’s up here!”A beam fell and fire continued to scorch the interior of the abode.

“C’mon! C’mon!” The fireman yelled. She kept going with the fireman guiding her to safety.

Suddenly, Skica’s pulse returned to her and she stayed low to the ground beneath the smoke. She coughed profusely. The door had been slammed shut. She reached for a sweatshirt and turned the knob which still felt hot. She managed to surpass the doorway. She scooched under the beam and navigated out of the house through falling debris. Sparks flew up like bright fireflies of orange and red.

Alene kept going down stairs, crawling like a spider. She stayed under the smoke but still coughed some. She didn’t have her sweatshirt with her, so she burned her hand when she reached up to grab the knob and exited the front door to go outside.

She kept crawling until she reached the end of the driveway where a trove of fire, medical and police vehicles parked in front of the house, now an inferno.

Fire personnel and other first responders lifted her up and brought her to the truck. Alene coughed. A blanket covered her shoulders. She saw her mother speaking with a police officer.

“She…left me…to die!”

“It’s alright, Miss,” a firewoman reassured.

“No, my mom wanted me to die in the fire,” she coughed.

Away on a business trip, Mr. Minton Monet looked at his messages. They came in bursts. First, his wife informed him of the blaze. Then, dozens of text messages poured in like digital hail, pelting his consciousness.

“Hello? Hello?!” he said in his hotel room. He screamed into the phone for his wife or daughter to pick up their smartphones. He made arrangements to head back to Delaware on the next flight to the States.

Back in the Wilmington suburb, the glow of the fire had attracted neighbors and news cameras.

“It’s okay, Miss Monet. You’re going to get some oxygen, now,” the fire woman tried to calm her down and comfort her as best she could. Alene ripped off the mask and charged towards her mother.

“You selfish bitch! You wanted me to die. You’re so full of yourself!”

“Honey,” Skica replied, with her eyes stained with tears.

“There’s no ‘honey.’ Jesus! Your own daughter!”

The policeman looked at Skica. “Would you please tell me what else happened in the house?”

“I can tell you!” She coughed a great deal. Then resumed. “She wanted me dead.” She turned to her mother. “And you better not lie….”

“I checked for your vitals. I couldn’t find anything. I’m just glad you got out alright.”

“Don’t give me that! You wanted to just get out and collect my whole life insurance policy. You probably started the fire.”

“Let’s stay factual and not start making claims,” Officer Hedgman spoke in a quiet but firm manner. “Please, Miss Monet, return to the medical truck. They’ll be able to patch you up and look at that hand.”

“I’m staying right here.” She looked at her mother. “You’re a liar.”

“You’re not thinking, Alene. Use reason and you will know just how important it is to retain a level head in all of this. Just look at all of this!” She waved her arms around the flickering lights and all of the different trucks and vans that had encircled their residence, now being reduced to ashes. The night sky saw plumes of smoke rise up to the stars. With every passing moment, the assessment of the damage would be in the millions but the preservation of the lives remained priceless. Each of the professionals carried out their work with extreme precision and excellent timing. As all of them continued to put out fires and to keep the neighbors at a distance, television news vans occupied at least three places in front of the house.

Because no one was injured severely or killed, the newscasters didn’t spend a lot of time discussing the burned down house. They decided to become buzzing yellowjackets and ask “a man/woman on the street.”

A woman with the face of an aging movie star remarked to the telejournalist. “Well first I heard a rumbling. Then a crackling. I looked out my window and saw the yellowness of the flames. I just said, ‘damn! Not the Monet’s!’ They’re good to people. I pray to God for their safety.” A man stepped up to the camera. He looked distinguished with gray at his temples and jet black hair elsewhere.

“I would say that they’re cursed. The husband and father is a senior vice president of Diamante Bank. Maybe it was arson, though. Whatever the case, I just hope everybody got out alright.” He swung around and someone else came into view as if in a revolving door. The woman was young and had high ebony cheek bones and used a vaporizer.

“I don’t know if it was cigarettes. You see I use this,” she indicated her inhalation device. “I want to say that it was something like a gas leak, but that would’ve probably caused an explosion. So I don’t know what sparked the blaze. It could’ve been anything. I just want the mom and daughter to be safe.”

Skica’s heart raced. She grabbed her daughter by the arm.

“If you think I’m ‘selfish’, you should consider your own station. Who is considering their own life? Who is thinking about themselves? You're irrational. You fail to grasp what we’ve always tried to instill in you. We should have a top list of values. You are up there for me right after your father. So I am selfish but not in the sense you’ve used the term. I care for my highest values which is an act of love. We raised you to be rationally self-interested. That collectivist nonsense you picked up over the years has corrupted your soul.” Skica sighed. Then, “There’s something you must remember from your father and me. Again, you are our top value. And I am selfish. That’s why I tried to see if you were okay. You had shown no signs of life. And then the fireman shouted at me and I quickly went into flight mode. As much As I would have loved to put you on my shoulders, the air was so thick and I didn’t dare having your father bury both of us.”

“I would’ve put you on my shoulders, alive or dead….” Alene shot back.

“See! That's the kind of selfishness I’m talking about! You say that now but in the literal heat of the moment, what would you have done? Forgive me if I didn’t dare to carry you out of that room. But you are thinking of yourself. But it’s not totally rational.”

“Are you gaslighting me?”

“No, no, no…look, why don’t you go over to the ambulance. I’ll meet you at the hospital.” Alene backed away and entered the vehicle. As it drove away, first responders sat around Alene and measured her vital statistics.

Once they reached the point where she could reserve a bed for her to be observed overnight, she had taken drugs to help her sleep. She still couldn’t. Alene fumed.

Skica happened to find a bed right next to her daughter.

“Nurse?” Alene asked.

“Yes?”

“Could you remove this patient?” She pointed to her mother.

“Not at the moment. We’re at capacity and we’re trying to keep family members together to monitor you both. Do you need more ointment for your hand?”

“No. It’s okay.”

Alene then got up with an IV attached to her arm and closed her curtain with violence.

“I can still hear you. Can we talk?” Skica asked in an even tone.

“Nothing. We have nothing between you and I and I’m drawing up charges. You could’ve shown yourself to be a mom. You claim to be ‘rationally self-interested’ or selfish but you didn’t try to save your own baby girl. That’s the reality of it.”

“I told you if I could’ve, I would’ve. If anything the fireman could’ve taken you out of the room. I think, however, his training kicked in for him. The way that the flames rose up, he wanted to at least get someone who was able-bodied to safety, rather risking the lives of two people. That’s just me saying this. I’m glad your pulse returned, obviously, but in the dark and the intensity of the flames, I just heard the voice of the fireman. I will not apologize for my actions. I’d done everything I could just like being a parent to you your whole life.”

Alene fell silent. A tear streaked her face. “I love you, mom. Do you love me, though?”

“Of course I do. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to ensure your safety. There may have been a moment back there when I thought I lost you, but you prevailed. I’m so overwhelmed with relief that you found yourself out of the house. While you have broken away from the egoist mentality, I still hold that given the opportunity, I would’ve carried you. If I would’ve died trying to get you away from harm, it would not have been a sacrifice. Just the opposite. I’m so consumed in my love for you…it lays heavy on my mind to think of you away from me. It doesn’t matter what names you hurl at me, I knew it was out of frustration and mental and physical strain.”

Alene removed the curtain slowly.

She made a short journey over to her mother. As she cozied up to her mom, Skica kissed her forehead. The tenderness of the mother-daughter relationship allowed for them to explore more time with each other as they healed. In moments of sheer terror and uncertainty. The two of them giggled at Korean sitcoms and restored their confidence in one another.

“I vowed to never let anything or anyone hurt you. I plan to keep that promise.”

****

In the next few days, Monet returned from Europe. The conditions of his wife and daughter improved.

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had lost you two,” Monet remarked slowly.

“It’s nothing, Dad. Don’t despair. We’re right here,” Alene reminded her father.

They sat in their summer home and allowed the glints of sunlight to pass through the crevices. The Rehoboth Beach home permitted them the ability to relax and recover. The three of them watched movies from the classic era of Hollywood. They laughed and cried at the right moments. Underlying all of this was the fire that destroyed their home.

“Now, I’m really wishing I had grabbed my smartphone. I could’ve written reviews of the films we’ve watched, so far,” Alene announced.

“It’s okay. You’ll get a new one later on today,” Monet encouraged.

“Too bad it won’t be with my info,” she lamented.

“Oh, how quickly we forget about the wonders of the Cloud,” Skica reminded.

“I’m looking at a new house in Dover. We should be able to move in once the ink dries.”

“What ink, Dad? Everything’s digital as Mom just recalled for us,” Alene replied. She moved the cursor to another movie on the streaming platform.

“Oh, let’s watch this one. It’s noir and really plays on the audience’s ability to track down the suspect.”

“Can you allow your old dad a metaphor? Anyway, It’s going to be one of the most advanced structures to prevent fires and allow us to live in absolute safety,” Monet mentioned.

Skica smirked. “It’s something to behold: we are living under the same roof again…we are living.”