Shroud

Don't worry, it gets worse.

I dropped out of medical school, for starters.
I didn't want to. I cried for a few days about it, trying to figure out an excuse that could get me to stay. But most of my classes couldn't be done online, and they required a doctors note for most of the ideas I came up with.
So, I dropped out. A true start to the end.
I continued hiding. Andrew stayed around, he helped support me when I left work. He ended up half moving in with me, though he had signed a lease with his roomate and couldn't permanently leave for a few months.
I thought things might get better. Really, it seemed like it. Though more cracks showed up in my arm and hands, everything else seemed kind of okay. I found a job that I could do from home, went on walks late in the evening or early in the morning wearing a mask to get some sort of outside time. It was still lonely, but it was also a bit freeing.

My mom had even contacted me. She didn't apologise, not yet. She just wanted to talk. See how I was doing, what was going on. I would never admit I dropped out, so I didn't tell her I ever got accepted. I just said that I had graduated University and was taking some time off.
It was the happiest I had ever been to talk to my mother.

..

Then the fire happened.
It was in my boyfriends apartment. The gas line to their stove broke, a spark flew from something.. and the kitchen lit up. They were on the second highest floor, and I could see the smoke from my building.
I rushed over as quickly as possible, terrified of what I would find. The fire had spread to other apartments, and at that point they hadn't made it to his, so I went in.
There was a back door to the building almost no one knew about. Whenever I visited I went through it, so I rushed in and ran up the stairs. My adrenaline from the fear seemed to keep me from being winded, but the thick wall of smoke that filled the stairs and hallways made it almost impossible to see or breath without equipment.
I just ran. I ran and ran until I came to his door, and I.. fell through it. That was the first time I accidentally went through an object. My panic made me barely notice, and instead I just sped through the house, yelling his name in between bouts of coughing. His roomate was out that day, it should have only been him in the place.

I found him trapped in his room. He had been asleep when the fire started, and his door was half blocked by a flaming part of the ceiling and furniture from the apartment above.
We did our best to shove the burning couch out of the way, receiving minimal injury. Escape was within reach, he was going to be okay! We were going to be okay!

All at once, everything went wrong. Time slowed. There was a cracking sound of wood, and a beam from the ceiling fell,splintering in the middle.
It hit him. There was blood everywhere. Just on the head,but it gave him a bad hit.
He wasn't pinned down, so I dragged him out. Firefighters ran by in that moment, and one rushed him down the stairs to the ambulance. They tried to get me, too, but I ran before they saw my face. My hands were drenched in blood, sticky and smelling of iron, all accompanied by the horrible smell of smoke as it billowed into the sky.

My legs collapsed underneath me, so I just layed down on the grass, and watched as slowly, the fire went out.