The S.P.E.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A faulty gas line on the restaurant stove caused the fire to become so strong so quickly, or so said the fire investigator. We had a history of problems with insurance claims, and fire, so the both the fire department and the insurance company did separate and intensive investigations. The gas line was weak and an automatic "safety" light turning on set both the spark and the fuel to nearly destroy our business and our home.

I had been asleep for several hours by the time I knew anything had happened. Apparently, my parents had called out to me to get up and leave the house. I was only partially awake and aware, so I sarcastically replied, "Okay, Dad, sure thing. On my way," before rolling over and going back to sleep. Smoke alarms were a long-faded memory in our house because we never replaced the batteries and Mr. Fischoeder, our landlord, never enforced their upkeep. So, my parents and siblings left the house in a rush, making sure to grab the important papers and Gene's not-so-secret cat, Steven, fully expecting their almost-eleven-year-old to get herself downstairs and to safety. But I was still asleep in my room, door locked to keep out my nosy mother, and unaware of the danger.

Tina told me that Mom began to panic once everyone was downstairs in the street and she did a head count. I wasn't there. They checked the alley while Gene called out to me over and over from the open front door. The fire truck blaring up alongside the house did nothing to stir me. I don't know if it was just my tendency to sleep like the dead, or if the carbon dioxide knocked me out, or what it was, but I didn't know anything until I was laying on a gurney in an ambulance, coughing up a lung with an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose. I sat up and saw someone else wrapped in a blanket sitting on the floor, feet hanging outside the back. I looked up to my house to see a soggy mess of twisted charred wood and smoke billowing into the night air. When I tried to ask what was going on, I found my throat was raw. The person on the back on the truck hopped off to move aside for the paramedics. My mom appeared and told me to not be scared, that they would follow in the car, and that she loved me. Dad said to be brave, and not to bite the doctors. The doors swung closed and my vision blurred. The world went dark again.

I opened my eyes again to a hospital room, while wearing a hospital gown, laying in a hospital bed. I had a cannula in my nose, an I.V. in my hand, and four family members snoozing in chairs around me. I tried to swallow to gauge my throat. It was sore, but not as bad as before. My dad sat in a chair, chin to chest, snoring softly. I noticed something in his hands- my old bunny ears, slightly singed on one ear and grey-tinged from smoke.

After a moment, Tina awoke and smiled at me sleepily. She rubbed her eyes, pushed

herself out of her chair and came over to sit on my bed with me. I scooted over a bit to give her room, and she climbed into the bed, putting her arm around my head and shoulders so that I could lean my head on her.

"What," she started, "did you think you were doing, you idiot?"

"Sleeping," I croaked, throat scratchy and dry. She smoothed my hair and I could hear her heave a huge sigh.

"Well next time, please don't go back to sleep. Who knows if Logan will be around to save you again?" With shock, I pulled away to look her in the face. She was serious.

"Logan?" My voice was getting stronger, a little. "Logan who?"

"Logan Barry Bush, your nemesis."

"Logan..." My brain was in overdrive to try to make sense of what Tina was saying.

"He saved you! He heard Gene and Mom and Dad and me calling for you from the sidewalk. He was walking down the street, coming from the wharf. Dad was about to push pass the firefighters and run back in for you when Logan jumped over the barricade and barreled up the stairs. Next thing we knew, we heard this huge boom and saw the kitchen collapse into the restaurant. Mom and Dad were screaming and crying; the firefighters were shouting for us to get back. Then we heard some banging sounds and about a minute or two later, Logan comes out the door with you in his arms and your ears in his hand. His shirt was burning, but I think they got it put out before he was hurt. He gave you to dad and fell onto the street, coughing."

I listened to my sister tell a story that, if I weren't in a hospital bed, I would think was one of her fictions. Then the figure I saw sitting by me in the ambulance wrapped in the blanket popped into my head. That hair would have been blond if it wasn't full of soot and ash. Tina was telling the truth. Logan Bush saved my life.

My silence went on for so long that Tina stood up just to check to see if I was still awake.

I was just too speechless to come up with any sort of reply. "Louise..." she asked. "Do you need me to call the nurse? I have the button right here." I slowly shook my head. I met her eyes with my own. She had unshed tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks and worry etched in every line of her face. I gave a small smile before curling back into my bed and hiding my face in my pillow.

~

The next few days were a blur of doctors and treatment for my lungs and my parents coming and going. They say it was a miracle I had no burns, only smoke inhalation. Tina never left my side, at all. Gene only left a time or two- "to give us girl time," he claimed but I'm pretty sure it was music related. He had started a band the year before and his, now full-sized, keyboard was lost in the inferno that was our house. He was likely meeting with his band mates to discuss what to do about it. Mom and Dad didn't want to leave either, but they had to meet with insurance people and the landlord and who knows who else? They whole apartment was gone, Mom said. Tina told me it was more than that- the restaurant was half-burned too.

I didn't see Logan during all this. I wanted to see him, to thank him at least, but he never came around. Gene said he talked to Mom and Dad, shook hands, and didn't come back. Mom and Dad kept saying his name reverently, as if he walked on water or something. I mean... I wanted to thank him and everything, but I wasn't going to forget that he was a douchebag. If you asked my parents, Logan Barry Bush was an angel sent from heaven. All past sins forgiven.

It was bullshit. The whole of my world was so messed up now and I couldn't do anything about it. I hated feeling helpless, almost more than I hated the idea of Logan in my bedroom, Logan holding me in his arms, Logan touching my bunny ears. Because he had to have seen them on my bedpost. I never wore them anymore; I kept them in my room, on my bedpost, as a living memory of my past. Logan likely hadn't seen me in so long he didn't know I stopped wearing them every day, so he grabbed them when he rescued me. It was sweet, if I let myself admit it. I was also grateful, not that I would tell anyone that. Everything else was gone. All gone. The furniture, the pictures, my stuff, my sister's journals and books, Gene's music... it was all gone, but for my ears. It was almost stupid, the relief I felt for that gesture. Not only did he walk into fire for me, saved my life... but he saved my ears.

I never told anyone this but, one night there in the hospital while Tina was asleep in those

awful ugly chairs and Mom and Dad were out with Teddy looking for a place for us to stay and Gene was with his band, I cried. I cried for what we lost, I cried out of fear of what could have happened to me, and I cried with relief that things worked out like this. I cried because I was thankful for Logan being in the right place at the right time. As hard as it is for me to admit it still, I needed him in that moment.

I found out later that Mom and Dad wrote Logan glowing college recommendations. I mean, these letters were college admissions golden tickets. He would be able to beat out God for a spot at any school with those kinds of praise. I read a copy of one of them that Tina found. Mom made like, a dozen copies for Logan to send with all his applications and there were some he didn't need. I folded the letter and shoved it in between the pages of a comic book my dad brought me.

A little past a year after the fire, while we were living in this shitty tin box trailer just a couple spaces away from Zeke when our building was going through renovation and rebuilding, the bottom fell out of the world again. And it was all Logan's fault.