Breathe

by Cari Hunter

  Chloe stared at her for a long moment, her nostrils flaring and her good leg scuffing the floor. Tears had bled mascara down her cheeks, and little remained of her crimson nail varnish. Jem had grown up with girls like Chloe, all attitude and aggression until someone bothered to scratch the surface.

  “He said he’d come back for us,” Chloe whispered. “But he never. He just left us in here for days and days.” She started to cry. “I want to go home.”

  Rosie knelt beside Jem and put a hand on Chloe’s thigh. Jem could sense the tension radiating off every inch of her, the urge to pepper the girls with questions, to get them to name names and provide descriptions and a full account, but all she did was pass Chloe a tissue.

  “Let Jem take a look at your ankle,” she said. “She’s dead gentle, and as soon as she’s done, I’ll give you a piggyback out of here. What do you reckon? Does that sound like a plan?”

  Chloe’s head bobbed. She’d cried herself out within seconds. “I’m hungry,” she said.

  Jem patted her pockets and pulled a Twix from each. She was happy to take the blame for not keeping Chloe nil by mouth, if it turned out she needed an anaesthetic.

  “Don’t stuff it all in at once,” she said as wrappers went flying. “Rosie won’t be impressed if you puke down her neck.”

  Chloe sniggered through a mouthful and tapped her left leg. “It’s this one.”

  Jem raised the blanket, finding Chloe’s shoe and sock already removed and a black-and-blue ankle swollen to the size of a grapefruit. “Can you wiggle your toes for me? Good girl. Feel me touching you here? How about here?”

  Chloe nodded, her cheeks bulging. “Is it broke?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jem said, delving into her bag for ibuprofen. “Ankles tend to swell a lot even if they’re not broken, but it’ll definitely be sore for a while. How old are you?”

  “Thirteen and a half.”

  “Any allergies to medicines?”

  “Nope.”

  “Excellent. Get these down your neck.” Jem handed her the tablets and turned to Rosie. “All my splints are in the ambulance. Grab some of that wood, and I’ll improvise.”

  “Wilco.” Rosie moved with alacrity, returning with numerous pieces of wood she’d kicked off the crates. Jem selected a matched pair and set them either side of Chloe’s ankle.

  “Hold these for me?” she asked Rosie. She began to wind a bandage around the makeshift splint, her face close to Rosie’s as she worked. “What the hell is going on?” she murmured.

  “I don’t have a fucking clue,” Rosie said. “Let’s get them out and worry about the rest of it once they’re safe. Will your radio work down here?”

  “No.”

  “Mine neither.” Rosie took an uneven breath. “But backup should be on the way. We can put them on a priority as soon as we get a signal.”

  “All right.” Jem felt calmer for having a plan. She added a final piece of tape to the bandage. “How’s that?” she asked Chloe. “Can you still wiggle your toes?”

  “Yep,” Chloe said, demonstrating.

  “Fab. Are either of you hurt anywhere else?” Although Jem kept her question nonspecific, she shared a relieved glance with Rosie when the girls shook their heads. “We’re all set then,” she said, shrugging into the straps on her response bag so she could wear it like a rucksack. “Chloe, loop your arms around Rosie’s neck. Ava, you stand up with me and get your sea legs.”

  They did as she instructed, Ava swaying as a head rush hit her but staying on her feet. Rosie lifted Chloe with ease, settling her in place, and then led the way to the ladder at a pace that suited Jem and Ava. Her foot was on the bottom step, her hands poised to pull herself up, when she froze and peered toward the hatch. Even in the torchlight, Jem saw the colour drain from her face.

  “Shit,” Rosie hissed. “Can you smell smoke?”

  “No,” Jem said, still supporting Ava and a few feet shy of the ladder. “What? From upstairs?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Shit.” Rosie turned in a full circle, searching for another way out, her light exploring every inch of the barred window.

  “Has someone set the house on fire?” Ava whispered. Her fingers dug into Jem’s arm with bruising force.

  “I don’t know,” Jem said, but she could smell the smoke now, an insidious hint drifting down and getting stronger by the second. “We’ll have to go up,” she said to Rosie. “We don’t have a choice. Go on, go!”

  Rosie didn’t argue. Jem followed on her heels, crawling into the cubbyhole and practically dragging Ava off the top rung. The tiny room was full of smoke, the violent crackle of the fire close by and growing in intensity. Still on her hands and knees, Jem could barely see Rosie, but she could hear Chloe crying. She reached out, finding Rosie’s ankle and squeezing it. “Right behind you,” she said.

  It was worse in the hallway, the smoke thick and noxious, with eager flames eating along the carpet and the front door. A small explosion in the kitchen confirmed both exits were blocked.

  “Up,” Jem said between bouts of coughing. “Top floor. There’s a balcony.”

  “All together,” Rosie said. “Stay as low as you can.”

  Jem did her best to keep up, forcing one foot in front of the other, one arm tucked around Ava, and the weight of the bag almost dragging her back to the bottom. Her lungs ached, and she felt dizzy and sick and more scared than she had ever been. She heard Rosie yelling into her comms, but she didn’t have the breath to do likewise.

  There was less smoke on the first floor, and they spent a moment gulping in the cleaner air before Rosie forced them on again like a drill sergeant. Six steps, seven, eight. Jem took to counting them: fifteen between each floor, then a further two as the landing split.

  “Left,” she gasped at the top of the second flight. “There were patio doors.”

  Rosie took her word for it, ushering them all inside the first bedroom. She set Chloe down and used her jacket to plug the gap at the bottom of the door before trying to open the patio. It was locked. Jem threw off the bag and dragged the oxygen cylinder out.

  “For the window,” she said, but when she tried to raise it, she found it too heavy. Rosie plucked it from her hands.

  “Should be using this for you,” she said.

  “Yeah, maybe later,” Jem conceded. Her lungs felt like stone, dull and unresponsive, and it was getting harder to make them work. “Just get us out of here.”

  Rosie nodded and battered the cylinder against the glass. A fine pattern of cracks appeared in the first pane, and she grunted with the effort, hefting the cylinder for another attempt. She had taken in smoke as well; her chest was heaving, and her eyes were red-raw and streaming.

  “Ava, help me move Chloe into the corner,” Jem said. Wisps of smoke were beginning to eddy around the doorframe, and the carpet seemed to undulate as something collapsed on a lower storey. She didn’t want the girls in the middle of the room. She had been in several burned-out buildings where the centre of the floor had been the first thing to fall.

  “Almost there,” Rosie yelled, as Jem sat Chloe by the wall and ripped her radio from her belt. Ignoring the priority button, she hit the open channel and shouted over the din of Rosie smacking the cylinder into the glass again.

  “I need urgent backup to five Mansfield Street, Stamford. House fire with four trapped on the top floor.” She had to stop to get her breathing back under control. “We’re trying to break a window—”

  Ryan’s voice cut across her. “Jem? Are you trapped?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprised by her own composure. “Send whatever you’ve got, mate.”

  “Fucking shit,” he said, and pandemonium erupted on the channel as crews began to call up with their locations and availability.

  She listened for a few seconds, reassured by how close some of the vehicles were, but let the radio drop when she heard Rosie cry out in pain.

  “Rosie?” It was difficult to see clearly; the smoke was distorting the fine
r details, like a cobweb caught on her retina. She inched across to the lighter part of the room, her hands outstretched for obstacles.

  “It’s nothing, stay put,” Rosie said, but she didn’t resume her hammering. Instead, Jem heard the cylinder drop to the floor and a whispered “damn it.”

  She found the cylinder first, stubbing her toe on the metal and staring in horror at the blood coating its length. “What the hell have you done?” she said, yanking Rosie’s shirt to pull her around.

  “Nothing.” Rosie stooped for the cylinder, but her fingers were bloody and she couldn’t grip it. “I cut my arm on the glass. Wrap it with something, Jem. Quickly, come on!”

  “Put some pressure on it and keep it elevated,” Jem said, using her scissors to hack a strip from the closest curtain. Rosie’s “cut” was a deep laceration extending from her wrist to mid-forearm, and it was bleeding heavily. Jem bound the cloth around the gash, pulling it tight and knotting the ends. “Here, I can—” She went to pick up the cylinder, but Rosie took it from her.

  “Fetch the girls. I just need to knock a couple more pieces out,” she told Jem. Then, softer, “Go on. I’m fine.”

  Jem did as she asked, hopping Chloe across the floor to the window in time to feel the first rush of cold air on her face. Rosie was waiting on the balcony, while a dishevelled crowd gawped up at her from the pavement. Three of them had brought buckets of water.

  “I think it’ll hold us all,” she said, but it wasn’t as if they had another option, so Jem boosted the girls through the empty frame. As Ava dropped clear on the other side, Jem sagged onto her knees, coughing and choking and only vaguely aware of someone shaking her shoulders. Then she was standing, Rosie’s arms around her, the smell of blood and smoke and sweat all over her, and Rosie was pushing her and cajoling her and pleading with her to “fucking move, right fucking now!”

  Jem reacted more to the stark panic than the command, landing in a heap on the metal. She could feel Rosie slapping and tearing at her pockets, though she wasn’t sure why. Below them, the road was a sea of blue lights, their intensity dazzling after so long in the dark, and everyone around her seemed to be yelling.

  “Here,” Rosie said, not yelling, just insistent. She pressed the inhaler against Jem’s lips, lifted Jem’s hand, and closed her fingers around the plastic. “Come on, Jem. I don’t know what I’m doing with it.”

  Jem pushed the spray three, four times, doing her best to synchronise her breathing with it but mostly failing.

  “Someone fucking help us!” Rosie screamed over the side of the balcony. Smoke billowed from the ruined window, and something disintegrated with enough force to rattle the foundations. The girls cried out, clinging to the railings and each other. Jem heard the mechanised whir of a ladder platform and a man barking instructions she couldn’t understand.

  “Ava, get Chloe up,” Rosie said, and knelt beside Jem. “Can you stand with me?”

  Jem nodded but then slumped to the side when she tried to get her legs under her. “Sorry,” she whispered. Nothing was working properly, and her vision was failing too; Rosie’s face kept disappearing at the edges. The balcony rocked again, banging her into its bars as a firefighter hurried over to crouch by them.

  “She’s asthmatic,” Rosie said. “I don’t think I can carry her on my own.”

  “I’ve got her, love,” the man said, hauling Jem into a sitting position. “You go on ahead. The lift won’t take all of us at once.”

  Rosie seemed on the verge of refusing, before her common sense kicked in. She touched Jem’s cheek. “I’ll see you in a minute,” she said, and bolted to the ladder.

  An alarm blared as the lift began to descend. Jem listened to its progress, her view blocked by the man in front of her. “Are we…we waiting for…the next ride out?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I got us a FastPass, so we’ll be able to jump the queue.”

  She couldn’t reply for coughing, but she managed to give him a thumbs up that made him smile.

  “Stick your arm around my neck,” he told her, when the alarm began to sound again. He cradled her against his chest and lifted her as if she weighed nothing at all. What little she could see suddenly pitched and rolled, and the sky, bright with fire and blue neon, swapped places with the balcony and the drunks holding their vigil on the road. She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out the nausea and the noise and the relentless ache in her ribs, and let the man carry her down.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Officer, you need—”

  Rosie shook off the paramedic’s hand. “I’m fine. See to the girls.”

  “They’re fine,” he said, clearly exasperated. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Where’s Jem?” She paced away from the ambulance, almost in tears. She’d been rational and efficient since she got off the lift, taking the time to arrange a police escort for Ava and Chloe and providing a very brief overview for her sarge. Her arm wasn’t bleeding that badly, and she no longer felt like coughing her spleen up, but she’d lost Jem in the melee and couldn’t see her anywhere.

  The paramedic took one look at her face and relented. “I think she’s with Bob and Dougie.”

  “Which vehicle?”

  He pointed past the first two fire engines. “That one.”

  “Thanks. I don’t mean to be an arse.”

  He pulled off his gloves and balled them up. “Tell her Spence sends his love.”

  She ran to the ambulance, dodging fire crews and hoses and the occasional belligerent rubbernecker, and banged on its back door.

  “Give us a minute!” a man shouted.

  “Is Jem in there?” She tried to sound imposing, but she could barely speak for crying.

  The door opened, and a grey-haired man, sweating and obviously stressed to fuck, looked out. “I’m guessing you’re Rosie,” he said. “I’m Bob.”

  She dried her eyes on the scrap of curtain binding her wrist. “Is she okay?”

  He shook his head, and she followed him inside, shutting the door behind her and staying in the corner, out of the way. She heard Jem before she saw her: the rapid gasp of every snatched breath, and the drawn-out wheeze that marred each exhalation.

  “Look who I found,” Bob said to Jem, cupping her chin and supporting her head so she could see Rosie. “Will you behave yourself now and keep that mask on?”

  Jem sobbed once, and Rosie sat on the floor beside her stretcher, taking hold of the hand that wasn’t tangled in an IV line and monitoring leads.

  Bob didn’t bother trying to get her into a seat. He grabbed his paperwork and slapped the bulkhead. “Stick your foot down, Dougie. Put them on standby. Her sats are only eighty-six, and she’s knackered.”

  The vehicle moved off, its sirens blaring to clear a path through the chaos. Rosie squeezed Jem’s clammy fingers. “Hey,” she said. “I know you’re tired, but no slacking on the breathing, okay? I’m not doing all the bloody paperwork for this.”

  Jem managed a weak smile and then set off coughing, until she retched and yanked her oxygen mask down.

  “Help me…I can’t…” She slapped at Bob’s arm as he tried to resecure the mask. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Jem, you need the medicine,” he said. The liquid-filled chamber beneath the mask created a thin mist as the oxygen hit it, but none of the mist was going anywhere near her. On the monitor, eighty-six percent dropped to eighty-five and then eighty-three.

  Rosie knelt up properly, wrapping her arm around the head of the stretcher so she wouldn’t go flying. “Here, let me hold it for you.” She placed the mask close to Jem’s face, though not so close it made her claustrophobic. “How’s that? Any easier?”

  “Yes,” Jem whispered.

  “We’ll have you there in no time,” Bob said. “You know what Dougie’s driving is like.” His eyes were fixed on the sats reading, and he’d set a ventilation bag in readiness by his feet. He mopped his brow with a paper towel when the figure climbed to eighty-eight.

  “Th
at’s the best they’ve been,” he said to Rosie. “She’ll go straight into Resus at A&E, and they’ll be ready for her, so don’t worry.”

  “Easier said than done,” Rosie said, watching Jem’s eyes roll as she fought to stay conscious.

  Bob was watching her as well, missing nothing, his foot tapping an uneasy beat on the ventilation bag. “Yeah, isn’t it just?”

  * * *

  “On my count.” Bob’s curt instruction brought a semblance of order to the staff gathered in the Resus bay, most of whom obviously recognised Jem.

  Rosie found a spot on the periphery, her attempts to feign authority undermined by the blood and soot covering her, and ignored by a team who had far greater concerns. Jem wasn’t ignoring her; her eyes had tracked Rosie’s position since their arrival in the bay, but as the team slid her onto the bed her gaze fell away, as if she was humiliated by her own weakness.

  “Jem Pardon, thirty-two years old,” Bob said, once she’d been settled and a nurse was hooking up the monitors. “Mild indications of smoke inhalation after a house fire, but severe exacerbation of chronic asthma. Initial sats were eighty-one, now ninety after back-to-back nebulisers and hydrocortisone IV. Resps are up at twenty-four, tachy at one-thirty plus. I know she’s been vented at least twice, and she has a specialist care plan here.”

  “We’ve fast-bleeped Respiratory,” a doctor said. “Cheers, Bob.”

  Bob threw his paperwork onto his empty stretcher and put his hands on Rosie’s shoulders. “This is Rosie. She also needs checking over at some point, but she appears spry enough for now.” He ushered her into a chair and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “I’ll be back to see you both in a bit.”

  Rosie nodded, overwhelmed by the cacophony of monitor alarms and the press of too many bodies in too close a space. She was out of her depth here, unfamiliar with the equipment, the terminology, and the staff, and she couldn’t simply show her warrant card and demand answers in an environment where her uniform held little sway. She had rarely been ill as a child—the usual bouts of chicken pox and snotty noses were the only things she remembered—and her good health had followed her into adulthood. She couldn’t imagine herself in Jem’s position, managing an illness that could put her in Resus at the drop of a hat, joking about chocolate at B&Q one minute and fighting for her life the next.