Left Drowning(46)

It’s as if I am back there in the hall, with the crackling sounds, and the atrocious smell, and the belief that death is closing in.

“I couldn’t think logically, but I could feel terror. I could … smell it. I couldn’t have gone into the living room if I’d wanted to because … because the smoke was too thick that way. It was happening too fast, and I couldn’t make it slow down so that I could think. No smoke alarms were going off, so I couldn’t understand how there could be a fire. It seems stupid, but I wondered if it was something else. Like a bomb. I couldn’t make sense of it. Honestly, I don’t remember deciding what to do. I just moved. I didn’t even scream. I don’t think … I don’t think that I made any sound at all.” I’m choking now as the words tumble out. “I had my hand over my mouth. So dumb. That wasn’t going to help. But I left my room because I had to get to James. That was the only clear thought I had. It wasn’t even really a thought. It was a … a drive. I kicked my foot out and got his door open. He was still in bed, nearly unconscious. I couldn’t get him to move. I may have … I think that I yelled at him, but I’m not sure. James wouldn’t get up. He just wouldn’t get up. He was so heavy, and I wasn’t strong enough. But I tried. God, I tried with everything I had in me, and then somehow I had him half off the bed, and then I saw the fire.”

I can feel my pulse starting to pound and my anxiety escalate as the trauma sears through me again in a fresh, torturous way. Part of me understands that I am in a shower, in a full-blown panic. That I’m having some sort of quickly escalating anxiety episode. But I cannot stop it, and I don’t want to. I want to be telling this nightmare and getting it out of me. I barely recognize my own voice as I sputter and cough out the garbled words.

“The color is bouncing off the wall in the hall … and I know, I know … I know it is coming for us.”

Chris rips open the shower curtain and catches me with one arm as I drop. There is so much steam in the shower now that I can barely see as he turns the shower handle. “Too hot, baby,” he says with more control and calm than the situation warrants.

It takes me a minute to understand that we are now sitting on the floor of the shower. He is behind me. I know the feel of his chest against my back, and part of me is comforted, even while most of me is spinning out of control. He reaches up and lowers the water temperature more. I look down and see that my stomach, my thighs, my arms are scarlet. I have nearly scalded my whole body with hot water.

“Fuck, Blythe,” Chris murmurs. I hear fear in his voice, but he doesn’t let me go. He pulls my head back from the stream of water and pushes the hair from my eyes. I am sobbing now, and he lets me cry.

“I’m here, and I’ve got you.” Then a few minutes later, when my crying has not lessened, “I think you should stop. You’ve told me enough for now.”

Even though I am drowning in water and fire right now, I let out a loud protest and shake my head back and forth so hard that he agrees to let me finish.

“You have to promise me you’ll breathe.”

“I … can’t.” I can’t breathe, I can’t even see properly. The only thing that I can see is the blood that I know is coming. And the screaming.

“Yes, you can. And you will.” This is not a suggestion. It’s a deal breaker. “Breathe with me.”

I am struggling terrifically for air. Because there is none. All I can taste is smoke.

“Feel me.” He inhales, and his chest presses into me. “Breathe,” he tells me. “Breathe with me.”

I feel the rise and fall of his chest, and I breathe as he does. His arms are around me, but he’s gentle, careful not to add to my suffocation. It is only now that I notice he is still in his clothes, his jeans now waterlogged and nearly black.

I keep breathing.

“There you go. Good girl.”

Slowly, my body cools down. But my mind is still there in the heat and the smoke. I am going to get through this, because even in the state I am in, I can feel how important this is for me.

“I see the fire, and I know I’m not strong enough to move James very far by myself when he’s unconscious. But I have to. I can’t even open the window. It’s jammed. Everything in the house is broken, and suddenly that matters. It’s not fun anymore. Because I can’t get the f*cking window open … Oh God, Chris, I can’t open the window. There’s a lamp on the table next to the bed, and I take it and smash the shit out of the window. And I’m bleeding. My arm is pouring out blood, and for this one second I think that is good because it means I am alive. I am still real.”

“It’s not happening now. Blythe, you’re here with me.”

I see that I have started telling this story in the present tense, but I cannot stop.

“I can feel the cold air hit me and it means freedom, but there’s no time because it’s coming for us. It’s coming for us.” I hear Chris inhale and exhale loudly in my ear, reminding me to breathe. To live through this.

So I do.

“I take the quilt from his bed. It’s one of those patchwork quilts, and I’m seeing all the colors and patterns. And there are pictures. These stupid pictures that make me so angry. How can I be looking at fabric animals, and trees, and flowers when I am bleeding and James can’t f*cking move and we are going to die because I’m not strong enough?”