HAD IT NOT BEEN for the image of Bridget’s small, pale face firmly lodged in Katie’s mind, she would have turned and fled instantly from the thick clouds of smoke billowing through the open front door. There were no flames, but the smoke itself engulfed her, tearing at her throat. She was coughing even before she stepped over the threshhold.
But Bridget was inside….
As Katie hesitated for a second in the doorway, her hands over her nose and mouth to protect them, she heard the faint wail of a siren. Too distant, much too far away to be of any help quickly. And how, then, would a fire engine make its way through that long line of autos crawling along the avenue hoping to see something exciting? What if the siren she was hearing wasn’t even headed her way? Could be going somewheres else, to a different fire, maybe, or to a car wreck because of the slippery roads.
She dared not wait. Bridget couldn’t wait.
Katie plunged headlong into the thick wall of dirty gray.
Once inside, she felt as if she had been swallowed up by a giant steel-gray monster. She could see nothing. There was not the tiniest shred of light to help her find her bearings. The smoke was so acrid it sent tears streaming down her cheeks. Her hands left her face to yank her skirt and petticoat up to cover her nose and mouth. This helped only a little. She couldn’t be sure exactly where the staircase was. In all that gray wool, there seemed to be no left, no right, no stairs….
She dropped to her hands and knees, thinking to get her bearings by crawling along the floor and using touch to locate various pieces of Mary’s furniture … the couch along the front wall, the parlor piano, the telephone stand decorated with seashells positioned along the wall just below the stairs … if she could find that stand, she could find the stairs. If it was the piano she found first, she would know she had moved in the wrong direction.
She found the seashell stand. She was already coughing so hard, the crawl from doorway to stairs took ten times longer than it should have. And crawling with one hand holding the skirt and petticoat over her mouth was very difficult. But she had no choice. She had intended to call for Bridget as she went, but the first time she opened her mouth to do so, the only sound that emerged was a harsh croak. Smoke rushed in, gagging her, and she shut her mouth quickly, only to have it forced open again by a wracking cough.
The realization that Flo had been right, that the smoke had already damaged her voice, making it impossible to call for Bridget, was frightening. Finding the child would take so much more precious time now that she couldn’t summon her by voice. Katie almost turned around then and went back outside. But she had heard no sirens arriving at the house, no sound that help was at hand. She couldn’t desert the child. That would be too cruel.
Brian hadn’t deserted the steerage passengers on the Titanic, even when he knew there was no hope of rescue, knew he would not be saved. Still he had stayed.
I’ll stay, too, Katie vowed, until I find Bridget.
She still saw no flames. That was a blessing. Perhaps there was no real fire, perhaps something in the house … the old coal stove in the basement, maybe, was spitting out the smoke. Katie had no idea if that was even possible, but the thought was comforting so she clung to it as she slowly, painfully, made her way up the stairs, crawling on her stomach, tears pouring from her red and swollen eyes.
Why, Katie thought in a flash of anger as, exhausted, she reached the top step, had Mary gone outside without her small daughter?
If anything terrible happened to their only child, Tom would never forgive his wife.
A small orange flame, like a curious kitten peeking around a corner to see who was there, darted straight at Katie from the corridor. It shocked her. It wrecked her notion that the house held only smoke. She heard, then, a new sound. Like feet tramping on small, dry twigs, snapping them in two, or on dry autumn leaves. She and Paddy made sounds like that when they walked in Central Park in the fall.
But no one needed to tell her these were not the sounds of feet in the park. This snapping and crackling was the sound of furniture and framed photographs and the pages of books and the soles of shoes and the glass of mirrors being consumed by flames. She pictured the very walls themselves being devoured by the fire, leaving nothing behind of Agnes Murphy’s house but smoke and ashes.
Katie didn’t care about the house or anything in it. All she cared about was finding Bridget, toting her safely from the house to give her back to her mother.
Her eyes burned so furiously, she had to keep them closed. It made no difference, since she could see nothing. She was surrounded by a thick, gray wool cape. And it wasn’t her eyes that worried her, it was the constant coughing. How long before the thick, cloying smoke pulled every last breath out of her and stopped her heart forever?
Only once in her life had Katie Hanrahan been as frightened. In the belly of the great Titanic, wandering panic-stricken along its silent, narrow corridors, desperate to find a way up, to light and air and safety, she had been terrified that she and the two children left in her care would die down there. Paddy had saved her then. But Paddy was far away now, in the city, probably somewhere with Belle, not knowing Katie needed him again.
I was mean to him, she thought dazedly as, gasping and choking, she pulled herself up into the hall. A second shoot of flame reared its nasty head, darting around the corner to tease, I dare you, I dare you to keep coming! Katie ignored it, and began sliding along the corridor floor on her stomach. I should have told Paddy why I was being so sour with him, it wasn’t fair of me to turn him a cold shoulder without sayin’ why. ’Twas cowardly, if nothin’ else. If I could just see him again, for a minute….
The agonizing climb up the staircase had left her drained, her chest aflame like the building itself, and there was an ominous roaring sound in her ears. Comin’ from my brain, she told herself. It’s mad it’s not gettin’ enough oxygen and it’s roarin’ in anger.
Dizzy, so dizzy … sleep would be just the thing. If she just took a tiny little nap, just the smallest forty winks, maybe when she woke up the nasty old fire would be gone, the smoke cleared. Then she would find Bridget and they would go outside together into the clean, fresh air.
That seemed to Katie’s oxygen-deprived brain a fine idea. She might have followed it had she not, as she stretched an arm out over her head in preparation to lay her head on it, encountered with her fingers a small, human hand. The hand was limp, lifeless, but…
Gasping in shock, she clutched at the hand. She tried to call out Bridget’s name. Impossible. Her vocal cords, seared by heat and smoke, no longer functioned. Flo would be so angry.
Katie’s head cleared suddenly. She had found Bridget. She had done half of what she came to do. Now she had to get the other half done. She had to get both of them out of this deathtrap of a house and into fresh air and safety if they were to live.
She had no idea how she was going to do that.