YANKING HER SKIRT UP over her face again, Katie crawled over to the small figure. She knew to feel the tiny wrist for a pulse. It was faint … very faint … but it was there. Bridget was still alive. But she needed to be taken from the smoke-filled house.
How? Katie would have shouted aloud if she’d had a voice. How? She was so weak herself, she could barely crawl on her own, let alone carry even as small a child as this one.
Why had no one come to help them?
Anger pulled her up onto her hands and knees. I did not survive the worst sea tragedy in history, she told herself grimly, when so many others did not, only to perish in a fire in a Brooklyn roominghouse!
The voice that Katie heard next was not her own. It was her ma’s. “Well, if you’re goin’ to do what you came in here to do,” her ma’s voice said, “you’d best be about it.”
Katie lifted her head. “Ma?”
No answer. Sheila Hanrahan had said all she meant to say. Now it was up to Katie to heed or ignore her mother’s advice.
Didn’t seem like she’d have heard it in the first place if she was meant to ignore it.
There were no new flames taunting her, and the smoke seemed to have lessened just a bit. Could be her ma had scared it away. Reaching out tentatively with both hands, Katie clasped her hands around Bridget’s small wrists. She could still feel a pulse, which seemed a great wonder to her. Bridget’s spirit must be very strong, then. That thought renewed her own strength, and holding tightly to the two delicate wrists, Katie began inching her way backward, still on her stomach on the floor. She had no free hand now to keep the green skirt and petticoat over her face. But her head had cleared, as if her mother had somehow filled it with life-giving oxygen.
If she could drag Bridget to the top of the staircase, staying flat to avoid the thickest smoke, they could slide or even tumble down the stairs to safety.
If she could find the stairs.
She couldn’t.
She wasn’t sure exactly how she’d got turned around. Perhaps when she’d crawled to Bridget. Though she crawled the length of the corridor, pulling the little girl along with her, she never came upon any stairs. Perhaps they’d collapsed. Or perhaps they were there and she couldn’t see them in all the smoke.
This, Katie thought despairingly, must have been what it was like for Brian when he was thrown into the Atlantic Ocean. It would have been as dark and murky down there as it is in this hall. Like me, he wouldn’t have been able to see, or get his bearings, or think what to do. The difference was, Brian would have frozen to death almost immediately in that below-freezing water, and so he hadn’t been able to save himself. It was not cold in the hall of Agnes Murphy’s roominghouse. Katie felt she had no excuse for not saving herself and Bridget. Brian would expect her to, considering how much more fortunate she was than he.
Without a staircase, they would have to leave the house some other way.
Katie slid her body around on the hot floor to kick out behind her, seeking a door, any door, that would allow them to escape the smoke-filled hall. If she could find a room that wasn’t being consumed by fire, there would be a window in it. She could open the window and let in blessed fresh air.
The thought spurred her on, and she slid and kicked out at the wall behind her, slid and kicked, never letting go of Bridget’s wrists for a second. She didn’t realize she’d come to a door until it burst open after several sharp smacks with Katie’s booted foot. Still pulling the unconscious child, she used her knees and feet to propel them both backward. Her left arm was beginning to pain her fiercely, and she realized that it had been burned. She wasn’t sure how, hadn’t been aware of a flame touching her. But one must have, because she knew a burn when she felt it, and when she turned her head to look, she saw that the sleeve of her green dress was blackened just above the elbow.
Flo wouldn’t like that, either.
The room was not as thick with smoke as the hall had been. And when Katie lifted her head and with tremendous effort opened her swollen eyes, she saw no sign of flames. She stood up and lifted the little girl, then hurried to the window. But once there, she had to lay Bridget down on the floor. She needed both hands to open the window.
Out of a deep need to let the child know she hadn’t been abandoned, Katie planted one heeled boot firmly on the skirt of Bridget’s smoke-grimed, flowered dress. Maybe the little girl wouldn’t know someone was there … but maybe she would. Then, too, it was Katie’s way of keeping track of the child, should the smoke thicken again.
Suddenly there were flames, small ones, dancing in and out of a tall bookcase standing against the wall opposite her, near the door. Like children playing hide-and-go-seek, Katie thought, even as the sense of urgency within her mushroomed. How long would it be before the infant flames, fed by the pages of the shelved books, grew up?
If she could get some air into her lungs, the constant coughing would stop, the sharp knives carving into her chest might go away, and then perhaps she could think straight.
Keeping her right heel firmly planted on Bridget’s dress, Katie examined the window. The glass was smoke-grimed, but when she looked down, she could see the scene below. There in the street were two fire engines, parked helter-skelter. The crowd of neighbors and spectators had thickened to a deep, wide, puddle of people. Katie saw her uncle Malachy, still in his iron-gray work clothes. He was standing with his arm around Lottie. She must have telephoned him, summoning him home. Had Tom come, too? Katie didn’t see him. Her aunt was openly crying and twisting in agitation the flowered apron tied around her waist. Behind her stood Flo, an anxious look on her face.
Someone saw her then, an elderly woman Katie didn’t recognize. The woman opened her mouth in a shout, and pointed. The firemen looked up, along with everyone else.
Spots were appearing in front of her eyes, blue, yellow, purple, dancing like the flames near the door. And the room had begun slowly spinning around her, like the wonderful carousel at Coney Island. But this kind of spinning was not so wonderful. Katie guessed that the spots meant she was close to passing out. She had never fainted in her life, not even when she broke her elbow. She dare not do it now. They would both perish for certain.
She reached out and undid the latch. It took every ounce of strength she had to raise the window. But it was worth the effort, as cold air smelling of smoke rushed into the room. Katie gulped it in gratefully, and at the same time, reached down to scoop up the unconscious child and lay her head on the windowsill, as close to the air as possible.
It took her only a second to realize the price she would pay for the fresh air. The incoming oxygen had fueled the baby flames, transforming them from playful little creatures to full-blown, adult flames, grasping like tentacles for everything in their path.
They had already, in just seconds, swallowed up the door.
There was no way out of the room.