BRIDGET HUNG FROM THE windowsill, limp as a rag doll. From below came shouting. It was Katie’s name they were shouting. And something else… “Jump! Jump, Katie!”
Jump? From the second story?
Then Mary’s voice, surprisingly strong. “Did you find her, Katie? Did you find my Bridget? Is she all right, then?”
Other voices shouted, “Jump! You’ve got to jump!”
Katie looked down. There were five, no six firemen in black coats and helmets. Their extended arms supported a black cloth or canvas, round as pie. From where Katie stood, it looked no more substantial than a child’s blanket. They weren’t thinking, were they, that she was to jump into that? Or fling poor Bridget down upon it? Did they think the smoke had driven her daft? She turned away from the window, sagging against the windowframe. “Oh, Paddy, damn you,” she whispered, “where are you? Why are you not here, as you were on the ship? Are you not goin’ to save me this time, then?”
She knew he wasn’t. He didn’t even know she was in trouble. Such terrible trouble. And not just her. Bridget, too. Paddy liked Bridget. He would be sore distressed to see the child in such a state.
The flames had swallowed up a full quarter of the room. They consumed flowered wallpaper, a wall sconce, a wooden valet supporting a blue serge man’s jacket, an inexpensive fake leather jewelry box and its contents, a floor lamp with a pink fringed shade, a pile of clean white pillowslips neatly folded on a brown wooden chair. Then they ate the chair. Katie watched in horror.
There was no more time.
“Jump!” came from below. “You must jump!”
She knew the voices were right. She felt again for Bridget’s pulse. Still there … but oh, so faint. If there was any chance at all … Mary must have her child. She would never forgive herself if her baby died.
“Oh, Lord,” Katie whispered, “you ask too much of me, and that’s the truth of it. But I guess I got no choice. I’ll do it then, if I must.” Then she muttered grimly, “But I’m sayin’ right now I won’t like it!”
Turning back to the window, she hoisted Bridget up over the sill. When Mary glimpsed the red curls, she cried out in joy and shouted, “Bless you, Katie, bless you!”
Even with a voice, Katie wouldn’t have had the heart to shout, “Don’t bless me yet, Mary. You haven’t seen the state your child is in.” The only blessing was, as far as she could tell, Bridget wasn’t burned. It was the smoke that had done her in, poisoning her little lungs. Looking at her pinched, gray-blue face and her limp body, it was impossible to believe that Mary’s Bridget would ever walk, run, play, breathe normally again.
“I cannot toss this child out the window,” Katie whispered to the gluttonous flames. “I cannot!”
But she did. Dropping the little girl out into space was the hardest thing Kathleen Hanrahan had ever had to do. Worse even than stepping off the great ship Titanic into a lifeboat. But now, as then, she had no choice.
The child landed softly, gently, just as Katie had hoped. One of the firemen scooped her up, cradling her in his arms, and rushed with her to a waiting ambulance. Mary and Agnes Murphy raced along behind him. Both climbed into the back of the ambulance before it pulled away, siren wailing.
Katie, her breath coming in agonizing, ragged gasps, fell to her knees. She knew she had only been inside the house ten minutes or less. It seemed days.
“Jump, Katie, jump!” her uncle Malachy shouted from below. “Hurry! Jump now!”
If only there were a lifeboat hanging on davits right outside the window, like the one she’d stepped into from the Titanic. She would step into it then and someone above her would slowly, safely, lower it down to the ground. She wouldn’t even mind if it lurched like a drunken donkey, as the lifeboat had. As long as it got her out of this inferno and safely to the ground.
But there was no lifeboat here. The only way to the ground was a dive, a leap out into empty space. What if she missed the canvas? She would escape death by fire only to die of a broken neck or smashed skull.
If I’m ever goin’ to see Paddy again, Katie thought as another wave of coughing overtook her, if I’m ever goin’ to see Ireland again and me sisters and brother, me ma and da, I’m goin’ to have to take a leap out this window and I’m goin’ to have to be quick about it. She did so want to see Ireland again. Even if it meant boarding a ship.
Closing her red and swollen eyes, she pulled herself to her feet and climbed over the wooden sill until she was perched on it. Heat from the flames gobbling their way toward her seared the back of her neck. Terror made her oxygen-deprived heart skip, slow, skip again, as if it were trying to decide whether or not to go on with the struggle. Afraid it would give up before she could jump, Katie stared down at the black canvas circle just long enough to take aim. Then she leaned forward, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she whispered, “I give you my heart and my soul.”
Then she jumped.