Ultraviolet ✔️

17.2

Chapter Seventeen, Part Two

I'm so tired that through the haze leftover from my dream, I mistake the fire alarm to be a regular wake-up call from a blaring clock. When I roll over, covering my mouth with two hands to cough, I see that it's four-thirty in the morning. The sound isn't coming because it's eight am and I have to get to the station. It's coming because there's a fire in my apartment.

I throw myself out of bed, still tangled in the sheets. The house is hot. It's so freaking hot and stuffy and the smoke is wrapping itself around my neck like an invisible noose.

There's a black stream inching out of Betsy's room. I can smell this terrible mixture of everything we own being set ablaze. There are tears in my eyes and I'm on my knees, crawling closer to the door.

Something cracks behind me, a loud snap as something in the other part of the apartment collapses. I reach up and manage to unlock the door. Despite the pain in my hand from turning the knob, I succeed.

Why did that hurt?

Even in my state, I can't help but think about the deadbolt. If the door was still locked when I reached it, Betsy is potentially lost in the apartment, passed out or worse.

This isn't how she dies, I remind myself as I stumble down the hall, weary from smoke inhalation. She has to be okay.

I'm only on the second floor, but it takes all the energy I have to get down the stairs. There's so much smoke, so much smoke and fire everywhere. When I look down at my palm, I see that it's red and blistered from a knob I never realized was hot.

I'm so close to the bottom of the stairs, to safety, but I can't breathe anymore. There's so much pain as all of it catches up to me. The next thing I know, I've collapsed in the middle of the staircase, my eyes falling shut as sirens grow closer, then louder.

Stay awake, I order myself. Get your sorry ass off the ground and stay awake.

I can't. It's like the fire has reached my entire body because I feel like I'm burning. Everything hurts.

Someone kicks the door downstairs open. There are heavy boots of a fireman thudding against the ground as hands lift me up and throw me over a shoulder.

When my eyes are opening again, I'm on a gurney outside the building, a mask over my face. It's all too familiar being in an ambulance on the edge of death. But I don't immediately register how close I was to dying, not until I replay the voicemail in my mind.

Don't give us a reason to dispose of you.

I'm an idiot. I'm actually like the imbecile protagonists of horror movies. I should've gone right and instead, I went left. If I hadn't spoken to Chief, it wouldn't have happened. Because of me, people were hurt in the crossfire. There are so many ambulances, residents coughing and receiving medical attention.

"Stay calm." one of the paramedics tells me.

It's hard to even breathe properly, let alone slow a pounding heart. I don't understand how I'm supposed to just be calm and okay.

I want to wake up, I want to wake up and have everything be okay. The voicemail, the fire— I want all of it to disappear. I want to forget any of this ever happened. I want to head to the station and give that stupid statement like I'm supposed to. I want to go back to my life when I didn't have to worry that the people I love and I are all being hunted because of a curse I've never been able to get rid of.

I can't risk them finding me. There's a very good chance they could be waiting at the hospital to finish the job. If I go to the hospital, sedation could be the last thing that ever happens to me.