I blinked. That was stupid. I was not the kind of woman who got weak-kneed before men. But he’d dazzled me, somehow, and I didn’t know how or why. He was attractive, sure, but...
“I feel like I know you from somewhere,” I said.
His face hovered near mine, and I thought he might kiss me. His mouth curved upward. “Strange, isn’t it?” His breath disturbed a tendril of hair that had fallen on my cheek.
I wanted him to kiss me. I was startled by how much I wanted that. I leaned toward him, parted my lips, and closed my eyes...
...when the back door of the bar burst open.
“There you are!” Kara crowed.
My eyes fluttered open, and I lurched back against the brick wall of the bar. Merrel stepped away from me, looking flustered.
Kara was holding a nearly empty glass, and it looked as if she might have been through a couple before that one. Curt, always stone-cold sober, rolled his eyes and tried to pull her back. But Kara stumbled up before Merrel and purred: “Who’s your new friend?”
Merrel stuck his hand out. “Hi, I’m Merrel.”
“Kara.” She slipped her hand in his and grinned brightly. “That’s Curt.”
Curt lifted the hand that was holding a beer bottle in a half-wave. He handed me my jacket with the other, which he’d been babysitting while I’d been flirting with Merrel. I felt suddenly guilty at that. Curt deserved to have a good time to forget his woes, and I’d wound up in an alley trying to play smash face with a stranger while he was watching my coat.
I was ready to suggest getting something to eat when shouts sounded inside the bar, and the music stopped. I whirled toward the door, which slammed open. A flood of people rushed out, shouting in panic. I grasped Kara’s wrist and drew her back against the wall. Smelling acrid smoke, I grimaced.
“What’s happening?” she shouted.
“Fire,” Merrel said, his eyes narrowed.
“We have to get out to the street,” Curt said, pushing to get into the tide of panicked patrons exiting the building.
“Go,” Merrel said, pushing me into Kara. By now, smoke had begun to flow into the alley, and I began to cough. “Get to the street.”
Curt and Kara pulled me into the river of fleeing people. I turned back, hoping to see that Merrel was following.
But he was ducking back into the building, toward the black smoke and lurid light that was flickering within. The fire moved sinuously, as if it was a creature with its own volition, coiling and clawing toward the ceiling.
I shouted after him, but my voice was carried away by panicked screams and approaching sirens. The wave of people pushed my friends and me out onto the bricked street. We clung to each other like shipwreck survivors on driftwood, unwilling to be separated.
The tide abated at the curb, and we were almost pushed in the path of a fire truck. We were crushed against a parked car on the opposite side of the street, where, arms linked, we stared at the smoke and flames rising from the flat roof of the building. Firefighters rushed toward the club, their faces covered in respirators and carrying axes. A hose unwound, snaking toward a fire hydrant. I smelled chemical fire suppressant and rusty city water.
“We have to help,” I gasped. Gaining our bearings, we pushed back toward the fire truck. The people who had been able to flee the club on their own power had done so, but some of the others weren’t in such good shape. Adrenaline sang in my veins as we approached a fireman directing people away from the street.
“We’re doctors,” I shouted, my voice clear and ringing above the tumult.
He glanced at me before pointing to the brick courtyard in front of the building. “Stay clear of the building, but we have victims over there.”
I nodded and ducked below the billowing smoke. Curt and Kara fell to their knees beside a man who was unconscious on the sidewalk. His shirt was blackened with smoke, and Kara immediately checked his breathing.
I turned to see who else needed my help, knowing that they had his case under control. My gaze fell on a woman being carried out of the building by a firefighter. Flames had consumed her jacket and her hair. As the firefighter emerged, they were blasted by the edge of the hose, enough to take down the fire. He stumbled and pushed forward, carrying the limp woman to the curb.
“I’m a doctor,” I shouted again, and he laid her on the brick, out of the flow of traffic. Sirens echoed in the distance, and I knew that more help was coming.
I knelt beside the woman. She was in bad shape. Her vinyl jacket was melted to her skin, and her face and hands were charred. I reached for her neck for a pulse.
“Be careful,” the firefighter yelled. “She’s hot.”
A splash of water rained down in our direction, and I sputtered. Figuring that cooled the woman off enough to touch, I sought a pulse again. Her chest barely rose and fell under the melted plastic of her jacket, and her pulse was thready.
“I need some oxygen,” I told the firefighter, and he handed me a respirator bag. I fitted it over the woman’s nose and squeezed the bag.
The firefighter left my side to return to the building; the firefighters were attacking boarded-up windows with axes.
“Hang on,” I told the woman.
Breath fogged the respirator facemask. The woman emitted a low hiss, like a snake. I winced, thinking she was trying to talk and that her vocal cords were toasted from the fire and smoke.
“Don’t try to talk. Just breathe,” I encouraged her.
But something was happening to her. Her charred skin seemed to reignite, like forgotten incense on an altar. Red embers crawled underneath the blackened bits of her skin, and it curled, like paper in a fireplace, smelling like charcoal.
“I need some more water!” I shouted.
I stared at the woman, rhythmically squeezing the oxygen bag as she writhed and those wormlike embers chewed through her. A hose splashed water over us once more, and I gasped at the shocking cold, but didn’t miss a beat with the oxygen bag.
What the hell was this? Radiation? Chemical burn? I watched helplessly as red-hot embers devoured her skin. Water sizzled on the sparks, but it didn’t douse them. I tore off my jacket and slapped at the fire smoldering over her.
The woman writhed in pain, her mouth open in a scream that wasn’t a scream, but a hiss. I couldn’t stop what was eating her alive, I couldn’t...
She stopped moving, sank into the pavement. I reached for her pulse and found none, wincing at the scalding heat of her skin. I flung my jacket over her chest. I tried chest compressions with one hand over the jacket and kept pumping the bag with the other.
But it was no good. I couldn’t get her breathing again, no matter how hard I pounded on her or how much clean air I forced into her lungs.
The worms of embers faded and turned ashy grey. They’d chewed into her ribs, and I could see blackened tissue beyond them. One eye socket was hollow and black.
She was dead, unmistakably.
I’d failed.
I sat back on my heels and rubbed wet ash from my hands in a mercifully cold puddle. I was frustrated and angry. She shouldn’t have still been burning. Fire didn’t burn like that. She must have gotten into some chemicals or something in the kitchen, or...
Kara’s hand landed on my shoulder. “You did what you could. We need you over here.”
I followed her to force oxygen into the lungs of a woman who was living. Every few artificial breaths, I looked back at the woman I hadn’t been able to save. The firefighters had put a tarp over her. EMTs were arriving now, swarming over the scene.