Phoenix Heart (6 page)

By no means a deep sea diver, by this time my lungs had
begun to pump reflexively, trying to force me to open my mouth and suck in the
hot, swirling grey fog. I fought it as long as I could. The sprinklers still
sprayed from the ceiling and the water dripped down my face, making it a little
easier to see as it cleared and cooled the air. I took a cautious breath
through the material of the wet lab coat, and though I coughed sharply at the
burn of it, I found I could breathe, although with difficulty.

“Chuck! Andrew!” I called again, but it came out as a tiny
croak and caused a coughing fit. I crawled forward, knowing that only seconds
had gone by, feeling that I’d been in this burning room for most of my life;
the chore of trying to breathe through the heavy wet material of the coat
making my chest ache. Down the aisle I clambered gingerly over a three-by-five
foot section of the black counter lying jammed at an angle. Or I thought
jammed. Just as I reached the top edge, it slammed downward, my weight having
caused a bottle under it to shatter. I almost screamed with the suddenness of
it, believing for an awful second that the floor beneath me had given way.

I crawled on, becoming more frantic, certain that I’d
pursued a fool’s errand, that I was the worst kind of idiot to crawl
into
a burning room. I scaled shelves wedged between two counters, skirted the
test-tube centrifuge that had fallen with them. I wiped at my eyes, hearing the
sirens now climbing the hill toward the university, blinked rapidly, and looked
up to see the bottom of a cowboy boot jutting out from behind the end of the
lab bench near the back wall. I crawled frantically toward it, willing that
boot to move, scared now not that I wouldn’t find someone, but that I had. The
legs came into view, then a lab coat streaked with red and black, the water
causing the colors to run into each other, and then a white face, shiny with
the water sprinkling down on it, looking even paler against the brilliant
streak of red slashed across the forehead.

“Lance,” I choked out.

He stirred slightly and moaned, and I thanked God so
vehemently that I’m sure she must have blinked twice and turned her head to see
what all the commotion was about.

I crawled up beside him. “Lance,” I said.

He groaned and his eyelids fluttered, but didn’t open.

“Oh shit,” I whispered.

His breathing rasped in and out. He tried to cough and cried
out, a cry like the one I’d heard from the door.

I opened his lab coat and winced. The explosion had blown
something against him, burning his shirt and skin, and slicing him in a half
dozen places. None of the cuts looked serious, but his chest on the right side
was a deep red and looked slightly concave, like whatever had hit him had been
too heavy for the ribs below to withstand the force.

But it wasn’t the broken ribs that were going to kill him. When
I pulled the coat back across him, I saw that it had a new, large blood stain. It
was then that I saw his arm on the other side, twisted up next to him, still
lying on the jagged point of the broken flask that had sliced the forearm and
the arteries leading down to the wrist. Blood pumped from the cut, flowing over
the glass, and pooling with the water on the floor.

I crawled over his legs, gingerly lifted his arm off the
glass, trying frantically to remember the lesson on pressure points and
bleeding from my first aid class taken too long ago. I used the glass to slit
the lab coat and quickly tore a bandage and tied it around the cut, but within
seconds the blood had soaked through. I pressed on the inside of his upper arm
as hard as I could while I tore another strip of cloth and with one hand and my
knee, tied a tourniquet just below his elbow and twisted it tight. I sat back
on my heels, coughing, blinking at the burning tears coming not only from the
smoke, but from the panic I felt that I was probably killing him, that I couldn’t
deal with this kind of thing, who the hell was I to be crawling into a fire
like some idiot girl scout, and where the hell was the fire department anyway.

Lance had barely moved while I’d bandaged him. I stroked his
forehead. “Lance, I’m going to get you out. Just hang on.” He didn’t appear to
hear, or to notice my touch. I pushed around him, lifting back a shelf that
looked to be what had struck him across the forehead, shuffled around until I
could grab the collar of his lab coat on either side of his head. I squatted,
planted my feet, and pulled backward. His body slid across the wet floor, the
bandaged arm leaving a thin trail of red. The sprinklers quickly diluted it. I
shifted, planted my feet and pulled again. I kept shifting and pulling, stopping
to move debris out of the way, coughing painfully, blinking blindly, my hair
flopping against my face, the sprinkler water dripping into my eyes and into my
mouth as I panted. I could feel the panic growing, and I tugged harder,
shifting frantically. I swung him around the end of the counter, down the side
toward the door. He groaned as the material pulled at his armpits, but he
seemed too far gone at that point to care. I bumped up against a pH meter that
had been tossed onto a stack of “Cell” magazines. I shoved them aside and kept
going.

Just as I pried a piece of black counter out of the way a
deafening blam! split the air. I screamed and turned to see the nearly
invisible flames of an alcohol fire spread across the floor from a shattered
bottle stored under the bench. The sprinklers quickly doused the flame, and I
forced myself to forget all the other bottles stored in the lab, reaching
critical temperature, ready to send flaming liquid and shards of glass flying
through the air. I coughed steadily now, not able to hold the wet cloth to my
mouth, but the smoke was not as bad as it had been, and though my eyes burned,
and my mouth tasted of ash, I managed to slide Lance across the charred floor,
and the last few feet of wet linoleum out the door. His wet, dead weight on the
dry linoleum pulled at my arms, making the joints stretch painfully. His jeans
squelched against the floor, and the hard rubber soles of his cowboy boots
squeaked as his feet dragged behind him. I managed a good twenty feet down the
hall before my legs and arms gave out. I fell back against the wall, gasping
and choking, the air like sandpaper in my throat.

I sent another silent prayer aloft just as the stairwell
door slammed open and the sirens at last pulled up outside. Footsteps drummed
down the hall toward me, but my eyes burned so badly that all I could do was
squint at the blurry form coming toward me.

“My god, my god! Are you all right?”

Hands took me by the shoulders and I squinted up to see Andrew
Richards green eyes through a swimming film of tears.

I coughed and nodded and gestured toward Lance. The hands
left me and Dr. Richards’ grey and black form moved toward the still form lying
by my side.

“Lance?” he said, his voice choking.

Lance groaned and Dr. Richards rose and ran back toward the
stairwell while I leaned back against the wall, blinking my eyes and
concentrating on breathing without coughing, wincing each time the klaxon
sounded. The noise and the smoke were giving me a terrific headache. But
gradually, as I breathed slowly, the tightness in my chest began to ease. I
heard Dr. Richards step through the door and shout, “Fourth floor. We need an
ambulance!”

I heard the rumble of an answer and felt the vibration of Dr.
Richards’ steps approaching again. This time when I looked up, I could see him
more clearly. “Chuck,” I croaked.

He shook his head. “No, he’s not here. He told me he wouldn’t
be.”

“Bullseye?”

“At home.”

I breathed out in relief and it started another coughing fit
that bent me forward, groaning between coughs as they tore at my sore throat. Dr.
Richards held onto my shoulders until the fit passed and I leaned back once
more against the wall, concentrating on breathing shallowly.

“Melinda, what are you doing here? What happened?”

I shook my head. “Melanie,” I croaked.

“What?”

“Melanie Brenner. Not Melinda Brennan,” I said carefully and
looked at Dr. Richards, as I blinked rapidly, still trying to clear the
burning.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I shrugged and looked away.

“Melanie, do you know what happened?”

I shook my head. “No,” I croaked. I winced when the klaxon
sounded once more, and looked upward toward the source of the noise. But it
turned out that it was the last blast of sound.

“The firemen must have turned it off.” He looked at me, his
face pale and drawn. “Did you see anything?” he asked.

I shook my head again.

“You must have seen something,” he said.

“I heard something when I came up the stairs,” I said
finding that if I whispered, I could get the words out more easily. “Thought it
was an earthquake.”

“Coming up the stairs?” he asked. “You weren’t in there when
it happened?”

I shook my head.

He looked at me, down the hall at the door where smoke still
poured out, and back to me. “You went in there after him?”

I shrugged, embarrassed, and looked down at my hands in my
lap.

“Damn it.” He stood suddenly and looked down the hall at the
grey smoke. The only sound now was that of water. “Damn it,” he said again,
“I’m the only one who comes in this early.” I looked up at him just as the
stairwell door crashed open, and the firemen and the paramedics raced up the
hall.

They took Lance in the ambulance to the University Medical
Center. I watched them wheel him down the hall to the elevator, reluctant to
let him out of my sight, feeling somewhat proprietary and responsible for the
little guy. They’d wanted to take me to, but I insisted that all I suffered
from was a slight sore throat.

Dr. Richards had stood by silently as they’d taken care of
Lance, and as the firemen in respirators and protective suits began the
painstaking process of putting out the last of the fire and ensuring that
nothing else in the lab would explode. He answered their questions concerning
the stored chemicals, referred them to the office of emergency preparedness on
campus which kept all the material data safety sheets on all the hazardous materials.
He looked grim, his face pale, his eyes watching the door of 413, watching the
firemen tearing apart the charred fragments of his lab.

As soon as the paramedics had wheeled Lance away, and no one
seemed interested in me any longer, I pushed against the wall, struggling to
rise, feeling the effects now of my fight to drag Lance’s dead weight, and the
dizziness from trying to breathe smoke. Dr. Richards’ head turned and he moved
over to take my hand to pull me up.

“I’m sorry this happened,” he said. Over the noise of the
activity in the hall, I don’t think anyone but me heard him.

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

He looked toward the lab. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think
maybe it is.” He shook his head, seemed to realize what he was saying, and
looked back to me with a smile of concern. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

I nodded.

“Do you need a lift home?”

“No. I just live a few blocks up Madison.”

“You shouldn’t walk. If you can wait a few minutes, I’ll
give you a ride.”

“No,” I said. “You have other things to worry about. I’m
fine. The walk will do me good. Besides, I really should duck out of here
before they decide to start questioning me. I have a lot to do yet before my
flight.”

“Flight? Oh, yes, your trip. You haven’t missed your plane,
have you?”

“No, no. The limo picks me up at two. The plane leaves at
four. There’s plenty of time yet.”

“Good.” His eyes went back to the thread of smoke and steam
which still trailed up over the blackened top of the lab doorway to the
ceiling. Something flickered in his eyes and I saw the muscle in his jaw begin
to jump as he clenched his teeth rhythmically. I started to move away, but before
I’d moved more than a step, his eyes came back to me. They seemed to be
measuring me somehow, assessing what lay in my reddened eyes, and soot-streaked
face, under my wet, filthy hair. I waited, heart thumping faster as his eyes
studied me, and after a long moment he seemed to come to a decision. He stepped
toward me.

“Melanie,” he said, but before he could say anything else, a
voice boomed up the hall from the direction of the stairwell.

“Is there an Andrew Richards here?”

His eyes flicked away from mine and I felt the
half-terrified, half-excited buzz that his look had caused fade away.

“Here,” he called.

A large, grey-haired man in a fire captain’s uniform stepped
away from the door toward us.

“That’s your lab?” the man asked pointing one beefy hand
toward the door with the fire hoses snaking out of it.

“Yes.”

“I’d like to talk to you.” His voice held overtones of
authoritarian menace, but it also held a sound of genuine anger. His black eyes
stared unblinkingly at Dr. Richards as he stepped toward him. Only once did
they break away, and that was to look at me. He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m just leaving,” I said, and headed for the stairwell,
stepping over the fire hoses snaking up the hall. As I walked away I heard the
fire captain say something about a phone call, but the rest of it was lost in
the clatter as a couple of the firemen lifted the respirator tanks off their
backs and set them down next to the wall near the stairwell. Just as I reached
for the door handle, I heard Andrew Richards’ voice rise above the din. One,
angry, astonished, “What?”

I turned back. The captain had his back to me. I could see
Dr. Richards’ face, eyes wide, face set in anger and incredulity, but I could
hear no more of the conversation, and I stepped through the door and headed
down to the street.