“Natalie!” I yelled as I rushed into the house with another firefighter, Pete, right behind me, echoing her name.
“Natalie, call out to me if you can hear me!” I yelled again, even though I wasn’t near the rear of the house. The front was covered with smoke and it was hard to see, but there was a possibility she’d gotten scared and tried to run from the fire.
We slowed as the smoke thickened and flames licked at the walls and doorways of the hall we were going down, but we never stopped calling out her name. With only a second to assess the flames coming into the hall from the room where I bet the fire had started, Pete and I barreled through and came to a closed door.
“Natalie! If you can hear me, back away from the door!” Pete roared only seconds before he forced the door open.
The back wall of the room was covered in flames, the rest of the room was filled with smoke, and there was no child on the unmade bed.
“Natalie?” I called out, and crouched low to the ground.
I’d only gone a few paces before my flashlight went across a pair of eyes looking back at me from under the bed.
“Natalie, I’m a firefighter, I’m here to help you!” I shouted as I crawled toward the bed. “Can you crawl out to me?”
Seconds passed before she started coming toward me, and by the time she was out from under the bed, I had made it over to her. I sat up, grabbed her up into my arms, and took off out of the room at the same time I put an oxygen mask over her face. Pete reached for my shoulder just as I slid to a stop in the hallway—I’d forgotten about the fire that separated us from the other side. There was still a sliver of space left that the fire wasn’t touching, but I was now holding a little girl wearing only a nightgown and holding a small blanket.
I moved the mask away for a few seconds as she coughed, then gave it back when she was done. She tried to move away from the mask and cried out for her mom. “I’ve got you,” I promised near the top of her head. “We’re going to get you out of here, and then we’re going to get you to your mom, I promise.” Glancing at Pete as he spoke into his radio, I said, “Get the comforter off her bed.”
Natalie turned her blackened, tear-streaked face on me, and though her bottom lip continued to tremble violently, it was obvi ous she was trying to put on a brave face. I held up the mask and she moved toward it, so I offered her a reassuring smile.
“You’re brave, Natalie, huh?”
She nodded, but didn’t try to speak.
“Can you trust us for a few minutes?”
Again, she nodded without any hesitation.
I set her down when Pete came back, and spoke as quickly as I could while trying to keep my tone calm for the girl’s sake. “We’re going to wrap this around you, and I want you to squeeze your eyes real tight when we do. When I pick you back up, I want you to pretend that you’re flying, okay?”
Behind the mask, I got a hint of a smile, and I was going to take that as approval, because we didn’t have any more time to waste. Wrapping the comforter so there wasn’t a part of her showing, I yelled for Natalie to close her eyes and get ready to fly, then followed Pete through the fire. We didn’t stop running, but Pete slowed to go behind us, and I knew he was making sure that the comforter had made it through without catching.
We passed the guys with the hose just as they were coming into the house, and as soon as we were a good distance outside, I set Natalie down and ripped the comforter off her. I brushed the hair off her blackened face, and smiled when I realized she was still squeezing her eyes shut.
I grabbed the oxygen mask again and said, “You can open your eyes, brave girl.”
She cracked them open before letting them widen, and greedily took the mask from me with the hand that wasn’t holding her blanket. “I flew,” she said matter-of-factly before she put it to her face.
Pete came up behind me and held a hand up for her. “That was some great flying, little girl!”
Natalie slapped at his hand with her blanket-covered one.
“Natalie!” the babysitter screamed as she ran toward us. “Oh my God, Natalie!”
On some unknown instinct, I grabbed Natalie into my arms before the babysitter could get to her, and stood.
She looked at me with a frenzied expression. “Please, let me hold her.”
“Have you spoken to anyone about how the fire started?”
“Y-yes, I just finished. Please let me hold her.”
“She needs to be looked over by EMS,” I responded, just so Natalie wouldn’t have to go back to her, and began walking over to one of the trucks.
“Parents are on their way here,” Sergeant murmured as we passed him, then followed us. He quickly became enamored with the brave three-year-old, and stood there talking with her as she told him about how she flew in the dark while the EMTs looked her over.
“Is she going to be okay?” the babysitter asked, and tried to get into the truck, but I shot an arm out in front of her. “W-we didn’t mean to! I had no idea what would happen. I thought the candles were far enough from the curtains.”