“I’m coming, Leo!” I shrieked into the echoing concrete shaft.
I took the stairs three at a time, my hands grabbing the metal railing, using it to violently pull my body upward. First floor. Second floor.
By the time I hit the landing of the third floor, I hit the smell.
It wasn’t the smell of a forgotten dinner on the stove. It was the acrid, chemical stench of melting plastic, scorching drywall, and burning carpet. The air in the stairwell instantly grew ten degrees hotter, pressing against my skin like a physical weight.
I rounded the corner to the final flight of stairs leading to the fourth floor, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I thought it would crack my sternum.
The metal fire door at the top of the stairs, leading into the fourth-floor hallway, was closed. But thick, oily black smoke was violently jetting out from underneath the door sweep, pouring down the concrete steps like a dark, suffocating waterfall.
I took a deep breath of the semi-clean air on the third floor, held it, and sprinted up the final flight.
I grabbed the heavy metal handle of the fourth-floor door and pulled.
It was hot. The metal burned my palm instantly, raising a blistering welt across my skin, but the adrenaline masking my pain was absolute. I yanked the door open.
A wall of heat and impenetrable black smoke hit me in the face, physically knocking me back a step. I couldn’t see the ceiling. I couldn’t see the opposite wall. The hallway was completely consumed.
I dropped to my hands and knees, knowing from every safety drill I had ever learned that the only breathable air would be on the floor. I crawled forward, the jagged edges of my torn jeans scraping against the cheap hallway carpet.
“Leo!” I tried to scream, but the moment I opened my mouth, the toxic smoke rushed into my throat. I choked, a violent, hacking cough doubling me over onto the floor.
My eyes watered instantly, burning as if someone had thrown acid in my face. I squeezed them shut, relying entirely on memory to navigate. Four doors down on the right. That was my apartment. Unit 4B.
I dragged myself forward, my hands sweeping the wall, feeling for the brass numbers on the doors.
Unit 4A. Keep going.
The heat was becoming unbearable. It felt like I was crawling through the interior of an oven. The carpet beneath my hands was practically melting, the synthetic fibers sticking to my skin.
Unit 4B.
I felt the smooth wood of my own front door. I reached up blindly, my fingers searching for the doorknob.
It was locked from the inside.
“Leo!” I pounded my fists against the bottom of the door. “Leo, can you hear me? Open the door! It’s Mommy!”
Nothing. No answer. Just the terrifying, roaring sound of a fire consuming the interior of my home.
I felt the bottom of the door. The gap between the wood and the threshold was stuffed tight with a thick, rolled-up towel.
My ten-year-old son had done that. He had remembered the fire safety video I made him watch. He had shoved a towel under the front door to block the hallway smoke from getting in.
But it didn’t matter. The fire wasn’t in the hallway. The fire was inside our apartment.
I could hear the deep, violent crackling of flames eating through the drywall on the other side of the wood. The fire had started in our unit.
And Leo had locked the deadbolt. He had done exactly what I always told him to do the second he got home from school—lock the door and don’t open it for anyone.
I didn’t have my keys. They were in the canvas grocery bag I had left in the courtyard.
I was trapped in the burning hallway, and my children were trapped on the balcony, completely cut off from the only exit.
I slammed my shoulder against the solid wood door, screaming until my voice gave out. It didn’t budge. I hit it again, and again, the wood completely unyielding against my desperate, frantic assaults.
Suddenly, a loud, violent crack echoed from outside, cutting through the roar of the fire.
It sounded like a gunshot, but deeper. More structural.