He Saved Her Son and Let Mine Burn novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ladder Went to Him
A tower fire, two children, and the fire captain who chooses the other boy is Hannah's husband; she takes off her ring in front of the cameras, and the surgeon who comes for her daughter is the brother he fears.
Stafford Tower caught fire at two in the morning, and I watched it on the TV over the bread racks.
I had dough to my wrists and a hundred loaves to shape before dawn.
The news helicopter showed the thirty-first floor, orange behind every window.
My daughter was on that floor.
She was five, and she was sleeping over at a party for firefighters' children.
My husband had signed her up for it himself.
He was the captain on duty tonight, so I knew he was somewhere under that smoke.
My phone buzzed with a text from the party's host.
"Please don't panic, Mrs. McCormick. The children are together and the crews are close. Your husband will bring them down."
I drove to the police line with flour still on my arms.
I watched the rest on my phone, because the street was too packed to see the building.
The camera zoomed in on one window.
A boy in a gray hoodie stood there, and next to him stood a girl in pink pajamas, holding a stuffed rabbit up by one ear.
She was holding Biscuit up so someone would see her.
The ladder truck swung and stopped at their window.
A firefighter climbed it and took the boy first.
The ladder started to come down.
I screamed at my phone, "Go back for her."
It did not go back.
The truck pulled away from the building, and smoke filled the window where my daughter had been standing.
A second crew went up the stairs and brought her out.
I do not remember the drive to St. Brigid's Children's Hospital.
I remember the corridor, and a nurse who put Biscuit in my hands because Lottie had held it until they cut her pajamas off.
One ear was black and the stuffing smelled of smoke.
Lottie had gray eyes.
Everyone said so at Christmas, and everyone said they were her Uncle Terrence's eyes, and Sawyer always changed the subject.
Terrence had not come to a Christmas in four years.
The elevator opened and Sawyer walked out in his turnout gear.
His helmet was in his hand and there was soot across his cheek.
A news crew stood in the lobby doorway behind him, filming, and a nurse was letting them.
A woman in a camel coat walked beside him with a blanket around her shoulders and her hand on his arm.
A nurse carried a small boy in a gray hoodie behind them.
"Mrs. McCormick," the woman said to me, and her voice was soft and thick.
"I'm Celia Stafford. It's my building. Lottie kept Sammy calm until the ladder came. She told him a story about a rabbit."
She squeezed my hand.
"Thank God for Sawyer," she said.
She had called him Sawyer and not Captain McCormick, and I thought nothing of it.
I looked at my husband.
"They said the ladder went to the penthouse boy," I said. "Tell me they're wrong."
He put his hand on my shoulder, and his fingers shook.
"They're not wrong." His voice cracked. "There was one ladder, Hannah. Sammy was nearest the glass. I had a second to choose."
"Lottie was holding up her rabbit."
"I saw that."
"She was screaming for you. I heard it on the stream."
"I know what she was doing."
He looked tired, and he looked past me at the camera.
"I made the call a captain makes," he said. "The second crew got her out. She's alive."
"She's alive because somebody else went up the stairs."
"Hannah." He glanced at the camera. "Not here."
"You did it on every channel in the city."
The young firefighter who had come in behind him stood with his hands open and said nothing.
I took the ring off my finger.
It was tight, and I had to twist it past the knuckle.
Sawyer watched me do it and said nothing.
I dropped it into the helmet in his hand.
It made a small bright sound against the shell.
"So I took off my ring," I said.
The camera light swung toward us.
Celia's hand slid off his arm.
"Hannah, you're in shock," Sawyer said, keeping his voice gentle for the camera. "Go home and sleep. I'll handle the hospital."
"You'll handle nothing. She is not yours to handle."
I said it louder than I meant to.
Everyone in that corridor heard me, the nurses and the cameraman and the young firefighter, and the boy in the nurse's arms.
Then the double doors at the end of the hall opened.
A man in blue scrubs came out, pulling down his mask.
He was tall and gray at the temples, and his eyes were gray.
I had not seen him in four years.
"Mrs. McCormick," he said. "I'm the burn surgeon on call. I'm going to operate on your daughter."
He did not say his own name.
He did not need to.
Terrence McCormick looked at me for one moment, and then past me at his brother.
Sawyer's face went white.
"Not him," he said. "Get me anyone else. Anyone but him."
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