The Day Two Sisters Burned for Husbands Who Never Came novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Call He Refused to Take
Ten days before her due date Calla calls her fire-captain husband three times while the apartment fills with smoke, and the third time a woman answers. She gives the paramedic no next of kin, and the lieutenant who carried her out says Engine 9 was told first.
At 6:38 on a Tuesday evening, the smoke alarm over my stove went off, and I called my husband first.
Dalton was the captain of Engine 9.
His station sat directly across Cedar Street from my kitchen window, and that was why I'd picked this apartment.
That morning he had kissed my belly and said, "I'm one street away. Nothing touches you while I'm one street away. Call and I come."
I was ten days from my due date.
My younger sister was on the couch with her feet up, thirty-three weeks along, eating crackers out of the box.
Her husband was working a double, he'd told her.
Mine was on shift, a hundred feet from where I stood.
The alarm in the hall started screaming too.
I opened the front door and black smoke rolled in at the ceiling.
The knob was so hot it hurt through the dish towel.
I slammed the door and called Dalton.
It rang and rang and went to voicemail.
"Dalton, the building's on fire," I said. "Fourth floor. Please come."
Across the street, the bay doors of Station 9 were shut.
The day room window glowed yellow.
I could see a tall man's shoulders in it and a woman's long hair beside him.
I pushed our window up and screamed his name until my throat tore.
Nobody in that room turned around.
"Calla, Corey isn't picking up either," my sister Bree said. She was holding her phone against her chest with both hands.
"Get towels," I said. "Wet ones. Under the bedroom door."
We went into the bedroom and shut it.
I called Dalton again.
This time the call ended after one ring.
He had pressed the button.
I stood there looking at the screen, and the smoke started coming under the door anyway.
The bedroom window had been painted shut by some landlord years ago.
I picked up the heavy lamp from my nightstand and swung it into the glass.
Behind us the front door gave way.
A wall of heat hit my back and the skin along my shoulder blade caught.
I screamed, and Bree grabbed my sleeve and beat the flame out with a wet towel.
"The fire escape," she said, crying. "Calla, I can't. My stomach."
"You can," I said. "I'm right behind you."
I got her over the sill first.
She went down the rusted iron stairs one step at a time, holding her belly, and I went behind her with my back on fire and my hands slipping on the rail.
At the second landing, a ladder from a ladder truck banged against the wall beside us.
A firefighter came up it fast.
He took Bree's weight and said, "I've got her, I've got her, go."
Then he came back up for me.
"Ma'am, put your arms around my neck."
"My sister first," I said.
"She's down. It's you now."
I held on to him.
He carried me down four floors of ladder in one go, and my feet never touched a rung.
Then I was lying on a gurney in the street with a mask on my face.
Bree was on the next one, white and shaking, with a paramedic counting something against her wrist.
Across the street, Station 9's bay doors were still shut.
The engine was in there.
I could see its red side through the little window in the door.
"Can I call my husband?" I said.
The paramedic handed me my phone, which I'd had in my fist the whole time.
I called him again.
It rang four times.
Then a woman picked up.
"Calla? It's Imogen," she said, soft and warm, the same voice that had cried over the crib I picked out. "Oh, honey. He can't come to the phone. He's holding my hand."
"Our building is on fire," I said. "Bree and I were in it. We're in an ambulance."
"Oh, sweetie, I'm sure it's smaller than it sounds," Imogen said. "He'll call you when he can."
The line went dead.
I looked across the street at the lit window of the day room.
I could not see anyone in it now.
The paramedic leaned over me with a clipboard. "I need your name, and who we're notifying."
"Calla MacDuff."
He looked at my wallet.
"Your license says MacDuff. Are you Mrs. Overpeck?"
"I never changed it," I said. "MacDuff."
"Next of kin?"
I thought of the hand on the other phone.
I thought of the voice saying it's probably nothing.
"Nobody," I said. "Nobody is coming for us."
So I stepped out of my marriage right there on the gurney, with my back burned raw.
The firefighter who had carried me stood at the ambulance doors with his helmet under his arm.
His face was black with soot, and his jaw was tight.
"Lieutenant Ansel Killian, Engine 14," he said. "Ma'am, I'm sorry. I have to tell you something."
"Tell me."
"Dispatch put out your address at 6:41. Engine 9 was the first engine called."
His eyes went to the station across the street, then back to me.
"Your husband told dispatch Engine 9 was out of service," he said. "That's why they sent us from the other side of town."
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