Lisa Scottoline: Save Me

She reached the handicapped bathroom. Smoke was being sucked under its door. Melly would suffocate.

“Melly!” Rose tried the lever, hot to the touch. The door was locked, so Melly had to be inside.

“Melly!” Rose shrieked, frantic. She yanked on the lever. It didn’t open. Tears of fright poured down her cheeks. She coughed and coughed. Black smoke rolled along the floor, enveloping her.

Fire flared closer. She pulled on the lever with all her might. She felt hotter and hotter. She couldn’t breathe, her lungs choked with smoke.

“Melly!” Rose screamed, at the top of her lungs.

There was no reply.

“Help!” Rose screamed. Nobody was in the corridor. The alarm bells rang continuously. Sirens sounded far away. She was on her own.

She threw herself against the bathroom door. It didn’t budge. She raked at the hinges to see if she could take the door off, but no. She told herself to stay in control. She couldn’t surrender to panic. She coughed and coughed. Tears blurred her vision.

She knelt down to look at the lever. It had a hole underneath. It locked from the inside, by pushing a button. She could unlock it if she could stick something in the hole. She tried her finger. The hole was too small. She needed something thin enough to fit through.

She looked wildly around. Smoke billowed everywhere. The blaze in the teachers’ lounge was spreading. She had to hurry. She got up, bolted to the library, and burst through the doors. Smoke filtered the air, less than in the hallway.

She ran to the librarian’s desk and tore open a drawer. It held pens, pencils, rulers, orange Tic-Tacs. She grabbed a pair of scissors. The blades were too big. She threw them aside. She whirled around, then saw a coat rack holding a red cardigan and a few wire hangers.

She ran to the rack, snatched off one of the hangers, and twisted it out of shape on the run. She bolted out of the library, horrified at the sight in the hallway. The fire was spreading to the handicapped bathroom. Fingers of flames stretched from the teachers’ lounge. Black smoke enclosed the door.

“Melly!” Rose shrieked, agonized. She ran to the bathroom and threw herself on her knees in front of the door. She couldn’t see the hole for the smoke and her tears.

She wrenched the hanger out of shape, slicing her palm with the pointy end. She bent the wire and tried to shove the end into the hole. Her hand shook too much. She tried again and again, her face next to the lever. She finally rammed it through. She felt a click .

She yanked on the lever. The door opened wide. Heat surged behind her, the flames sucked forward by new oxygen. Smoke filled the bathroom.

“Melly!” Rose screamed, but Melly sat slumped beside the toilet in the clouds of smoke, her head to the side, unmoving. Her arms hung down. Her feet flopped apart.

Rose rushed to her side and scooped her up. She couldn’t tell if Melly was breathing, but black soot covered her cheeks and ringed her nostrils and mouth. Her body was limp, her eyes closed. Rose knew CPR but had to get her out while she still could.

She gathered Melly up, staggered to her feet, and ran out of the smoky bathroom. She bolted to the library, burst through the doors, and tore through the stacks to the exit, which led her down one smoky hallway, then another. She’d never been in that part of the school. She followed the sound of teachers shouting. Melly remained silent, lifeless.

Rose barreled toward the noise and saw an EXIT sign over double doors. Twenty feet away, then ten. Then five. She exploded through the doors into a stairwell, where a teacher was evacuating older kids, hurrying down the concrete stairs toward the exit for the teachers’ parking lot.

“It’s my daughter!” Rose shouted on the run, and the teacher blanched.

“Let her through!” she called to the kids, who parted as Rose wedged her way out of the exit and into the sunshine.

“Help!” Rose screamed, and the school librarian and a teacher came running. Smoke clouded the parking lot, and beyond it thronged teachers, staff, and students, abuzz with shouting, crying, and head counts.

Rose raced to a patch of grass, laid Melly on the ground, and put an ear to her chest to listen for a heartbeat. She couldn’t hear breathing because the alarms were too loud. She put her cheek to Melly’s face to feel breathing, but no. She began CPR, tilting Melly’s head back, opening her mouth, and breathing for her, ignoring the stench of smoke on her lips.

Suddenly, Melly started coughing. Soot puffed from her mouth, a horrifying sight.

“Honey!” Rose cried with joy, but Melly’s eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled backwards into her head. “Melly, wake up! Please!” She shook Melly to rouse her, to no avail.

“Here’s the ambulance!” The school librarian touched Rose’s arm. The teacher stood behind. “Let us help.”

“Thanks!” Rose scooped Melly into her arms, and the librarian steadied her as they ran through the parked cars.

The crowd surged forward, craning their necks, but the teacher and custodians with walkie-talkies shooed them back. Parents and neighbors held up cell phones and BlackBerrys, snapping pictures and taking videos. The ambulance sped onto the long driveway, and people shouted to flag it down until it veered into the teachers’ parking lot.

Rose and the librarian hustled to meet the ambulance, which zoomed to a stop. A paramedic in a black uniform jumped from the cab and raced toward Melly. The back doors flew open, and two other uniformed paramedics, a male and a female, hustled out with a stretcher and a portable oxygen tank.

“She’s my daughter.” Rose met a male paramedic at the curb. “She’s breathing but she’s not conscious.”

“I got her.” The male paramedic took Melly from Rose as the two others materialized at his side. He laid Melly on the cushioned stretcher while the others hurried to fit a translucent oxygen mask over her face and secure her with two orange straps. They all rushed the stretcher to the ambulance, sliding it inside.

Rose was about to climb in behind, but shouted to the librarian, “Please get word to my husband, Leo Ingrassia. He’s a lawyer, his office is in King of Prussia.”

“Will do!”

Rose hoisted herself inside the ambulance, hurried to Melly’s side, and picked up her hand. It felt limp and oddly cool to the touch, but she clung to it, making a human tether to keep Melly in this world.

Please God let her live.

“I’m locking, Jim!” the female paramedic shouted to the driver, to be heard over the sirens and the radio crackling in the cab. She twisted a large handle under the steel corrugation on the ambulance doors. “Go, go, go!”

“Is my daughter going to be okay?” Rose shouted, lifting up her oxygen mask to speak. They’d made her wear one and sit belted to a cushioned jump seat, but she could still reach Melly’s hand. She held on as the ambulance lurched off. “I did CPR, and she was awake. Why is she unconscious?”

“Please keep your mask on.” The female paramedic hurried to Melly’s side. “You can ask the ER doc all your questions.”

The male paramedic scrambled to Rose, shouting, “Let me see that ankle, Mom.”

“I’m fine,” Rose yelled, under her mask. “Take care of her, please.”

“We have to treat you, too. You’ve got burns on your ankle and hand.” The male paramedic slipped on exam gloves, grabbed a square white bag that read ROEHAMPTON STERILE BURNS DRESSING, and squatted at Rose’s feet. “I’ll start here. This might be uncomfortable.”

“Please, take care of my daughter instead.”

“My partner has her, don’t worry. We have to treat you. It’s the law.” The male paramedic zipped open the white bag, but Rose kept her eyes glued to Melly, who looked so pale under the oxygen mask. The female paramedic was attaching circular electrodes to her chest, leading to an EKG monitor that began spitting out a spiky graph, almost instantly.