Dana Mentink - Flood Zone

“Please help,” she rasped. “Cora Graham’s house on Stick Pine Road is on fire.”

The dispatcher gave her a fifteen minute ETA.

Her heart sank. They could both be dead in fifteen minutes. She stowed the phone in her pocket and ran to the front porch where she remembered there was a hose Cora used to water her patches of brilliant snapdragons. The wood of the old house crackled violently, letting loose with a spark every now and then that burned little holes through the fabric of her jacket. One started to smolder, and she slapped a hand to snuff it out. Flames flashed out the first-floor windows. Juno barked furiously, dashing in helpless fits and starts, unsure how to get to his master.

She cranked the hose and squirted the water at the open front door. Where are you, Dallas? Inside, the flames had spread through the sitting room, enveloping the oak furniture in crackling orange and yellow. She climbed up the porch steps, dousing the wood with water and forcing her way into the entry, past the spurts of flame.

She sprayed the water vigorously, but there was simply not enough flow to combat the hungry fire. She retreated to the front porch, skin stinging from the poisonous air.

Dallas appeared at the upstairs window. He shouted something to Mia, but she could not understand. The fire was nearly upon her, heat scalded her face and hands, smoke filling her lungs. She backed farther away, praying the fire engine would arrive soon to douse the flames.

There was no welcoming wail of sirens.

She scanned the upper story and once again caught sight of Dallas. He was batting at the flaming curtains with a blanket. She saw a way she could help. Climbing a few feet up an ivy-covered trellis allowed her to stretch the hose far enough that she could train the water on the burning fabric. Dallas jerked in surprise and then disappeared back inside, returning a moment later with Cora in his arms and stepping onto the roof. Mia’s heart lodged in her throat as she watched Dallas walking on the precariously pitched shingles with his precious burden.

His feet skidded, and he fell on his back, somehow stopping his slide before he fell over the edge. Mia jumped off the trellis and cast the hose aside. “Here, lower her down to me.”

It was an awkward process, but Dallas managed to ease Cora low enough that Mia could grab her around the waist. Staggering under the weight, she tottered backwards until Dallas jumped down and they both carried Cora away from the burning house. Juno raced behind them to a flat spot of grass where they laid the old woman. Dallas ordered the dog to stay.

Mia brushed sooty hair away from Cora’s forehead. Her sparkling blue eyes were closed, her mouth, slack. She put her cheek to Cora’s mouth, praying for a reassuring puff of air. Panic swirled through her veins as she felt nothing at all. Starting CPR, she pressed her hands to Cora’s chest.

“Come on, Cora,” she said. “You’re not going to leave me now.”

Dallas dropped to his knees and performed the rescue breaths at the end of her compression cycles. After a full minute, Dallas checked her pulse.

He shook his head.

Tears trickled down Mia’s cheeks as she began the next cycle. “You haven’t finished learning Italian,” she said to Cora. “You’re only on lesson three, and that’s not going to be enough if you want to go to Rome.” Another set of compressions and rescue breaths.

This time she didn’t allow herself to look at Dallas. Cora was going to live. Shoulders aching she pressed with renewed vigor. “And your nephew is happily married in Seattle. He’s not going to want to come and take care of this sprawling old place, isn’t that what you always said, Cora?”

Sirens pierced the air and a fire truck appeared through the smoke, rumbling up the grade, followed by an ambulance. Mia did not slow her efforts.

“You wake up right now, do you hear me? I mean it. I told you over and over not to keep those silly scented candles in your bedroom. They did not keep away the mosquitos, no matter what you say. You wake up so I can chew you out properly.” Tears dripped from her face and cleared spots of black from Cora’s forehead.

The medics ran over, but stopped short when Juno barked at them until Dallas quieted him. They pushed forward, eyeing the big dog suspiciously, and edged Mia out of the way.

“I have to stay with her,” she pleaded.

Dallas drew her back, his voice oddly soft. “They’ve got it, Mia. Let them work.”

“But...”

He gently, but firmly, took her arm and moved her several yards distant from the paramedics.

She breathed in and out, forcing herself to stop crying. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” she repeated, waving him away when he came close.

Dallas stood there, long muscled arms black with soot, the edges of his hair singed at the tips, looking at her until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What is it? What are you thinking?”

Dallas didn’t answer.

“Please tell me.” She moved closer, the dark pools of his eyes not giving away anything.

Dallas considered. “I wasn’t sure what type of service dog Juno would be. Before I trained him in Search and Rescue, a buddy of mine had a go at making him a drug-sniffing dog, but Juno doesn’t obey anyone but me, so he flunked out. Mastered only the first lesson.”

“What are you saying?”

He pulled a plastic pill bottle from his pocket. “These were on the bedside table. Do you know what she takes them for?”

Mia took the bottle and held it up to the light from the engines. “It’s her blood pressure medication. I pick up her prescriptions myself.”

Dallas frowned.

Mia felt the seeds of dread take hold deep down. She put her hands on Dallas’s unyielding chest. “Dallas, please tell me what you’re thinking.”

“The first lesson, the only one that Juno mastered...”

She found she was holding her breath as he finished.

“Was alerting on drugs...like cocaine.”

* * *

Dallas mentally berated himself for mentioning Juno’s behavior at that moment. Mia was already trembling as the shock of what had happened settled in.

Should’ve waited. How many times had he said that to himself?

This time he did not allow her to pull away when he folded her in a smoky embrace. She was so small, so slight in his arms, and he resisted the urge to run his hands along her shoulders. He thought of all the things he should say, the comforts he could whisper in her ear, but everything fled, driven away by the feel of her. She stiffened suddenly, and he wondered if she’d been hurt in the fire.

“There,” Mia gasped, pointing behind the house.

He turned in time to see a woman with a wild tangle of red hair framed by the trees that backed the property. She stood frozen for a moment, eyes wide and face soot-stained and then she bolted into the woods.

“Stop,” Dallas called, and he and Juno took off into the trees, Mia stumbling along behind.

“Who was that?” she asked, panting.

He didn’t know.

“I thought I saw her outside the clinic one time, talking to Cora, but I’m not sure,” Mia said.

A cursory search yielded nothing, though the falling rain and smoke didn’t help. After a short time, they left off looking to follow the ambulance to the hospital.

In the waiting room, Mia sat on a hard-backed chair, and Dallas paced as much as the narrow hallway would allow until the doctor delivered his news. “I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.”

Dallas watched the spirit leak out of Mia as she put her head in her hands. Something cut at him, something deeper than the grief at Cora’s death. He swallowed hard and stepped aside with the doctor. “Do you have a cause of death?”

The physician, whose name tag read Dr. Carp, hesitated. “She was dead upon arrival, but we called the police immediately after you told us about the pills. They took possession of them. Autopsy will be later this week.” That much Dallas already knew as he and Mia had told their story to a young uniformed cop named Brownley.