The fire started somewhere near the southeast end of the building. It spread quickly through the open corridors — the wide hallways built specifically to allow wheelchairs and hospital beds to pass unobstructed — sucking in oxygen and climbing from the floor to the walls to the ceiling with ease. There wasn’t a sprinkler system at Valleyview to attack the blaze. Such systems weren’t required until the 1970s, and the building that housed nearly 150 residents in need of around-the-clock care was built before such regulations were in place. At first glance — through the layers of choking black smoke — it was hard to pinpoint the fire’s exact origin, or whether its intent was malicious or accidental. But none of that would really matter to the residents or staff at Valleyview Nursing Home in Hartford, Connecticut. Regardless of intent, the results of the smoke and the flames and the fear would be the same. Scarring for some, fatal for others. The southeast wing of Valleyview charred into ruins.
82-year-old resident, Dottie Anfenson, was lying on her bed, confined to it in room A106 without the assistance of nursing staff. She had long understood, accepted, that she would die in this bed. It would be the place where her mind caught up with her body and they slipped away forever in rest. She imagined that such death would come quietly. Maybe even in her sleep. Maybe with the calming hum of a familiar daytime game show filling the room with just enough noise to provide comforting company, a whitewashed sound to blanket restless thoughts and any background buzz from beyond Dottie’s room – the noise of living going on around her, without her. Yes, quiet and simple and alone, like her life had been the last few years, as visits from her daughter and granddaughters grew further and further apart, reserved almost exclusively for birthdays (when schedules allowed) and holidays (if folks weren’t out of town) and a few other anniversaries personal to the Anfenson family.
But when it showed up — those flames, that smoke — when the sharp pulsing siren from the alarms jolted her eyes open, and the familiar smell of toxic fumes quickly became those she could taste and touch — that stung her eyes and throat — Dottie couldn’t help but nod. Of course, this was how it would end. This burning dark ghost had been haunting Dottie for most of her life, leaving scars on her body, pink and tight and smooth even as the rest of her skin thinned and freckled and folded with age. Its keen ability to manipulate into the smallest of cracks, sneak through a keyhole, melt holes into metal, or burst through walls, creating doors where none existed, made it almost impossible to hide from. And it had found her again. Fire. Smoke.
Hello. Dottie said. Though she wasn’t sure if she said it out loud, or if she swallowed those words into a knot in her throat. What took you so long?
Dottie remembered the first time they met. At eight years old and charged with watching her sister, Kimberley, only four and just walking, stunted by a twisted left hip that made it difficult for Kimberley to keep her balance and bend her knee. And her ankle. The sisters were making soda biscuits, as suggested by their mother the day before. Make five, and eat three, she had said. The two remaining biscuits their mother would eat when she returned from work, dipping them in mint tea to soften before taking a bite. Like she did every night that Dottie made extra biscuits for herself and her sister before their mother walked home in the dark from her job at G. Fox and Co., where she served tables in the larger of the department store’s two restaurants. And they had biscuits a lot. Sometimes with curious leftovers or food on the brink of turning that Dottie’s mom brought home from work.
Dottie was familiar with the kitchen and the stove and the easy recipe of just five ingredients that could be edited to four when they were running short on lard or milk or salt — tasting fine enough without the complete recipe. She knew to light the front burner to warm the skillet, the flames licking up the sides, trying to crawl into the grease cooked deep into the pan. That day, that first time, Kimberley was sitting on the floor nearby, calmly stringing empty thread spools through a strand of yarn — then holding them high, letting each drop from the yarn onto the ground. A gentle pop pop pop on the wooden floor, that she scooped up to string and drop again.
Dottie pulled a stool to the edge of the counter, reaching for the bag of flour stored in the cabinet above. It slipped in her hands, and she dropped the bag — pop — onto the countertop that puffed powder into the air, immediately catching the flames from the stove and exploding a ball of fire over the young girls, into their kitchen. As quick to burn out as it was to burst, but long enough to grab hold of the thin, faded curtains that framed the kitchen window. This first time — fire, smoke — it wasn’t the flames that grabbed Dottie, but the fire’s boiling water from the stove; the pot bubbling patiently as it waited for three eggs Dottie was going to pair with the biscuits. The handle of the pot caught her elbow as she reached to pull the curtains into the sink — the boiling water splashing on Dottie’s thigh.
She barely felt it at first. There was too much unexpected happening at once to find the initial time to react to any of it: the fireball, the curtains, the shrieks from Kimberley — maybe laughter, maybe panic — who watched from a point of distance, a point of safety, entertained and excited and scared all at once. That blast of liquid fire on Dottie’s leg that melted the cloth of her dress into her skin had to wait; she was too busy making sure the flame stopped before taking hold of the windowsill. And she did, running the faucet on high, scooping handfuls of water furiously, steady splashes of water cupped in small palms —
— saving the house from a fire. Saving her life and the life of her sister Kimberley, who at four was just walking, born with a twisted hip, and couldn’t flee the fire fast enough, even with the help of her eight-year-old sister who would have died trying. Saving the flames from finding a path to the back garage, really more of a shed built from leftover wood of a collapsed barn; the shed landscaped in kindling, in unkept dry, yellow grasses — brittle corpses held up by other brittle corpses, leaning on each other, that would have lit up with joy and relief as the fire finally let their bodies rest and return to the dirt. Then saving the neighbor’s kitchen and mudroom as the fire looked for, and would have easily found, more fuel in the neat rows of replicated Bungalows lining the street. So then, of course, another house. This one filled with music from the living room radio, turned up loud so the pregnant woman painting her dining chairs a blue-green could hear it clearly from the kitchen. Dottie saving her too. And one more after that, a house, the last house on the block, where the fire would have finally been interrupted by a street corner, allowing for a pause in the swift — even quiet at first, almost unnoticed on that lazy spring day — burn from curtain to kitchen to shed to house to house to house where it would’ve paused to catch the eye of a curious six-year-old, home that afternoon from Catholic school sick with the flu, looking out the window from the upper bedroom miles away, wondering why a black cloud was so close to the ground, seemed to have fallen from the sky — a boy nicknamed “Nicky” who would grow up to be a writer and have a daughter who would star in a movie about spirits trying to kidnap children; a daughter who would be killed, whose stalker and murderer would be released from prison after serving less than three years. No one could blame Dottie for that – for homicidal acts and flaws in a justice system. She saved lives and homes! A child savior reacting on her eight-year-old instincts to eliminate any evidence of her accident. Not trying to be a hero, not even trying to be brave – just trying to keep from a scolding from her mother, for her clumsy behavior. For breaking the first rule of her mother’s house: stay out of trouble.
So, there wasn’t a catastrophe that day in Hartford. And no hero’s parade either — no key to the city for a small girl who had to use a stool to reach the stovetop to make dinner. Just two sisters, one already back to threading wooden spools on a strand of yarn, the other with a blister the size of a soda biscuit bubbling on her leg. Trying to quickly clean up the water from the floor, the flour from the counter, from the stove, from the cabinet. Trying to finish the biscuits she still had to fry and the eggs that still needed to boil. Trying not to vomit, but still vomiting from the pain in her leg. Putting her sister to bed, then herself, trying to fall asleep before their mother got home, before she dipped her dinner in tea, before she noticed the missing curtains. Dottie — hissed out of bed by their mother’s sharp words, her sharp accusations — who couldn’t hide an anguished moan, then scream, nor the burn on her leg, who was finally cradled into sleep by her mother’s arms after she peeled the fabric and skin off Dottie’s thigh, refusing to make eye contact with her eight-year-old who begged her to stop. After the burn was cleaned with an iced whiskey and a teacup full of the same in Dottie’s stomach. After a final calming cover of chilled salve and a repeated murmuring I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry that she wasn’t sure if she said it out loud or just in the darkness, in the relief, of sleep.
Never mind, all that. Don’t fuss over it. Whatever you do, don’t fuss over Dottie. Besides, she would get another chance at rescue, a chance to be a hero, when the sisters are twenty-two and eighteen, a rare day off work and responsibilities on a day almost as hot as the stovetop. Where they splurged for reserved seats in section D (D for Dottie) because they were told that section ensured the best views of big cats’ act. Where when she went back to find Kimberley, Dottie ran past the woman on fire with plastic barrettes melted into her scalp, still carrying a bottle of Coke in her hand.
What took you so long?
Dottie’s room was filling with smoke. She coughed. Nothing deep. Not yet. Just a slight irritation in the back of her throat. A small fan on the nightstand next to her bed was pushing the smoke away from her face. But it couldn’t keep up, finding it more difficult to navigate a clear path through clear air. The slight, light breeze wasn’t enough to move the heavy black smoke and was soon overwhelmed.
Outside Dottie’s door, Valleyview was chaos. Shouting and running and broken glass and broken voices. Every few moments, the bright pulsing flash paired with buzzing alarms caught the silhouette of a body rushing by her door. A flash there and a flash gone. Dottie understood. The running. The rushing. She knew what the other side of that door looked like. It’s what the church and nursery rhymes teach about death, about bad death. Unable to describe damnation without fire. Without burning. Others often questioned what hell looked like, what it was like to die. Dottie didn’t have these questions.
The smoke was growing thicker and darker, rolling through Valleyview, looking for new places to reach. It would be better if the smoke got her first, thought Dottie. Wrapped her up in a dense plume, whispering her into permanent sleep, stealing her breath as she slept like a cat in a baby’s cradle. She pulled the tube loose that was tucked under her nose to deliver a steady stream of oxygen into her lungs. She coughed. Nearby, the oxygen tank warned users of danger, of combustion. Flammable, it read. Isn’t everything, Dottie thought. Fortresses and cities and children and animals that lived and worked and migrated in cages, animals that weren’t supposed to see or taste or touch snow, or eat plants native to North America’s New England coast. All of it could burn and blister and morph into unrecognizable shapes, shapes that used to be bodies, into bizarre figures impossible to define, warped into unnatural positions without relatable context or reference. They looked like nothing because they were like nothing seen before.
That, or turned into dust. Like they never existed at all.
She was getting sleepy again. She hardly noticed anything outside her room. In fact, without the alarms, Dottie might have slept through it all. She was used to sharing noise with others. Used to ignoring what was going on outside her door. It wasn’t really any of her business. She wished she was still sleeping — wished the smoke would just hurry up, just get it over with already, before the flames found her. Gluttonous in every way, the blaze consuming everything in its path, taking the oxygen from the air, eating and eating and eating. Never full, just out of food.
She tried to breathe deeper. But the coughing. It was harder now. Angry now. It caused her back to arch and knot the muscles in her stomach. It burned her throat, tightening like a noose, its hands wrapping firm around her neck. It was too slow, too aggressive. It tasted terrible and forced itself into her mouth, swelling her tongue and insisting her body fight, even after she had given it permission to rest. The smoke wouldn’t allow it. This wasn’t quiet at all. She couldn’t be, she couldn’t simply slip into sleep like she had decided, and Dottie frantically reached out in the darkness for her oxygen tube. And the coughing hit her again. And dammit, she thought, there it was. Even after all the times they had met before. Fear.
Then Dottie’s door opened.
The large burst of smoke flooded her room completely into blackness, into heaviness, stinging her eyes shut and covering everything almost instantaneously in a layer of toxic soot. Dottie held her eyes closed tightly together and opened her mouth in a gasp, pulling ashes into her lungs. Do it again, she thought. Or maybe she said it out loud, but it was muffled by the ash in the air, muffled into the darkness. Again! Hurry! The fire is following. Even pulling in air was almost impossible; instead, her lungs just filled with soot, drowning in smoke. Dottie was dizzy. Too tired to cough. Her body relaxed completely, softening into her mattress, into her bed. See, I told you so. And she was suddenly rising. She felt the smoke lift her into the room, wrap itself under her shoulder and legs, carefully floating her out of bed like she was bobbing and drifting in water; her heavy, rested body weightless, carrying her higher into her room, buoyant and comforted. She heard the crash of the windows – the smoke breaking out into the frigid February air. Yet even that seemed far away, like a slow shatter, each broken piece of glass falling like it was floating through honey, like fat snowflakes sinking through the sky, quiet and comforting like the hum from a familiar television show. The company she needed. The fresh frozen night tried to force itself into her lungs. There’s no room for you. I’m smoke now. And she was. Moving with softness, swirling across the sky and exposing a slight breeze and the direction of a weather front on the horizon that was just starting to slip into the Atlantic coast and would be there soon. Pieces of her stretched over the tops of trees, weaving through branches, until she floated and faded further and further into the atmosphere.
Then it stopped. She was grounded again. Covered with a wool blanket that kept her from drifting away, that was intended to temporarily protect her from a burning fire and frozen weather. Dottie’s mouth opened, her lungs opened, her eyes opened for just a moment, just enough to watch the smoke leave her there, on a mattress – her mattress – that had been pushed from the broken window, from the burning building and onto the ground outside to catch Dottie’s body and hold it there safely while other windows broke and other mattresses and other bodies were lifted out of Valleyview. The mattress was warm at first, but Dottie could feel it trying to steal the heat from her body, starting to freeze her legs and feet and hands even as the orange and yellow blaze warmed her forehead and the tops of her shoulders. Hot and cold deciding they could work so closely side by side – deciding a truce somewhere where freeze stopped, where burn started. Somewhere where Dottie waited on her mattress, long understanding, accepting, that this was where she would die.
“Where am I?”
“You’re safe. We’re taking you to the hospital.”
“Who are you?”
“I pulled you from your room.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I saved you from the fire.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You’re very lucky.”
“Why?”
“You survived.”
“Survived what?”
“The fire.”
“Oh, that.”
“Are you okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, can you breathe okay? Do you hurt anywhere?”
“What do you mean?”
“Yeah, you’re a survivor, Dottie. That’s what you are. A survivor.”
“A survivor? What’s that?”
“You are.”
“I thought you said I was lucky.”
