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[A.J. returns the uncertain smile, and despite the nurse’s protests, he speaks up in the doorway, not daring enough to actually enter the room and address the woman.] Hi there. [It sounds stupid, too much and not enough all at once. The nurse clicks her tongue, but seeing this is a losing battle and that Mara has already woken up, she takes a step closer to the bed. Honey, this is Mr. Golden. He’s a firefighter who was at the scene tonight. Etcetera, etcetera. A.J. just flashes a dumb simper.] I just wanted to make sure you were alright. You gave a scare. [He finally pipes in, clearing his throat.] But your fine caregiver here is doing her job and wants me to come back during visiting hours.

mara-witter

(He seems awkward. Nervous, uncertain at the least, and she's too tired for it but she still tries to give him a warmer smile. She's drowsy and weak and wincing as she tries to straighten, but he's a visitor. Her only visitor. And, for a moment, a piece of hope ignites in her chest that he'll know her, or have found a missing persons report, or have recovered her driver's license. Something. Anything for a piece of what she lost. She keeps eye contact with him, breath catching as she starts to hope, even as Rosa comes around to her bedside to try and convince her to lie back, and she only tears away her gaze when she realizes he doesn't know who she is. Mara looks at Rosa, lips parting in disappointment, and the nurse gives her a small, sympathetic looks before she turns her attention back to the man. Mr. Golden. He saved her life.) Thank you, (Mara says simply, overwhelmed and eyes wide because she doesn't know what else she can say.) I-It's okay. You can stay. It's okay with me. If you want.

#th03

aj-golden-fireman

[The paramedics has taken a look at A.J. at the scene of the fire, and despite his protests, a piece of debris lodged into his skin from some poorly timed crawling had left him with a hospital trip and a tetanus shot. The whole process had not taken long, however, and thankfully, he was back on his feet in an hour or two. But that didn’t mean he was leaving. He had seen the woman from the house whisked off ahead of him, and while he had done his best, she was in bad shape. He had to check, had to be sure that she made it out alright.

Moving cautiously through the building, he peeked into a few rooms before being caught by a nurse. Shit. She had meant to lead him out of the wing, but on the way, there she was. Lying in a hospital bed and clearly in one piece. He lout a sigh of relief as the nurse stopped to scold him again.] Alright, alright. Don’t wake her up.

mara-witter

(Mara's mostly been sleeping. Mara, she knows her name is, or at least that's what she's calling herself; apparently none of the witnesses at the party knew her, but one in a drunken haze remembered that she had called herself Mara Witter when she introduced herself, short skirt and tight top and mascara. The name doesn't sound familiar to her, but familiar enough for her to use it. She's Mara. Mara, she says in her head a thousand times, Mara.

Mara's tired of sleeping, but, as the nurse says, right now it's the best thing for her burns to heal and her brain to recover, and there's hardly much on television and no family to bring her books to read. Rosa said she'd bring in Harry Potter tomorrow, but that's all she has to look forward to. A boy wizard to keep her awake for a few hours while she sits trapped in a bed she can't get comfortable in.

She's half asleep, shifting blearily, when she hears a voice she doesn't quite recognize in the area she's learning as the doorway to her room, and she blinks slowly, adjusting herself and hissing lightly at the pain from her bandaged burn. He's watching her, and she smiles, if uncomfortably, and more than a little hopefully.)

#th03

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Lost Girl

She heard a buzz before she woke up. Soft, soothing, in the distance, sounds mixing together at the edge of her hearing and the edge of her consciousness, blending and sweeping until they were indistinguishable from each other, rendered into a small, thin buzz in the back of her mind that meant reality, consciousness, life.

She opened her eyes slowly. They were blurred, tired from disuse, her mouth parting to ask a question she couldn’t quite get out. There were drugs in her system, some kind of drugs keeping her from grasping onto reality hard enough to panic, but her eyes focused on the ceiling for a moment, the steady beep of her heartbeat, the gentle drip of fluid into her veins. The ceiling was white, paneled, dotted, and in the blur of her vision she could imagine the dots circling and dancing with each other, before she managed to swallow, turn her head, and look around.

Hospital. She was in a hospital.

Her body was still waking up, limp with drugs and weak from injury, but when she managed to try and shift in her bed she gasped. Her back was bandaged but tender, so tender, as she moved and pulled lightly at the wrappings, and her right arm was stiff and sore and bandaged the same. But her head, her head hurt; she leaned back against the bed into shooting pain, and, gently feeling under her hair, there it was – a shaven patch, a bandage, stitches.

A woman rushed in, and she recognized her voice, if not the bright, cheerful scrubs she wore, more fit for a children’s ward than the ICU, one of the voices she’d heard most in the buzz that brought her back. The woman spoke, soothingly. You’re okay, she said. There was a fire, but you’re doing well. You’re at the University of Pittsburgh hospital. The doctor said you should be fine.

She couldn’t seem to find her voice, so she nodded. She understood. A fire. Burning, she guessed, head injury. She merely asked for some water or some juice, and the woman smiled and hurried to get her some, but by the time she returned the girl had fallen asleep again.

She didn’t realize it until later. She woke up a few hours later with apple juice and water waiting, and a promise that the doctor would check in soon. He was a large man in his forties who looked more suited for a football coach than a physician, but he had professionalism and a smile. He said a lot of words. Traumatic brain injury, severe, smoke inhalation, third degree burns. Two stuck out to her, three days, that she had been unconscious for three days, and that she had morphine soaring through her system to help with the burns. Concussion, GCS, diffuse axonal injury, heavy oxygen treatment, under observation.

She didn’t understand much of what he said. He spoke medical jargon, and when he tried to dull it down for her she still didn’t grasp it. She was trying to remember what happened. The nurse had spoken of a fire, but she couldn’t remember a fire. She couldn’t remember what she had been doing, where the fire had been, what had caused it, why she had been there.

“What does it say on my chart?” she suddenly asked. Demanded. Needed.

The doctor fumbled for the file and for words, halfway through a sentence about her medicine and a comment about her history. He had told her everything, he said after a moment, everything she had been diagnosed with when she arrived at the hospital in the ambulance and everything she had been treated for.

“No, you don’t understand. What does it say my name is?” she asked, glancing from him to the nurse and back again. Her voice began to crack, tears in her eyes, a churning in her stomach.

“What is my name?”

Jane Doe. That's all that was scribbled onto the top of the chart, hastily written after she had gotten to the hospital with no identification on her and any remnants burnt to pieces in the fire. Another anonymous woman laying in the ICU, a woman with no family to collect her and no friends to sit with her in the hospital. The police had been there, they told her, taken her fingerprints, searched missing persons, and had found nothing.

She was anonymous. She was no one. A mystery they couldn't solve and a mystery they didn't care to, and suddenly she felt so alone. Completely alone, tears spilling over her cheeks and lips twisting together. She didn't want to cry. She didn't think she was a person who cried, holding her breath and swallowing and nodding as long as she could, but she was alone. Confused. Empty.

Two more words were added. Jotted into the chart notes, thrown over her head, another diagnosis on another page. Retrograde amnesia.

#para: lost girl #th02

mara-witter

Hold My Breath

aj-golden-fireman

When the alarm came through, A.J. had been in the middle of a nap, the long night shift finally getting the better of him, and so, when he jumped up to don his boots, fatigue still clung heavy to his limbs. But he rallied against it just as he always did, getting dressed quickly and sliding down into the garage in less than a minute’s time. New record. The siren blared to life, and clinging to the outside of the fire engine, the man let out a breath as a gust of cool Pennsylvania air hit his face. A shiver ran down his back, mocking the heaviness of the dark fireproof jacket hanging from his muscular frame.

The driver shouted something about where they were headed, and a woman yelled something in reply from the back. Ducking inside, A.J. began to ready himself to work. Autumn had arrived, and that meant the universities were back in session. So this call was not an unusual one. All the campus alarms had a direct wire to the station house, and while it was a good safeguard, every time a girl tried to straighten her hair quickly or someone overdid the microwave popcorn, he would be on his feet and ready to deal with a false alarm.

Not that was complaining. Better no one got hurt, but there was always the persistent inkling that every second wasted was one they could have spent elsewhere, rescuing someone who really needed it. Maybe it was bitterness, the realization that he should have gone to university himself and made millions or some shit. The vehicle swerved sharply, shaking the man from these wandering thoughts. Fuck it. He loved his job. Did a real service to the community. He had nothing to bellyache about.

When they arrived, the building was already up in flames, and A.J. was almost taken aback to see how real the threat was. A crowd was gathered outside, early responders keeping them at bay while news vans pulled down from the other end of the block. A.J. moved quickly, knocking out a double-parked car’s window to connect the hose to the nearest hydrant. Sorry, jackass. And helping the others set up the hoses, he overheard someone talking about an unattended cigarette. Shit. It was always the small stuff that went wrong like that. A bunch of dumb kids partying, and some drunken frat guy lights up and stubs it out on a sofa. He grunted.

“Is everyone out?” the chief was shouting at someone, maybe the president or an older brother. Did fraternities have those? Someone to answer to? Probably. A.J. didn’t know, and apparently, the young man in question, a bull-faced kid in a baseball cap, wasn’t much help.

“I dunno. We don’t have a guest list. I dunno. People just show up,” he repeated in a bit of a stupor, pacing back and forth. A.J had the sneaking suspicion that maybe he had something to do with the forgotten smoke.

Golden.

He snapped to attention when he heard his name. You’re going in. He nodded sharply, moving to don his mask and tank without a second thought. Was the building structurally sound? Would it come down on top of him? Hell, that was all the more reason to check it out, to drag whatever poor bastards were locked inside back into the open air.

He and other firefighter, Denton, were ready, and axes in hand, they made their way to the front door. Fortunately, the fire seemed to have centered itself near the back of the house before climbing up some vines on an exterior wall to ignite the second story. The sound of his own steady breathing ran in A.J.’s ears as he moved quickly into the foyer, flashes of orange licking the doorways to the entryway and threatening to take it any moment. Smoke billowed overhead, and he scanned the room through the dark for any sign of movement. The first floor did not take long to clear, but with the house creaking around them, they were moving double time.

A voice suddenly cried out in the flames, and Denton moved first, finding a young woman nearly passed out behind the living room sofa. A.J. offered him a nod as the other man scooped her up and out, but he lingered behind, searching for any stray sign of life. A few sparks neared the wooden stairwell, and he knew that if anyone was up there, this was his chance. Blinking through the smoke, he started the ascent, moving carefully lest the wood give way. The corridor was empty at the top, but a nearby door stood ajar to a nearby bedroom.

Crack. A.J. heard it before he saw or felt it, and he moved quickly, running into the doorway just in time to see another young woman incapacitated there. He must have called out to her, an effort to be reassuring whether the mask muffled it or not. But that was when the ceiling splintered, bits of plaster falling away, headed right for them both.

mara-witter

The house shuddered. The floor felt like it was shaking under Mara, the walls undulating as though they were about to fall, the structure shivering under its own weight until it felt like it was about to collapse. There was a voice in her head, screaming at her. She had to get out. Get out.

But there was smoke in her lungs. Seeping in, crawling through her. And she felt so, so tired.

One hand on the floor, weight shifted, another, and it took a few moments for Mara to try and stand. The heat was blinding, and she stumbled backwards as the bedside lamp tipped over, flame licking at the lampshade and licking at her, but she stumbled into a bed that's already burning up and barely managed to pat her clothes out, by instinct alone. She couldn't feel the pain of the burns, crawling along her back, the scorched shirt hanging over a tattoo that had now disappeared into dark, peeling skin, but her adrenaline was firing underneath the drugs and the smoke taking over her system. She was so dizzy. Just so dizzy.

She needed to get out. Mara needed to get out, but she couldn't find a way through the fog, across the beds whose sheets had erupted into fire and the dresser already crumbling into ash, and a lightbulb in the ceiling fan that seemed about to shatter. Her vision was still blurred, her body numbing, and as she searched for a way across the room, her limbs began to feel weak.

And then he appeared. A fireman bursting through the door to help her, and something like a smile caught on Mara's lips before she erupted into another fit of coughing, doubling over weakly. He seemed to say something to her, but she couldn't hear much. His mask in the way, the fire cracking around her, the adrenaline ringing in her ears. But she guessed it was something like, I'm going to help you. I'm here to save you. What she needed to hear right now, even if she didn't deserve to be saved.

The ceiling broke apart. A dozen pieces scattering downward, shattered above them, drew her attention for another moment and she stumbled again, this time the flames from the dresser eating up her sleeve, and she wasn't quite so quick to catch them. Instead, she shook. She quivered, losing her footing, and she looked at him.

She couldn't scream anymore. She just said hoarsely, "Help me."

Mara didn't hear the ceiling break again, splintering over her head, a half dozen pieces falling over her, bigger, heavier this time. She didn't see them, clouding her vision; she was still focused on him, pleading, watching him coming for her. They caught her unaware, offguard, sudden and heavy, and she barely felt it.

The sharp crack against her skull, the thick, wet blood matting her hair, and the sound of her collapsing into the smoke.

#para: hold my breath #th01

Hold My Breath

Mara didn’t smell the smoke.

She didn’t sense much at all, actually – the smoke wasn’t strong enough to wake her up, facedown and dazed on the floor of someone’s room in a frat house she didn’t recognize, the fire licking at the walls just above her line of vision, and the sounds of wall turning to ash and ember just outside the edge of her hearing.

She knew she’d had too much to drink, and this felt more like the remnants of a date rape drug teasing at the edges of her system, but it didn’t matter. It was already too late.

Originally, she hadn’t planned on coming here. She had only been in Pittsburgh a month or so, a new, fake Pennsylvania driver’s license in her pocket even if she didn’t know how to drive and a wad of cash stuffed into her bra, and she hadn’t planned on staying long. Within a week, she didn’t think she liked the town and had set her sights to try Philadelphia – Pittsburgh didn’t have the depravity she was used to so far, and even if it was pleasant, it didn’t pay as well. And Mara had always been in it for the money.

She had been skeptical to try the University of Pittsburgh, but one of the girls said it was popular around this time of year, the coming back to school parties and the boys just getting out from under their parents’ thumb. There was a bar some of the boys used who would rather pay fifty bucks than try their hand at chatting up a girl at parties, and Mara gave it a shot. They were right, and more – some grad student picked her out easily, got down to business, and offered her cash to pretend to be his girlfriend for the night at his old frat house, complete with a fuck in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

Devin Lange. The name blurs in and out of her mind as the smoke fills the room and begins seeping deeper into her lungs, but she remembers now. He reminded her of it before they walked in – Devin Lange, microbiology, great cock, he said to tell everyone – and it wasn’t hard to pass off. A few winks at him across the room, shifting her body and moving her legs until her skirt was nearly indecent to distract the guys she was talking to. And enough beer and liquor and weed to keep everyone off their game. It was a perfect gig for Mara, and she took advantage of it all. Devin got the fuck of his life, panting and wide-eyed afterwards, and Mara got to wipe the come from her mouth and get back down to the party and the tequila.

It’s fuzzy after that. A spiked drink, probably, one of Devin’s supposed friends who wanted to fuck the hot girl that the nerd got to bring to the party, dragged her upstairs until she passed out on the floor and he couldn’t lift her up onto the bed. She can sense that she’s clothed, clothed enough that apparently he never got the chance and that presumably he got out in time.

But none of that matters now, she thinks, the haze of her mind clearing as the haze of smoke over her head intensifies. There’s a fire, a bad one, something she’s never seen before, and it’s eating up the frat house entirely. All she can see is flame and ash and smoke, and she coughs violently before she works up all the energy she has left, everything that isn’t groggy from the drugs and the alcohol and whatever else was burning up her system, and she lifts herself from the floor.

#para: hold my breath #th01