PUMPKIN

by ardavenport

- - - Part 1

There was smoke in the stairwell.

They went in anyway, coughing, going down the dingy narrow stairs. There wasn't any other way. Louise wouldn't risk getting trapped in that small and very old elevator. And weren't you supposed to not use elevators if there was a fire?

But as they passed the fourth floor landing, they heard the ominous sounds of crackling, fire consuming the building under them, and they coughed more from thicker puffs of smoke rising from below. Louise peered down and saw a yellow flicker.

Doris screamed, whirled around and fell on the stairs, one flailing hand grabbing the railing, but still clutching her big green cloth purse. Coughing harder, her eyes tearing, Louise pushed the strap of her own small handbag up over her shoulder as far as it would go and took Doris's arm. They climbed back up to the fourth floor landing; Doris screamed, hacking and coughing every step.

Louise opened the door and dragged Doris into the hallway. It was silent, except for their coughing. There hadn't been a tenant on the fourth floor for over a year. Closed doors with old names on the frosted glass windows of the offices. Their was a haze of smoke in the air, but no obvious source for it. Charred wood and rubber and stone.

"What are we going to do?! What are we going to do?!"

Louise tugged on a door. Locked. "Shut up and find one that's open!"

"We can't get down through any of these! That's the only stairway!" Doris panicked and shrieked in place. "We're going to burn up in this crummy building!"

Getting angry, Louise kept tugging on doors. "You will if you just stand there like an idiot! Now help me with this!" How could her co-worker and roommate fall apart so completely? Become that useless dumb blond that she could so easily pretend to be?

They moved down the hallway, door to door, Doris with more and more panicked squeals as she tugged on the doorknobs. When they got to the big double doors at the end, those were locked, too. Doris shrieked and pounded on the barrier with her fists.

"Let us out! Let us out! Somebody help us!"

Nothing was open.

Louise could see daylight through the frosted glass of the doors on the left side. Those faced outward toward the street. She picked up a metal trash can in the hall and slammed it against the door pane. It didn't go through. Didn't even crack it. Her heart pounding, she slammed it harder. The glass shattered on the third blow and she flinched from the flying shards.

Doris shrieked.

Reaching past the jagged glass, Louise turned the inside lock. "Get in here!"

"It's on fire! It's on fire!" She pointed frantically, hopping in place. Louise looked.

Smoke billowed out from under the stairwell door. And flames at the corners. Suddenly the jokes about their office being a fire trap were not so funny.

"Come on!" Louise dragged her friend through the empty outer office to the inner one and slammed the door behind them. She rushed to the window. She pushed upward, opening it. The building was old, with old fashioned stone ledges. She heard sirens outside.

"We can't go out there! We can't go out there! We'll fall!"

"We can't stay here!" She tried to catch Doris's flailing arms. Did people really do this when they panicked? Then she grabbed her scarf, tearing it off her neck.

"Don't look!" she shouted, tying the scarf around the other woman's head.

"Ow!" Doris tried to pull out her blond hair, caught in the knot.

Louise grabbed her arm, dragged her to the window and climbed up on the sill, the peeling paint and splintered wood digging into her legs. Her handbag slid down of her shoulder and she pushed it back out of the way again. She heard sirens down below. The ledge was wide, but the street was still four stories down.

"Give me your hand!"

"I can't! I can't!"

Louise crouched, arm out; her hand clinched on Dori's shoulder. She cried and repeated, "I can't! I can't" as Louise dragged her up. Her knees were bloody, her hands scraped from the fall in the stairwell. Those stupid two-inch heels. But there was no way to get them off now. And Doris still wouldn't let go of her huge purse. Heaven forbid that Doris Hanover should go anywhere - - even to flee for her life - - without her makeup. Louise stood, hugging the stone facade of the building and pulling Doris up with her.

"YOU ON THE LEDGE! STAY INSIDE! CLOSE THE DOOR! WE'RE SENDING HELP UP TO YOU!" A man's amplified voice came from below. But Louise could see smoke coming in through the broken frosted glass of the door now. How did the fire get there so fast??? It would come in right after them.

"Come on!" Louise inched along on the ledge, her hand still clamped to Doris's wrist.

"I can't! I can't"

Hugging the wall, the fingers of her free hand digging in between the gray blocks of the building facade, she inched away from the window.

"I can't! I can't!"

"YOU ON THE LEDGE! PLEASE, STAY WHERE YOU ARE! WE'RE SENDING HELP UP TO YOU NOW!"

Louise stopped. Doris shrieked.

"Please! HELP US! HELP US!"

Her screams dissolved in a coughing fit and Louise felt her own horror that Doris might lose her balance and fall off the building. Keeping close to the outer wall, she carefully turned around. Her fingers dug into the hard stone as her own coughing fit came out.

Red fire trucks, hoses, running men. Streams of water sprayed upward from below the shear drop over the ledge. A platform with firemen on it rose on the end of a long arm extended from one of the trucks, the machinery of it groaning louder as it came up to them.

Doris cried and coughed, sobbing loudly for help.

The tops of the two firemens' helmets came up level with the ledge, then the rest of them, leaning forward on the railing of the platform.

"You're going to be okay, just stay calm. We're going to get you down, but you have to stay calm." The fireman with the darker hair under his black helmet held his hand out to them.

"Please! Help us! Please, please, I don't want to fall!"

"You're not going to fall. Now just stay calm." The platform had risen level with the ledge, closer to Doris. The dark-haired fireman reached out to her, but the other one looked at Louise. He had blue eyes.

"It's okay. You're doing real well. We'll get you down in a minute." Louise clinched her teeth and nodded, but the other fireman was having trouble with Doris. She didn't fight him, but she wasn't helping either.

"No, I can't! I can't! We''ll fall!"

"Now just calm down! Calm down! You're not going to fall!" He leaned over the railing of the platform and grasped her shoulders. "Now just come toward me. Come toward me." Doris whimpered but she let him pull her away from the wall.

"You're gonna be all right now. You're gonna be all right. I'm just going to lift you up toward me." He got his arms around her waist.

"Aaaaaaaaiiiiiii!!" She screamed when he lifted her and quickly swung her around inside the railing. The other fireman helped and she latched onto him, crying.

"It's all right. We'll have you down from here in minute." The blue-eyed fireman put an arm around Doris while the other one turned to her. Louise started to inch toward him on the ledge.

"Don't move." He stuck his arm out toward her, palm out. "We'll come to you." He waved a signal down to the truck below where the fire and the spraying water was still going on in the shadow of the buildings. The truck motor growled.

"Now don't look down!"

Louise pressed herself back against the building and then turned her head to the side. Flames and smoke were coming out of the window that she and Doris had climbed out of.

"Should I look there instead?"

He half smiled back. "Just look at me." He reached out to her. "Now, just come to me. You're gonna be all right." She looked at him. He was young, but not a kid. He had a long face and brown eyes.

His hands came around her waist as he leaned toward her. She put her hands on his shoulders. She picked up her legs as he lifted her up over the railing.

"There we go. Now we're going to get you down right away."

Louise grabbed him when she felt the platform jolt under her.

"Now it's all right, we're taking you down right now."

The platform descended, but she didn't let go of him, her head pressed against the heavy canvas coat. He was thin and tall, she could tell that much through his protective clothing.

"You're going to be all right. We'll be down in a minute." He laid his hands on her shoulders without putting his arms around her. Louise coughed and trembled. Did people really do that when they were afraid? Doris clung to the other fireman; the volume of her crying had gone down a lot and she'd pulled the scarf off her face.

"Now, see? We're down." She looked around. They were just above the street. They took out a middle bar from the platform so they could get out underneath the railing and there were more firemen to help her and Doris down to the street. The pavement was wet but solid under her feet and they had to pick their way across lines of hoses lying across it.

"Now we're just going to sit down right over here." The tall, thin fireman with Louise spoke over her head. They were led to the back of a small red fire vehicle and sat down on the tail board.

"I'm Fireman-Paramedic John Gage and this is my partner Roy DeSoto. We're just going to check you out." Both firemen took off their helmets and heavy coats. They wore short sleeve blue uniform shirts, silver badges, name tags.

"I'm - - " she covered her mouth to keep from coughing in John Gage's face " - - Louise Gorhan and this is - - " cough, cough " - - Doris Hanover." Cough.

John Gage wasn't skinny. He was tall and slender and tanned. And he had thick dark hair, mostly black with dark brown highlights in the sunlight. He brought her a tank and a mask.

"Now breathe into this." He put a huge black mask on her face. It was connected to a hose and a big tank. Next to them, the other fireman tended to Doris who breathed and coughed into a second mask.

"These don't look too bad, but you should have them looked at, at the hospital." He swabbed the blood that had run down from Doris's bruised and scraped knees. But that fireman didn't know Doris. Anything that kept her from wearing a mini-skirt or bikini was a major disaster. She was going to have to wear slacks for weeks now.

Louise jumped.

"It's okay, it's okay. I'm just taking your pulse." John Gage bowed his head and looked down at his watch. He had very nice thick hair, a little long but perfect for him. She wanted to touch it. She looked down at where he touched her. He had nice hands. And no wedding ring.

He dropped his hand from her. With a ripping sound he took out a thick fabric strip and pushed the short sleeve of her dress back.

"Now, I'm just going to take your blood pressure here."

She nodded, still breathing into the mask that she held over her nose and mouth. She averted her eyes, glad that her face was covered and wouldn't give away what she was thinking, how nice it would be for him to put his arms around her now that he wasn't wearing a heavy canvas coat and they weren't four stories above the street.

The band inflated very tightly on her upper arm and, head bowed again, he listened to the pounding vein in her arm with a stethoscope. She clinched the fist of her free hand. If she reached over and touched his hair he would just look up at her like she was a freak and she couldn't bear that.

He finished. Wrote numbers down on a little pad with a green pen from his front pocket. Then he opened a red case on the ground while the other fireman reached across for the blood pressure thing.

"Rampart this is Squad Fifty-One, how do you read?" John Gage spoke into a telephone receiver.

A woman's voice answered and he read the numbers to her. And then the numbers that Roy DeSoto got for Doris. Louise wished there were some other reason for John Gage to touch her again. But she knew there wasn't. A man's voice spoke out of the radio in the red case.

Louise squinted up at their old office building. There was less fire and more smoke. Firemen with hoses poured water down into the fifth floor windows from the platform crane. Smoke poured out of the top of the building but there was no fire coming from the sixth, top floor, where their offices were. Had been.

"Now, you both look fine, but you really should go to the hospital so the doctors can check you out, just to be sure." Roy DeSoto put things back in a black box as he spoke to Doris. A man's outraged voice startled them all.

"Oh no! Oh no, no, no!!"

Uncle Floyd had finally gotten back from lunch.

He ran right past where they were, stumbled over the fire hoses and turned around in circles a few time. Short and balding, wearing a cheap gray suit, shirt and tie, he accosted a fireman who looked like he was in charge. Louise couldn't hear what was being said over the noise of the fire trucks and men running around and hoses, but Uncle Floyd was red in the face and started flapping his arms. A policeman came over.

"I can't believe this!" Uncle Floyd tore his arm away from the policeman who led him away from the firemen. The two paramedics scowled in his direction as he came running up to them.

"Louise! What happened?! What's going on?! I go out for a short lunch and I come back to this!"

Uncle Floyd always took a two-hour lunch at Milligan's. With a beer or two.

"And now everything's gone up in smoke?!"

John Gage stood up. "Sir, Sir? Do you know them? Are you a friend?" He tried to block Uncle Floyd without actually touching him.

"A friend?! A friend?! She's my niece! She's supposed to be my office manager! While my whole business is burning down!" Uncle Floyd raved and flapped; his comb-over had come completely unglued.

First Doris, now Floyd. Hysteria all around. Louise threw the mask down and marched right up to her uncle. "Well, what do you expect, renting in that cheap flop house?! I'm surprised it didn't burn down before now!"

Floyd sputtered, his come-over fluttering. His shirt collar and tie were loose and he had a brown stain on his jacket lapel. "Well, did you save anything?! How am I supposed to run a business this way with smoke," he waved an arm skyward, "smoke coming out of the windows!"

"We've got copies of everything at the warehouse!"

Louise had nagged Floyd for months about keeping back-up copies of their books, the orders, the customers, the shipping, the vendors. He wouldn't buy a xerox machine (they were so expensive, Louise cringed when she saw the price, not to mention the maintenance fees) but there were printing shops who would make copies. Expensive, but worth it. But now she was too angry at him for a good 'I told you so.'

"What?! We can't have everything at the warehouse! We can't do business from a warehouse!"

"Uh?"

They looked. Roy DeSoto had raised a hand. Next to him, Doris, an oxygen mask still on her face, held up their address card box and green appointment book from her purse.

"Yes!"

Uncle Floyd ran to her and ripped them out of her hands. He muttered, thumbing furiously through the pages of the book.

"Now, Louise we've got to start calling - - "

"We're not calling anyone! Doris and I are going to the hospital! And you are going to come pick us up when we're done!"

"Hospital, hospital? What? Are you hurt? You don't look hurt? What hospital? Do I have to call your mother?"

Thank-you Uncle Floyd for noticing.

Roy DeSoto approached cautiously. "They're fine. But the doctors should look them over, just to be sure."

"Oh, oh, oh." Somewhat deflated, Uncle Floyd's head looked back and forth between DeSoto and Louise. "Oh, all right. You go then. I'll take care of this. As long as I don't have to call your mother." He started thumbing through the book again.

"Fine." Louise did not want to call her mother either. Next to her, John Gage still cringed back as if she was on fire. She clinched her teeth, her shoulders hunched. "Sorry."

"It's all right." Roy DeSoto extended his arm toward two ambulance attendants in white pants and shirts.

This was it. They were done. DeSoto helped Doris up and she and Louise went with the attendants. One of them helped Doris up first.

"Do you think your uncle is going to remember to pick us up?"

Louise looked back, leaning to the side to try and see around the red fire vehicle for one last glimpse of John Gage.

"I'll call him at the warehouse from the hospital."

- - - End Part 1