Donna woke with a start, disoriented in her dark bedroom. It took her a fraction of a moment to make sense of the screeching sound around her but once her brain registered the noise, she was out of bed in an instant, yelling for her roommate.
She opened her door hesitantly, the screeching becoming louder as she entered the smoky living room.
"Susan!" She shouted, coughing a bit. "Susan?" It took a minute before Donna realised that her roommate was staying at her boyfriend's house that night.
Donna tried to think fast, her mind quickly going to work. She moved to the front door, touching the knob and finding it hot, the thick black smoke streaming through into her apartment. "Oh my God," she said out loud to no one. "The building is on fire."
Terror began to race through her. She quickly made her way to the living room window, looking out into the night. Smoke was billowing out of the side of their building as people ran around below her.
She unlocked the main window that led to the fire escape, pulling on it only to realize it was jammed closed. She banged on the glass, but there was no one nearby to hear her cries for help. Panic continued to rise inside of her as she yanked on the window, wheezing as she exerted herself in the smoky room. The window wouldn't budge. Looking around, Donna grabbed the Louisville Slugger from their coat closet and shattered the window, the smoke immediately beginning to billow out of the apartment. It would do. Donna thought she could squeeze out.
She grabbed Susan's cat from it's hiding place behind the corner lamp and crawled out onto the fire escape, into the bitter cold. She made her way down the rickety metal ladder as quickly as she could, ignoring the various pains she felt along the way.
She stood barefoot on the street, becoming suddenly self conscious about the way she was dressed. The oversized Yale Law t-shirt and tiny pajama shorts weren't doing much to provide warmth against the night air.
The whole block was waking up as firefighters worked to contain the blaze. Neighbors spoke amongst themselves to account for everyone and by some miracle, all of the buildings residents had made it out.
"Would you like to call someone?" A woman from the building across the street offered her phone to Donna.
It was only then that Donna realized that her cell, and everything else for that matter, were inside the still smoldering building. Everything she owned was in there. Everything.
"Miss?"
"Hmm?" Donna, still a little dazed, turned to look at a hunky paramedic.
"Your leg, and hands. You're bleeding. Can I help you into the ambulance?"
"Oh, I'm sure it's not..." she looked down, noticing the blood for the first time. "Oh. Oh my."
She sat down on a gurney in the back of the ambulance, wrapping herself in the emergency blanket that a waiting medic had draped around her shoulders and fighting off scratches from Susan's cat.
"It's really no big deal," Donna explained to the medic cleaning the large gash on her leg. "I'm fine," she choked out before she began coughing again.
The woman looked up and studied her closely as her coughing fit continued. "Did you breathe in a lot of smoke?"
Donna nodded her head weakly as her eyes began to water from the coughing.
"We're going to take you in. You could use a few stitches in your leg, too."
"No!" Donna protested as she took a slow breath. "No, that won't be necessary. Really."
"Smoke inhalation can be serious. It's nothing to ignore." The paramedic gently placed an oxygen mask on Donna's face.
Donna thought of her high insurance deductible, her already tight finances and the fact that she'd have to replace everything she owned.
"I'm fine," she stated again, moving to get up. "I just need to… to…" she didn't know what the end of that sentence was supposed to hold. She couldn't go home. She didn't have a home.
"Would you like to call someone?" The medic softened her tone, handing her a bottle of water.
Donna vigorously nodded her head yes, suddenly overwhelmed by the situation. She took a sip of the water, not realizing how badly she'd needed it, and willed herself not to cry.
She hardly knew any numbers by heart, except Josh's of course.
Josh. Her heart made a heavy thud in her chest. She should call him. Tell him she's okay. After all, he didn't do so well with fire. But she couldn't call Josh. He was on the road, overnighting in Cincinnati. She wasn't going to wake him up and worry him- Not for this. Not that he'd even care at this point. They'd been stuck in a strange dynamic lately, anyway. They'd never fully recovered from Cliff and the Diary, and now Donna was having to watch him trip all over himself for Amy Gardner.
He'd be home tomorrow, she'd tell him then.
In the meantime, though, she needed somewhere to go. It was 3 am and she had nothing but the clothes on her back and her roommates cat.
"If you have a friend or relative nearby, we can give you a ride to their place," a police officer assured. "But I have to say that I agree with Rebecca, the ER probably wouldn't be a bad idea."
"I'm fine," Donna insisted yet again. "But if you could drive me to my friend CJ's house I'd appreciate it."
The officer nodded his consent and helped Donna into the squad car, following her directions to CJs place.
"Thanks again," Donna was sincerely grateful for the ride. She wasn't sure what she would have done otherwise.
She made her way up to CJs door, knocking in increasingly loud intervals, to no avail.
"You've got to be kidding me," Donna felt the tears threaten to fall once again. CJ wasn't home. It took Donna a minute to pull herself together enough to formulate a plan.
Toby lived a block away. It wasn't idea, knocking on Toby Ziegler's door in the middle of the night, but Sam's place was easily a mile walk. And that didn't sound like a great idea alone in the dark.
She was almost certain that Toby lived in Unit 7. She'd never been to his place before, but she knew that she had the right building because she'd given him a ride from the airport once. Yes, Unit 7 stick out in her mind. She knocked aggressively, figuring she didn't have much to lose if it was the wrong door. Sure, the people would see her filthy and barefoot in their building holding a meowing cat and probably call the police, but at this point she didn't care.
A few moments later a very grumpy Toby answered the door.
"What do you want?" He barked, swinging the door open, only for his face to immediately soften when he saw Donna standing before him.
"I… I'm sorry to bother you," her lip quivered. "But I didn't know where else to go."
Toby wasted no time ushering her inside, cat and all, and pulling her into a hug as soon as the door closed. "It's okay," he assured, not knowing what had happened. "You're going to be okay."