All I Want Is Everything. Daaimah S. Poole

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СКАЧАТЬ get up and call 911. I think the house is on fire!”

      “What? Leave me alone. Stop playing. I’m asleep.”

      “Lana!” I screamed again. I opened the door and saw dark yellow and orange flames halfway up the steps. There was black smoke everywhere, but the fire hadn’t reached the hallway yet. I closed the door and screamed, “Wake the fuck up, Alanna! It’s a fire. Call 911.” I snatched her out of the bed. She finally saw how serious I was and got up and searched for the cordless phone.

      “It’s not working. We going to die,” she yelled.

      “Be quiet. We not going to die. Yell ‘fire’ out the window and see if anyone is outside. I have to get the kids.”

      Me and Alanna were in the front room. I ran into the middle room to check if my mom was home, but her bed was empty. I ran past the steps where the fire was rising rapidly. It was coming up the steps. I could feel the heat on my back and neck. Lana came into the hallway and said the neighbors were calling the police. She then went into the bathroom and grabbed a bucket and threw water down the steps. That made the fire get higher and rise faster up the steps. I ran into the room next to my mother’s bedroom. Bubbles was still lying in the bed asleep.

      “Bubbles, get up! It’s a fire!” I looked all around but didn’t see Bilal. “Where is Bilal?”

      “I don’t know.”

      I coaxed her past the flames and had Alanna take her into the front room.

      “Where you going?” Lana asked.

      “I have to find Bilal!” I hoped he wasn’t downstairs.

      The fire was getting closer to the top of the steps. I was coughing, but I put my T-shirt over my mouth and kept walking toward the back room. There was dark smoke everywhere and I could barely see my own hand in front of me. I extended my arms out to make sure I didn’t bump into anything. I reached John’s room and found Bilal balled up in John’s bed. He had fallen asleep playing the game.

      I tried to pick him up, but I was becoming weak and coughing. I almost couldn’t breathe. I felt myself losing strength. I couldn’t leave him but he felt so heavy. I pulled him out of the bed and began dragging him across the floor. That’s when I heard glass break. A few seconds later I saw a figure in a yellow suit coming toward me. He picked me up and pulled me off of Bilal.

      I kicked and screamed, “My brother!” I fought him and yelled, “My brother! My brother! My brother! You’ve got to get my brother!” I continued to yell until I almost passed out.

      The man carried me past the flames into the front room and passed me out the window to another firefighter. I unwillingly went down the ladder. All our neighbors were outside looking up. Three fire trucks and two ambulances were there. I could hear the firefighters’ radios and their trucks idling. They sat me on a stretcher and put an oxygen mask on my face inside the ambulance. As soon as they sat me down on the stretcher I told them to get off of me and that I had to get my brother.

      “Get my brother! Get my brother!” I yelled. They told me to calm down, but I couldn’t calm down. I jumped off the stretcher. I ran out and saw Alanna. She was holding Bubbles next to her, and they were looking up at the window. My next-door neighbor, Ms. Arlene, came over to me and said the other firefighters were still in there. I looked up and saw another man coming down the ladder with Bilal. He was carrying him over his shoulders like a rag doll.

      “Is he okay?” Ms. Arlene yelled.

      The fire fighters pushed everyone out of the way, put him in the ambulance and pulled away. Then they grabbed me, Alanna and Bubbles and asked us if anyone else was in the house. Then they put us in the other ambulance. They said they had to check us out at the hospital. We didn’t say anything the entire ride. I think we all were too scared to ask if Bilal was still alive. We would find out in a few minutes when we got to the hospital.

      At the hospital they tried to treat me, but I still wanted to know what was going on with Bilal. A nice nurse told us he was alive but unconscious. Lana found out what room he was in, so we asked the same nurse if we could see him. She acted like she didn’t hear us but opened the door on the sly. We walked into his room and saw that they had him hooked up to all these machines. Tubes were going up his nose, but at least he was alive. Alanna and Bubbles starting crying. I just wanted to know if he was going to make it and what was wrong with him.

      Chapter 3

      My mom showed up at the hospital about half an hour after we had arrived. She was crying hysterically and smelled like alcohol. I was so mad at her—she was actually slurring when she spoke. We were just fighting for our lives and she was somewhere having a drink. She tried to fix herself up, though it was so obvious that she was out of it. But we all got up and hugged her, and then we started crying. She walked down the hall with all of us attached to her.

      “Where is your brother? Is he okay?” she asked, breaking away from our group hug.

      “They won’t tell us anything. They were waiting on you,” Alanna said.

      My mother went up to one of the nurses coming out of Bilal’s room. “Hello, ma’am, I am Bilal Thomas’s mother. What’s wrong with him?”

      The nurse looked at us. Then she walked my mother into the room. The nurse came out and then brought a group of doctors back with her. Bubbles asked the group of doctors, “What’s wrong with my brother?”

      One of the doctors stopped, kneeled down, and said, “Your brother’s going to be okay. We’re just checking him out, making sure he is one hundred percent before he leaves.” He touched Bubbles on her cheek, smiled at us and walked away.

      My mother came out of the room and told us that he had smoke inhalation and they had to monitor him because his asthma could be affected, but he was not going to die. I went and walked to the bathroom. I felt a little better knowing Bilal was going to be okay. When I came back I saw Bubbles talking to the nurse who had been talking to my mom. I kept coughing. When she saw me she smiled and offered me a ginger ale. She then pulled me to the side.

      “So how are you feeling?” she asked.

      “Good.”

      “I was talking to your little sister and she said your mother is never home and she leaves them home by themselves.”

      “That’s not true. My mom be working all the time. When she’s not home, I’m there. I’m seventeen and my other sister is eighteen.”

      “She wasn’t home when the fire started, right?”

      “No. She stepped out for a moment.”

      “Do you know where she went?” she asked, frowning.

      “No.” I knew better than to say the bar.

      “Okay, thanks for speaking with me.” She went back to the nurses’ station and jotted something down. Then my mother came out of the room and asked her for a blanket. The nurse gave her an attitude and said she would bring one in there shortly. We all sat in chairs around Bilal’s bed.

      It was two in the morning, and Alanna had called Bruce and he came to the hospital. Moments later she announced that she was leaving СКАЧАТЬ