🚨 Four-Alarm Fire, Part Two 🔥
If you haven’t already, read part one here first:
🚨 Four-Alarm Fire, Part One 🔥
Last Friday, as I sat in the dark reading Substack posts with my coffee, I smelled a faint whiff of burning plastic. Then I heard someone scream. It was four-thirty in the morning. Teenagers at their middle-of-the-night shenanigans? Someone stumbling over from the methadone clinic a block away?
With adrenaline pulsing through my body for hours even after the fire was out, everything on my agenda last Friday faded into the background, rendered utterly insignificant.
Just after sunrise, while the 150+ dispatched firefighters started packing up, I met the two roommates who lived in the apartment directly above the bodega where the fire started, before it climbed the walls and pipes into theirs. We were certain their place was destroyed.
Once they checked in with the clipboard-toting Red Cross representative, I invited them back to our place for coffee, water, a bathroom stop, trash bags, and essentials for their tiny 15-year-old blind dog, who had been tucked shivering inside their coats all morning.
They asked if we could watch him while recovering any remaining belongings. So I woke Michael up to spring the request on him, redirecting his day, then scrambled to get Ryder out of the house for a spontaneous day trip.
As I looked over my shoulder while starting down the block, I saw Michael cradling the dog in the crook of his forearms, carrying him into our building before transforming our living room into a safely padded wandering area so he could navigate safely without sight: