Healing Stones
“I came up on the window seat, straight into the covers-clutching, cardiac-arresting position of the fireman’s wife, like I’d done for twenty-one years. The prayers cried out before I knew I was awake.
God—don’t let it be Rich!
I squeezed everything so the fear wouldn’t take me into places no one who loves a fireman should go: into suffocating smoke and flesh-eating flames and beams-turned-to-tinder crashing onto heads even helmets couldn’t protect. Some wives didn’t want to know anything about the fire-beasts their husbands fought, and most wouldn’t have a scanner in the house. Others went to as many fires as their husbands did, cameras in hand. I always lay still and listened to the siren wail its agony and waited for the call.
Only tonight, there would be no reassuring ring from my husband. The thought that there might never be again drove me into the kitchen, where I flooded the room, and my spiraling psyche, with light.
Four AM. An acceptable hour to make coffee and start the day.
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