First things first. Harris lowers the girl to the floor—gently, even if she won't care.

"Stay there!" he calls out to the unconscious girl, as he dashes to bar the best conduit for the flames, the door. Gallows humor is like a helping of oxygen, giving him super-Harris strength. He puts his shoulder to the heaviest piece of stand-alone furniture in the suite, a commode. "Huurh!"

The commode digs in, his back protests.

"Fuuu..." He pushes harder. The commode lumbers an inch, screeches against the floor, picks up speed, slides into its new place. "Fuuu..." He pushes harder. The commode lumbers an inch, screeches against the floor, picks up speed, slides into its new place.

"Fuuu..." He pushes harder. The commode lumbers an inch, screeches against the floor, picks up speed, slides into its new place. "Full make-over!"

He grabs the nightstand. "French doors, Miss!" And tosses the bulky missile with all his might through the window.

Glass explodes over the balcony. He throws himself down, over the girl to protect her from stray shards. Because she's in her skin, and Murphy's law— Because he has to protect her.

For a second, they wait out the deadly hail on the floor, face to face. Only his mask separates him from her waxy features. The bright-red lipstick emphasizes bloodless skin around her lips. Crap.

He takes a long drag of air, wrestles his oxygen mask off and slaps it on her. His lungs immediately burn.

"Mayday!" Jung's voice breaks through on the radio. "Mayday! Ladder to the third floor tower window! Sarkisian and one vic are trapped!"

Groaning, Harris climbs back to his feet and hugs the girl to his chest. Every movement is a win against oxygen-deprivation. Jung's voice broadcasting that Sarkisian is trapped, isn't helping his struggle.

Focus... on living. What does he have to live for?

My dad. The house. Dad. The state will shove Sarkisian Senior into some facility without him, so he has to survive. Has to keep dad safe.

The last obstacle is a wedge of glass hanging onto the window frame. He smashes it with his elbow and steps outside.

"Help's on the way," he promises the girl between gasping for air. Will there ever be enough air for his wheezing lungs? "No worries."

Yep, no worries. None. A hotel door and an art déco commode stand between them and the inferno. Its tongues billow one window over, blasting his face with heat every time the wind gusts.

"Everything is under... under..." The shakes start in his hands, threatening to crawl up his arms, into his shoulders, and take over his whole body. If his muscles give up, he'll drop the girl. Everything... under control. I'm in control.

The girl mumbles something through the oxygen mask.

"What's that?" He bends his ear to her.

"Mom," the girl moans in one piteous note, like a dial-tone. "Mom..."

Maybe the girl still believes that moms can fix things? Then her mom must differ greatly from his. He coughs smoke out of his throat and spits it out. "Don't worry, I'll get you to your mom safely. Just need to wait a little longer, 'kay?"

"Angel comes... with fire... fire... fire."

"Fire, yes. But we'll be fine, because it's Thursday." This is the dumbest shit of a conversation, but at least his mind is no longer stuck in the first gear. The shakes recede. "Cool people like us don't die on Thursdays."

He's ready to believe it, but the girl maintains skeptical silence. He waits for her reply; for a huge gasp of coming awake; for bubbling of saliva on her lips; for the quivering of her eyelids.

Nothing.

She's slung over his arms, but something's changed. The girl's no longer a prop for him to lug around in the unfolding drama.

"Wish I had your faith," he says. "We don't have any moms here, nor angels. They can't help us. I'm all you have, so let's hope it's enough."

It must be, because he has someone he has to help, keep alive, someone to live for right now, no matter how tenuous her hold on reality may be, or if she remembers Harris Sarkisian after. This floats him above mundane concerns like dad's medical bills, a buckling wall in the yard and Jung's ass-hol-ier-than-thou-ness. Just treat it as a break, okay?

"Angels with fire, huh?" He cradles the girl tighter to his chest. Her trailing hair, matted with soot, covers her nakedness, except her skinny shoulder that sticks through. He fans the strands over the pink bump, then peeks at the street below. On the gray asphalt, the fire truck maneuvers toward their corner. Small people shuffle, tilting the ovals of their faces up and lifting rectangles of their cell-phones.

"I'm voting for angels with ladders," Harris says with chirpiness, though fatigue washes over him. "Am I right or am I right?"

It seems like a year before the ladder scrapes the railing by his feet, but it's less than ten minutes. The rescue squad's ace shines up it as easily as if he's running on a treadmill.

"There you go, Squirrel-man!" Harris heaves the girl over to him. "Do the thing!"

"You're cheerful," Squirrel-man mutters.

"Why not? I effing love my job." Harris' arms feel empty without the girl. Lighter, he corrects himself. His arms feel lighter without her.

Squirrel-man snorts and drags the girl down, clearing a space for Harris... Only ten seconds more, and he can finally get out of the Avantgarde. Ten-one-thousand. Nine-one-

A sound like a honking bullet-train swells up inside, rushing toward him at an unimaginable speed.

"Watch out!" Harris throws himself over the railing, even though regs require a few more feet of a ladder between him and the duo below. But that's conservative, far too conservative with a fireball swooping onto them.

Somehow Harris grabs the sidebar of the ladder and dangles three stories above the street level. A few inches of reinforced concrete stand between him and the inferno, his feet tread the air, and his fingers burrow into metal.

The fireball blows through the room, exploding onto the balcony. Above Harris' pounding head, concrete creaks from the blast of heat. His breath whistles in his own ears over the drumming of his pulse. Well, shit. Farewell, commode!

Pain shoots through Harris' strained joints—that would all his joints. Before it overpowers him, he has to... has to... Harris swings his leaden leg up and sideways, to crawl onto the ladder. At some point of this acrobatic trick, his chin must have hit metal so hard, he bit through his tongue. Tangy taste fills his mouth.

Even though the fire has vented, he grips the ladder. Is it his imagination, or does he shake so bad, the entire ladder shakes with him, including the pump truck on the ground? Or does the world quake, and he's falling with it?

"One-one-thousand..." He wipes sweat and grime out of his eyes. "Two-one-thousand..." and so forth, until the world stops swinging.

A vision of the leaning fence, flakes of paint on it, and moss velveting every crack dances before his eyes. Stuck between life and death—and he visualizes his dumb retaining wall? Somehow, it's the only thing he clings to aside from the ladder. I really need to get a life.

He slithers down on his belly, like a freaked-out cat, and he'll take it.

"I got you," Squirrel-man says over his sweating neck. Strong hands grip him, urging him to unglue from the ladder. "Climb normally. It'll get you down faster."

Harris rolls his tongue around his mouth. "Gimme a second."

"On the count of three, okay? One. Two."

"Three," Harris wheezes. "Four. Four-and-a-quarter..."

"Go!" Squirrel-man hollers right into his ear to push him out of shock. The yell can peel paint off the walls, and it peels Harris from the metal bars. He blinks tears away and steals a glance down.

The crowd watches them climb down. Their necks are craned, eyes wide. The news-crew films like mad, the cameraman swiveling in every direction. There's a new engine on the scene, preparing to pump. The black-and-whites crawl so thick they could start an annual police convention in Avantgarde. An ambulance is pulling out with wailing sirens and flashing lights, but two more stand by. Local News at Six got the drama they were after, alright.

Among the pandemonium, it's easy to miss a stretcher with a slim figure draped into a metallic blanket. Red hair balloons around her head, bright as a stop-sign, even from this distance.

Harris jerks his shoulder from under Squirrel-man's hand. "Thanks bud, I'm all good now."

"Any time!"

Once on the ground, Harris paces a little. He needs to walk the numbness out of his limbs, and if his legs are carrying him after the stretcher and toward the ambulance, so what?

Jung steps in front of him out of nowhere. "You lucky son of a bitch!" Man's too-white teeth flash from his sooty face. Well, his words, not Harris' and Jung's known Harris' mom in the Biblical sense, so who's Harris to...

Actually, Harris doesn't give a damn about Jung for once. Ambulance 38's Lance is hitching an oxygen mask over his girl's face.

"I... I can't afford to die, Sir. My bank will go broke," Harris says.

The lieutenant snorts, but Harris doesn't have time to celebrate the success of his joke, because Lance jabs a needle into the girl's shoulder. Phantom pain pricks him so sharply, he winces. Without taking his eyes from the emptying syringe, Harris waves at the ambulance.

"Excuse me, Sir. Let me just..."

"Sure, go get yourself checked out." Jung steps out of the way, because the protocol obliges him to do so. "You look a proper mess."

"Thank you, Sir. I strive to be just like my dad." Crap, did this just pop out of his mouth?

Jung's face hardens. "Go get yourself checked, Sarkisian."

The snap should have pushed Harris to the brink of screaming, but his attention is glued to the ambulance and the girl who's asked for her mom and the angels. Jung is just... Jung. With a muttered, Sorry, Sir, I don't even know what I'm saying, Harris stumbles toward the paramedics.

"Hey, Ambu-Lance! How's EM business today?"

Lance doesn't bristle at the nickname, a sure sign that shit's serious. He barely even glances at Harris or, to be more precise, at the lower part of his face. "Get that cleaned up once we're done here."

"Uh-huh." Harris instinctively fondles his chin. Caked blood scratches his fingers. Something is sticky and blackish smears them. He kisses his teeth... tastes blood all over them, but nothing seems loose. It's still a mess, just like Jung has said. Once adrenaline drains off, it'll sting like hell.

"Don't strain yourself thanking me." Lance pushes the stretcher inside the truck, slams the doors shut and waves at his driver. "Let's take her to the Central."

As far as the paramedic is concerned, their exchange is over, but Harris follows Lance around the truck.

"Overdose?"

"Plus smoke inhalation, but oxygen should clear that up. Considering EMT work or what, Harris?"

"Not really, no." His shoulders droop. "This girl saw angels in the fire. I guess that's why... It sucks."

"Everything sucks, dude." Lance sighs philosophically and slams the ambulance's door into his face.

Harris takes the helmet and the liner off and scratches his greasy skull relieved of the extra-weight. Then he hawks a gob of ash-tasting spit on the asphalt. Sure, the paramedic has his issues, but he's right: life sucks. It didn't always suck for Harris, but ever since mom left to pursue her dream job in New York, while dad was still at the ICU... it sucks.

The ambulance takes off, leaving Harris standing in the middle of an empty space, with his helmet in the crook of his arm.

The girl's bloodless face floats up in his imagination, as oblivious to his existence as the moon. An angel comes, the girl's promised him. An angel with fire. With fires? From fire? Why, why on Earth has she woken up in his arms to spout drivel? It was nonsense, delusional and utter nonsense, but so... unsettling.

Moms and angels, what use are those? Time, money, and patience fix things, at least for other people. So what he needs right now is a First Aid kit, then he should go home, sleep and fix that stupid fence. And, oh! He should finish the chess match with dad, it has been on pause since the last time he's been off the shift. Maybe he'll even win it.

As for this girl, he doesn't need to see her again. It's always embarrassing when they thank you, then don't know what to say and stuff.