Since I put up the latest prompts I thought I had also set to and write a rosebud using one of those prompts. So here it is.
Tell me if you like.
Burn Unit
Author: Ares
Written for ba_rosebuds
Prompt: Fire
Word count 449
Disclaimer: I wish.
Cleansing fire, that’s the saying, isn’t it? There’s nothing cleansing about fire. It eats away at wood and metal and flesh. The pain it brings is indescribable. It’ll burn some things down to ash, especially if it’s a vampire doing the burning. I’ve had close encounters with fire in my time. The smell of burning flesh is never pleasant. It’s not like meat burning in an oven. I think it’s the hair that gives it that added aroma.
I’m in the hospital. My hands are bandaged. I flex my fingers, and the pain bites. I ignore it and close my eyes. I’m back at the burnt out house, climbing through the debris, looking for answers. There is water dripping everywhere, ash and soot and blackened beams and a smell that lingers. The firemen did a wonderful job but they were too late to save the woman. Her name was Jane. Mother of four. I had saved two of her children. A girl and a boy. The flames were too fierce to let me get to the baby’s crib.
A sound has me opening my eyes. It’s Buffy. She is crying. Tears are spilling from her eyes. She is watching me.
“Hey,” I say, wanting to reach out to her. I don’t. There’s been enough pain already without adding to it with a touch.
“Hey,” she whispers back.
“They found the boy,” I tell her. “He was with his father. They were at the market, shopping for food.”
Relief steals some of the worry from her eyes.
“The baby?” she asks.
“The doctors are concerned. There was a little smoke inhalation, but they tell me the baby should be fine.”
She tries to smile, and I can see that it hurts her to do so.
“Buffy,” I say, and let her name linger in the air.
“Drugs are good,” she says as she closes her eyes. Her tears are drying on the dressings on her face. Her nose is covered too. Buffy was the one who pulled me back from the baby’s room. She knew that she had a better chance of rescuing the babe than I. She paid the price. She has second degree burns to her body and the pain that comes with it. I feel like a fraud. The paramedics had fussed over me, once Buffy and the kids had been carted off to hospital, and insisted on dressing my burns. I peel away the bandages on my hands. New skin is already forming.
I get up off my chair and lean over and kiss her hair. It suffered too. There are patches that Buffy will not be pleased about. But like her, the hair will recover.
The end.
January 2011