Scar by Kelly Favor Page B

that her boyfriend was inside the burning house.
    “We’ll do our best to get him out safely,” the cop said, but he was hardly even looking at her. They had a huge fire on their hands and seemed almost confused by where to start.
    The EMTs had begun trying to deal with the surviving victims.
    The mother and father were conscious, but not doing very well. The mother, in particular, seemed like she was having trouble breathing. They put an oxygen mask over her face.
    Her husband was badly burned on his chest and arms, and they’d cut his shirt off in order to immediately begin treating the wounds.
    More police and fire trucks arrived on the scene.
    As the minutes continued to pass, Caelyn began to get the sick, sinking sensation that Elijah had finally gone back into the house one too many times.
    She felt angrier and angrier as she watched the fireman fight the flames with their gigantic hoses, spraying the upper windows and into the front door.
    Why did he have to keep going back inside? Was saving three people not enough for him? Wasn’t Caelyn enough of a reason to try and survive another day?
    She knew that he’d been brave, but the aching pain reverberating in her soul told her that his bravery would not help her to get over the pain of losing her one true love.
    And the firemen were taking forever to enter the house themselves. She’d heard the neighbors desperately trying to tell them that Elijah and the teenage daughter were inside, and the police and firemen just kept repeating the phrases that they were doing their best and they’d eventually get in, once it was safer to do so.
    About six or seven of them were actually approaching the front door of the house when the unthinkable happened.
    The roof, which had been blackened and smoking and looking progressively weakened, suddenly crashed inward, collapsing like nothing more than a charred piece of paper.
    Half of the house was demolished in the blink of an eye.
    A horrified wail went up from a person near the ambulance, and Caelyn looked over to see that it was the mother. “No!” she cried out, throwing off her oxygen mask and trying to fight through the EMTs and police as if wanting to go inside the house herself.
    The whispers and conversation told Caelyn that her worst fears were realized. The daughter’s room was on that second floor, the one that had been wiped out when the roof caved in.
    What were the chances that Elijah hadn’t been up there, trying to extricate the girl when the roof collapsed? Caelyn wondered.
    That’s if he’d even gotten that far.
    The crumbling of the structure had made the authorities even more cautious about entering the house. They continued to fight the flames with hoses.
    Caelyn made her way over to the ambulance, where the husband was arguing with a policeman as he tried to comfort his sobbing wife. “Someone needs to go in there,” the husband said.
    “Listen, it’s too dangerous right now,” the cop told him. “If our men had been inside when that roof went down, your daughter wouldn’t be any safer and all we’d have is a bunch more victims.”
    “She’s going to die if nobody tries,” the husband said, holding his wife with one arm. “Can’t you at least try?”
    “Look, we’re doing our very best and I can promise you—“
    Suddenly, there was a rush of screams and cries from onlookers. Everyone turned to see what was going on.
    “Someone’s coming out!” Caelyn heard.
    “Oh my god!” another person cried.
    Caelyn saw that somehow, unbelievably, Elijah had reemerged from the front door of the house, literally carrying the daughter’s lifeless body over his shoulders.
    He collapsed to the ground and then the cops and firemen were all over them, and pandemonium ensued.
    Instantly, there were people surrounding him—police officers, firemen, EMTs, and now the neighbors were crowding closer as well. They all wanted to get close to the action, wanted to know if the girl was alive, and everyone