Chapter 2 - The Morning Broadcast
Dawn broke over Portland with a pale, bruised light that filtered through the rain-streaked windows. I didn't wake up naturally; I woke up to a chaotic symphony of flashing red and blue lights painting the living room walls in frantic strokes.
Clang. Shouts. The heavy thud of running boots on wet pavement.
I bolted upright, gasping for air. My head spun violently, a sickening wave of nausea crashing over me. The air in the house felt thick, heavy, and strangely sweet—a suffocating blanket that made every breath a struggle.
Before I could stand, the front door rattled violently, followed by the deafening sound of splintering wood as it was kicked open.
“Fire department! Clear!”
A figure in heavy yellow gear rushed into the living room, a gas detector shrieking in his hand like a dying animal. The digital screen flashed a blinding red warning.
“Gas leak! High concentration! We need an evacuation line down the entire block right now!” the firefighter yelled into his radio, his voice muffled by his respirator mask.
Strong arms hoisted me out of James’s armchair before I could protest. My legs felt like lead, my mind swimming in a hazy, toxic fog as I was carried out through the shattered front door into the brisk morning air.
Paramount urgency surrounded the street. Neighbors in bathrobes and raincoats stood behind yellow police tape, shivering in the drizzle. Two massive fire engines blocked the driveway, their hoses snaking across the front lawn. Ambulances sat with their doors flung wide, oxygen tanks hissing.
They placed me on a stretcher at the back of an ambulance, pressing an oxygen mask over my face. The cool, pure oxygen hit my lungs, slowly pushing back the heavy darkness that had been dragging me under.
A paramedic with kind, weathered eyes shined a penlight into my eyes. “You’re lucky you were near the front of the house, ma'am. The concentration of natural gas in the rear hallway was off the charts. If you’d stayed asleep another twenty minutes, carbon monoxide poisoning would have finished what the leak started.”
I clutched the edge of the stretcher, my voice raspy and weak. “My house...”
“Your gas line ruptured near the foundation,” he said gently, wrapping a warm foil blanket around my shoulders. “If a neighbor hadn't smelled the gas while walking their dog at 6:00 a.m. and called emergency services, this whole block would have gone up.”
As I sat there, wrapped in silver foil, watching firefighters ventilate the home James and I had built together, a camera crew from a local news station pushed past the police perimeter. A reporter with a microphone and a cameraman hurried toward the scene.
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Across town, in millions of living rooms, families were waking up to the morning news.
And by 7:30 a.m., my family’s phones would begin to ring off the hook.
