Free Ghost Hand by Ripley Patton Page B

saved by my mother’s refusal to face death. Maybe every cloud really did have a silver lining. I would have given anything for a sip of water. My eyeballs felt swollen. My tongue tasted like charcoal.
    “Olivia,” called a deep voice as a figure stepped out of the smoke. Mike Palmer, the fire chief, strode toward me, his long, thick, fireman’s coat billowing out behind him like a superhero’s cape. When he crouched next to me, I saw that he hadn’t fastened it up all the way in the front, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath. He must have gotten geared up in a hurry.
    “Olivia, you’re okay.”
    He sounded sure, so that was good.
    “I’ve got the girl over here,” he called over his shoulder as he fastened his fireman’s jacket closed. Several more firemen rounded the back corner of the house pulling a hose with them. Wayne Ramping, rooky fireman and only two years older than me, rushed over with what looked like a giant tackle box. He crouched at my other side, then froze as he suddenly realized I was half-naked.
    “A blanket,” Chief Palmer barked, and Wayne opened the tackle box and pulled out what looked like a huge piece of tin foil. He threw it over my legs, wrapping me up like a space-age burrito and started asking me questions as he and the Chief pulled various medical things out of the box and poked me with them.
    “Are you injured?” Wayne asked.
    I shook my head, though I wasn’t sure.
    “Can you breathe easily, or does it hurt?”
    “Hurts.” It hurt to breath. It hurt to talk. It just plain hurt.
    “What is today’s date?”
    “Friday.” I knew that was the day, not the date, but it was shorter.
    “Was your mother in the house?”
    “No,” the Chief answered before I could. “She was the only one inside.” Had I already told him that?
    “Do you know how the fire started?” Wayne went on.
    “She needs oxygen,” the Chief said, leaning across me to yank an oxygen mask from Wayne’s magic box, which must also contain a small oxygen tank. As Palmer’s arm passed over me, I caught a whiff of something familiar. Something muted, but strong enough to break through the smoky air and my singed nostrils. With the smell came a rush of memory. A flying ball of orange light. The torch on my rug. The man at my window trying to beat the fire out of his own shirt.
    I looked up at Chief Palmer as he stretched the oxygen mask’s band over my head, his hands leaving behind the faint but distinct smell of gasoline.

11
    UMLOT MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
    I woke up in a sunny hospital room, which immediately annoyed me. I hated hospitals. They smelled like disinfected death, and were populated by curt, smiling nurses who never left you alone, and cold, cocky doctors who were never there when you needed them. This hospital, the Greenfield Umlot Memorial Hospital, I hated particularly well. It was where my dad had died. It was where I had spent months watching him waste away, and I had exerted a lot of effort over the last four years avoiding it, which hadn’t been easy because my mom actually worked at UMH three days a week.
    I looked around the room. It was a double, not a private, and they’d put me in the bed closest to the door. The other bed, near the window, was made up and its curtain was open which meant no roommate, so that was good. There was a chair pulled up to the other side of my bed. My mother’s purse was on the bedside table next to a half empty glass of water with lipstick on the rim.
    Seeing the water made me suddenly have to pee, probably thanks to the giant IV bag plugged into my arm. The bathroom door was only a few feet away, but in addition to the IV, I had one of those pinchy things clamped onto the end of my finger, its cord trailing off to a monitor near the head of the bed.
    I was still debating whether to push the nurse call button, when the door swung open and Nurse Jane came in, a familiar face from my dad’s hospital days. He had always referred to her as “one of