Free Hooked by Matt Richtel

grabbed my arm. Don’t be an idiot, he was thinking.
    But then, he didn’t understand it was not nearly as idiotic as I was capable of being. That was spending my twenty-first birthday climbing Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, a 23,000-foot, highly challenging high-altitude ascent amid wicked winds.
    I looked at the water drainage pipe running up the side of the house next to the window. This didn’t qualify as a particularly treacherous climb. And the woman was now slumped. If someone didn’t get up there to calm her down, she was going to suffocate at the summit and get cremated.
    I looked around at the gathering of neighbors. No one seemed to know what to do. The first-floor doors and windows weren’t options.
    I moved under the window.
    I grabbed the pipe, and tested a foot against the stucco. It slipped off. I looked at my feet. Not an ideal time for the slippery black leather shoes I’d worn to the funeral. I pulled myself onto the pipe again. The man I’d been talking to, and one other, perched underneath me, and the pair hoisted my feet. With their help, standing on their hands, I’d have to pull myself only a yard on my own to reach the window’s ledge.
    My feet balancing me on the house, I clung to a metal strap holding the drainage pipe to the building. I reached for a similar strap a foot above, and felt my grip loosen. I started sliding down the pole. I landed on my feet, then my butt.
    I yanked myself up again and got a boost from the men. And I hung there, three feet below the ledge, looking less and less like Spider-Man every second.
    Who was I kidding? I wrote medical stories for a dollar a word, played recreational hoops two days a week, and faced such hero-inspired challenges as eating tuna sandwiches with mayonnaise that was nearing the end of its freshness date. I didn’t even play a doctor on TV.
    But I felt a surge of adrenaline, an almost foreign urge to act. Maybe it was Annie inside my head. I pulled myself within two feet of the window’s ledge and realized I wasn’t going to get closer. I could hear nearing sirens. I looked up to see the woman’s head against the window frame. Her lumpy chin rested on the sill, still rapidly gasping for air.
    “Hey!” I shouted to her. “You ever see a guy fall and break his neck?”
    “What?”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Agnes.”
    “You’re going to be fine, Agnes.”
    She turned her head to the side and threw up. Her head rolled back. She was so panicked that, given her weight, I was afraid she might arrest. Her blood pressure had to be skyrocketing. Her eyes were open. “I don’t want to die.”
    Suddenly, an explosion rocked us. I barely was able to hold on to the pipe, my feet were blown away from the house, my legs waving out like a tattered flag. I pulled desperately to keep from falling. A howl of heat blew out the window, the flames near.
    She started breathing quickly again. She was tremulous and crying. I had to get her talking. I had to get her to focus on me.
    “What happened, Agnes?”
    No answer.
    “Agnes! I need you to tell me what happened here.”
    Something in her eyes snapped open. “I’m just the housekeeper. It’s not even my regular day,” she said, pausing. “I was . . . I was cleaning. It got hot. Then everything . . . so goddamned fast.”
    “Did you smell gas. Was there . . . anything strange?”
    I heard the thump on the windowsill. I had been so entranced, I hadn’t noticed the arrival of the firefighters.
    “Gas, maybe. I don’t know. There was an electrician when I got here. The house was empty because of the funeral. The electrician said she was doing some wiring in the basement . . . ”
    She was cut off by another explosion, just as the firefighters made their ascent. One wrapped his arms around her. I felt a hand on my shoulder, guiding me down a second ladder.
    On the ground, I swam through a growing crowd in search of Erin. She was still sitting in the car, looking stunned.
    “Oh.”
    That was