“Stay where you are. Keep low. Help is coming.”
The voice on the line was steady, trained, almost gentle. It reminded me of a flight attendant explaining turbulence—calm because panic was not permitted.
I said thank you even though my throat burned when I spoke.
The call ended. The phone screen dimmed. The smoke alarm continued its shrill, merciless scream.
I slid farther into the bathtub, pulling my knees to my chest, the tile already warm beneath my skin. I had wedged towels beneath the bathroom door, soaked them in the sink until the water ran cold and metallic. They were doing their job—for now. Smoke leaked in anyway, curling like fingers searching for my face.
I lived on the eighth floor.
There was no window.
There was no way out.
I knew enough about fires to understand the math. The hallway would already be an oven. The stairwell, worse. Even if firefighters reached the building in time, even if they fought their way upward, there were too many doors. Too many people.
Too much fire.
I pressed my forehead against the porcelain and laughed once, sharp and hysterical, then clamped my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t waste oxygen.
I wasn’t afraid of dying.
I was afraid of dying unfinished.
The phone vibrated faintly in my hand, still unlocked from the emergency call. My thumb hovered uselessly over the screen. My vision tunneled. Everything felt unreal, like watching myself through water.
There was someone I needed to talk to.
Not to beg forgiveness. Not to argue.
Just to say it.
The screen went dark.
I swiped it awake. A lock symbol glared back at me.
Enter PIN
My hands were shaking badly now. The heat pressed down from above, heavy as a hand on my skull.
I typed.
Wrong.
Again.
Wrong.
My heart slammed so hard it made my ears ring.
I forced myself to slow down, breathing through my nose, counting. The numbers came back in fragments—muscle memory, not thought.
The phone unlocked.
I laughed again, this time quieter.
The contacts list opened.
Names scrolled past, meaningless. Coworkers. Old numbers. A dentist I hadn’t seen in years.
I scrolled faster.
She wasn’t there.
Of course she wasn’t.
I’d deleted it months ago, after the voicemail. After the screaming. After she told me never to call her again unless I was “ready to grow up.”
I had told myself I didn’t care.
The smoke thickened. The towels began to hiss.
I tapped Add New Contact with a trembling thumb.
The name field blinked.
I left it blank.
The number field waited.
I closed my eyes.
I didn’t remember her number the normal way. I remembered it wrong—through a stupid jingle she used to sing when I was a kid, tapping the steering wheel in rhythm, making the numbers into music so I wouldn’t forget.
I hadn’t heard that song in years.
But it came back anyway.
I typed.
One digit at a time.
My lungs burned now, each breath shallow and ragged. The bathroom light flickered, then went out entirely, leaving only the glow of the phone.
I saved the number without a name.
The phone asked me if I was sure.
I hit yes.
The smoke dropped low enough that I had to lie flat in the tub, chin resting on my arm, phone held above my face.
Calling wasn’t possible. I couldn’t speak without coughing, couldn’t hear over the alarms and the crackle and roar behind the door.
Texting would have to be enough.
The message box stared back at me.
My vision blurred. Tears came, unbidden, streaking sideways into my hair.
I typed slowly.
I love you.
Deleted it.
Too small.
Typed again.
I’m sorry.
Deleted that too.
The words felt inadequate. Cowardly. Like trying to summarize a life in a fortune cookie.
My hands were going numb.
I typed one final message, spelling everything out, no shortcuts, no sarcasm, no defenses left.
I should have listened. I should have come home. I never stopped loving you and I’m so sorry I didn’t say it sooner.
I stared at it for a long moment.
Then I added one more line.
Please don’t think this was your fault.
I hit send.
The phone vibrated once, softly.
I let it slip from my fingers into the tub.
The smoke swallowed me. My chest seized. The world narrowed to heat and noise and light.
I thought of her face the last time I saw it—tight with anger, eyes rimmed red, jaw set like she was holding something back that might break her if it got loose.
I wondered if she would cry when she read the message.
I wondered if she would forgive me.
The world went dark.
I woke up coughing.
Cold water splashed my face. Hands gripped my shoulders, rolling me onto my side. Someone shouted my name—my real name—sharp and urgent.
I sucked in air so hard it hurt.
The smoke was gone.
The ceiling above me was blackened, blistered. The bathroom door hung open, its frame charred. Firefighters moved through the apartment like red-and-black ghosts, boots crunching over debris.
Someone wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.
“You’re okay,” a woman said, kneeling beside me. “You’re safe.”
I tried to speak, but my throat refused.
My phone lay on the edge of the tub, screen cracked but intact.
It buzzed.
The woman glanced at it. “Family?”
I nodded weakly.
She handed it to me.
A message had come through.
Not from the contact I’d just created.
From a number I recognized instantly.
My mother.
The timestamp was from twenty minutes ago.
The message read:
I don’t know who this is, but you need to stop texting me. I lost my daughter years ago. Please don’t do this.
Below it, another message.
Sent just seconds earlier.
Please don’t contact this number again.
My fingers went cold.
I scrolled.
Above my message—above the number I had typed—was a conversation history I didn’t remember having.
Weeks old.
Then months.
Short texts. Rambling apologies. Missed calls. Long silences.
All sent from my phone.
All unanswered.
I stared at the number I had saved.
At the digits I thought I knew by heart.
One of them was wrong.
Just one.
The jingle I remembered skipped a beat.
The woman beside me touched my arm gently. “Is everything okay?”
I nodded.
I didn’t know how to explain that I had sent my last words into the void.
That the one person I wanted to hear them never would.
That even the fire hadn’t been enough to bring me home.
The phone buzzed one last time.
A system notification.
Message failed to deliver.
I closed my eyes and let the blanket settle around me, warm and heavy.
For the first time since the fire started, I cried.
Quietly.
So no one would hear me.
