I’m 32 now, and the only reason I’m alive is because my mother carried me out of a burning house when I was two.
The fire started from a gas leak in the kitchen. It happened in the middle of the night. My father was away on a work trip, so it was just me and my mom in the house. She woke up to the smell, then the explosion. She got me out of my crib and ran through smoke carrying me outside.
When my father came home and saw her after the hospital, he didn’t thank her for saving me.
I don’t remember the fire itself. I remember the scars.
They run along one side of her face, down her neck, and across her shoulder. When I was old enough to ask, she told me the truth in the plainest way possible.