Between the car accident and my mom’s stroke, I’m ready for things to get back to some level of normalcy. It won’t be today.
I had just gotten into the shower when I heard the doorbell ring. Since I was naked and wet, as well as running behind schedule, I figured whoever was ringing would come back. Or call and say they’d tried to stop by.
But a few minutes later I heard sirens. A few seconds after that I knew they had turned into our neighborhood, and it didn’t take me even a nanosecond more to realize they’d turned on to our street.
I raced to the window, with a sinking feeling in my gut that there was a connection between whoever had just been at the door and the sirens.
I was right. The fire trucks were in front of a house across the street which belongs to our neighbors and good friends who always help with Murph and the cats.
I threw on clothes and dashed outside, my mind racing with possible tragic scenarios involving the babies. (Who are not babies anymore. They’re toddlers, but because they’re twins and it sounds cute I still refer to them as “the babies.”)
But then a funny smell hit me. Not a smoke fire smell. It was more electrical.
Halfway across the street a worried Cindy came to meet me and assured me the babies were fine, she was fine, and there was no fire, just that horrid smell. But she asked if I could please watch the babies while the firemen checked things out.
Of course!
Later when she came to pick them up she explained how she’d survived a fire before, back when her oldest son was only six months. In that case trouble with their gas pipes sparked it off. They’d gotten out fine, and she’d managed to get two of the three cats and their dog out, but she couldn’t get the third cat to come to her before flames engulfed their house. The fireman found it dead under the couch. (What the fire hadn’t taken the water had. They lost everything.)
It was understandable why she was upset as it was, but then she burst into tears and said, “It was like déjà vu all over again. Gracie wouldn’t come to me. I feared I was going to lose her like I did our other cat.” (Whose name she said but I forgot.)
Gracie opted to squirrel herself under the furthest reaches of the bed rather than do like their dog was doing and get the heck out with Cindy and the babies.
Thankfully everything turned out okay this time, but it sure was scary!
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