A Hero's Reward Read online

  A Hero's Reward

  Text copyright © 2013, Amy Morrel

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - A Day Off

  Chapter 2 – Overnight for Observation

  Chapter 3 – Interviews

  Chapter 4 – Downtime for Greg

  Chapter 5 – Insult to Injury

  Chapter 6 – Recovery Plus Interest

  Chapter 7 – The DMV and a Surprise

  Chapter 8 – Margaret Unchained

  Chapter 9 – Margaret's Discovery

  Chapter 10 – Jack's Return

  Chapter 11 – Settling In

  Chapter 12 – Full House

  Chapter 13 – Court and Courting

  Chapter 14 – Arson and the Kid's Place

  Chapter 15 – Permanence

  * * *

  Chapter 1 - A Day Off

  Greg was looking forward to the explosions, the gunfire, and the hero rescuing the girl. His movie was just getting to the best part. He spent the majority of his days off watching this or that movie, mostly action adventure. He didn't have much else to do any more since his wife had divorced him and taken the kids. His construction job had him working four or five long days each week, so he liked to take a load off of his feet and relax when he had the opportunity.

  Wow, this one's really getting to me, I'd swear I smell smoke was the last thought to pass through his mind before his life changed dramatically. A loud explosion drowned out the noise from the television, assaulting his eardrums and rocking his house. A quick glance out the window showed that the house across the street was engulfed in raging flames. Noting that the car was present in their driveway, he raced outside to see if the people who lived there had made it out. Traffic was stopped in the street, the drivers staring at the flames. His neighbors were coming out of their houses all up and down the street to gawk as well.

  A high pitched scream demanded his attention. Glancing across the street he noticed a small hand waving from the upstairs windows farthest from the flames. Looking around he saw that there were no emergency vehicles anywhere nearby yet.

  Hell, it's been less than a minute since the explosion; there won't be any response for another five minutes at the very least, and by then the whole place will be up in flames raced through his mind in a flash. He was already moving by the time the thought had finished. He'd just gotten done cleaning the gutters the day before and the ladder was lying next to the garage. He took off at a sprint towards it.

  Greg grabbed his ladder and charged across the street. The stopped traffic worked to his advantage now, leaving a clear path straight across. Glancing up he saw that the flames were ten feet closer to the open window that was his target. Only thirty more feet and that section would be ablaze as well.

  He slammed his ladder against the wall, jumping on the bottom rung to drive the supports into the soft turf. He yelled as loud as he could:

  “Come on down kid! There's a ladder right here!”

  But the roar of the flames was loud enough that he could barely hear himself.

  Shaking his head, he launched himself up the ladder as quickly as he could. He estimated that there was less than minute to go before the rest of the house was a fiery inferno. Halfway up the ladder he realized that he was barefoot, his shoes lying on the floor beside his couch. No much I can do about that now he thought and continued his frenzied upwards rush. As soon as he could, he grabbed the hand that was still waving through the window and tried to pull. The hand pulled back and he could barely hear a young voice:

  “My Mom! She's...”

  The roar of the flames drowned out the rest of the statement.

  Greg raced up the last few steps of the ladder, looking in through the window. A young boy stood right in front of him, his face streaked with tears. The boy saw Greg in the window and turned back into the house pointing. Greg followed his finger and saw a second person, just inside of the door to the room. She was coughing, retching, and seemed unable to move.

  Sliding himself through the window Greg yelled to the kid from a foot away:

  “Go! Get out of here! I'll get her!”

  He helped the boy onto the windowsill, then charged across the room. Smoke filled the air near the ceiling so he was bent nearly double as he moved, trying to avoid inhaling too much of it. He got to the woman and saw that she had been stuffing the cracks around the door with the blankets from the nearby bed. He guessed that she had gotten a lungful of smoke, causing her to cough and retch. He could hear the flames on the other side of the door and the heat radiating off of it told him he didn't have much time.

  Scooping her up, he put her in a fireman's carry to get her across the room. When he reached the window he had to stop, leaning her half in and half out of the window so he could quickly crawl over her to get to the top of the ladder. He hoped he didn't hurt her in the process but the heat was increasing and the smoke in the room was still getting thicker, pouring from an air vent in the far wall. He grabbed her arms and was in the process of pulling her out to put her back into a fireman's carry when the door blew out.

  The shock wave threw the woman the rest of the way through the window. Greg fought to stay on the ladder, one hand clinging to the top rung, the second holding on to the woman's arm. He lost his grip on the rest of her but held that one arm with all of his might. The momentum of the woman's body caused the ladder to rise up off of the wall. Like an upside-down pendulum the ladder described a slow arc, the woman's momentum carrying the top of the ladder, and Greg, past vertical and following the arc into a fall on the other side.

  Greg pulled the woman into an embrace, clutching her tightly to him with one arm. He'd gotten this far but was at a loss. A twelve foot fall wasn't going to kill him, he'd had worse at work, but she was already in bad condition. Thrusting the ladder as hard as he could to one side took it out of the equation, now it was falling away from them as well as down, but they were going straight down and there was nothing he could do but suck it up and take it like a man.

  He tried to position himself so he would cushion the woman's landing and at the last moment he thrust her up and away from him in an attempt to lessen her impact. It worked, but he had forgotten that it was going to make his own impact that much harder. The turf was pretty soft but he hit it hard enough to lose his wind and black out for a minute.

  Greg woke to a neighbor's face staring down at him.

  “Holy Shit! He's alive!” rang out.

  Greg just blinked several times, trying to get his bearings. He coughed a couple of times, his back coming up off the ground as he did so.

  “Shit!” he cursed, through gritted teeth.

  His back was a throbbing mass, sending knives of pain through his body when he began to cough. His neighbor tried to help him up but Greg's vicious growl when his back started to move again aborted the effort.

  “Maybe you just better lie there, I think there are paramedics on the way.”

  “Where's the boy, and his mom? Are they okay?”

  “The boy's in better shape than you. His mom is unconscious but coughing and retching. It's probably from smoke inhalation. But she's alive. She sure as hell wouldn't be if it weren't for you. Jesus man, what the hell were you thinking? Rushing up a ladder into a burning building with no shoes on? You're fucking insane!”

  “I saw the kid's hand out the window and heard him yelling. I just thought I was getting the kid out but he wouldn't go without his mom so I had to go in for her.”

  “Greg, I wouldn't believe that shit if I hadn't seen it. At least three people had phones with cameras and got video. Because of that, everyone is going to see it. Damn man, you're going to be famous. Just lie there, I'm sure the medics wil
l be here soon.”

  Greg just tried to relax but his mind was racing, his thoughts finally boiling down to a simple:

  Fuck me! I didn't need this shit on my day off.

  * * *

  Chapter 2 – Overnight for Observation

  Sirens filled the air and a minute later there was a paramedic kneeling next to Greg.

  “Are you injured sir?”

  “It's my back, it hurts when I move it.”

  “How did it happen?”

  Greg thought for a moment, decided there was no way he could explain, and pointed to his neighbor:

  “Ask him, he saw the whole thing. He said someone got video, you can watch that. Basically though, stressing it out while under adrenaline and a fall from the top of a ladder using my body to keep someone else from impacting the ground as hard as they would've otherwise.”

  The paramedic turned to Greg's neighbor and started asking questions. Evidently the medic didn't believe the answers so the neighbor called someone over who had video of the whole thing. Once the paramedic had watched the video his attitude changed abruptly. Calling for a backboard he knelt next to Greg again.

  “Don't try to move please sir, that was one nasty fall. We're going to brace your back and take you to the hospital for some tests.”

  “How's the woman, did I get her out in time? The boy's fine too, yes?”

  “The boy is fine, he's staying attached to his mother's side like glue. She's unconscious from, at a guess, smoke inhalation. We'll be taking her to the hospital also. I suppose the boy as well since there's nowhere else for him to go. We're going to give you some painkillers now so things might get a little fuzzy.”

  The painkiller took a few minutes to take effect but once it did Greg began to relax. He was about to try to get up when the medic showed up again.

  “Don't move sir, we're going to get you on the backboard now and put you in the ambulance.”

  Whatever, I'll just lie here and watch the pretty colors Greg thought.

  Greg watched everything shimmer around him as they carried him to the ambulance. When he was set down on the bench seat, his head lolled to the side. Filling his frame of vision was the face of an angel. This angel had been worked over and lines creased her face, suggestive of sorrow. Her frown lines were highlighted by thick black soot in the creases with lighter amounts scattered over the rest of the face. The parts of the face not covered by soot had a slight bluish tint to them. Even so, it was still the face of an angel. He fancied he could see luminescence radiating from the angel's face. Greg carried the sight of the angel into the blackness which claimed him.

  Greg's eyes flickered open to a white room and a bright white light. When he tried to move, he found himself strapped down. He could only move his head and when he did so, he determined that he was in a hospital room. His memories of the past few hours were none too clear at this point but the pain in his back reminded him of why he was here.

  It was only a few minutes before a doctor came to speak with him.

  “That was a fairly spectacular fall you took. We're going to need some X-rays to make sure you didn't seriously damage your back. We already did a little testing and determined that there is no paralysis but we want to be careful and check for any other types of damage.”

  “Fall... I remember something about a ladder and a fire.”

  “Don't worry, you'll remember it all eventually. The painkiller that they used on you will keep you from focusing on anything for a bit. Once it wears off you should remember everything. In the meantime, would you like to watch yourself? You're quite the celebrity, two different videos have hit Youtube already. I'm pretty sure they'll have at least one of them on the evening news as well.”

  “Doc, don't take this wrong, but what the hell did I do?”

  “You don't remember anything but the ladder and fire? Can you remember anything about a young boy and his mother? You rescued them from a burning house.”

  “The angel, the angel in the ambulance with me. Was that her?”

  “Maybe, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about.”

  “I saw the face of an angel, soot-stained and sad. When I was in the ambulance, she was being taken here also.”

  “Yes, then that was her. I don't know that I'd call her an angel but I do know the painkiller they gave you can cause hallucinations sometimes. Now if you don't want to watch yourself, shall we get you X-rayed?”

  “Sure doc, let's see how bad I fucked myself up.”

  Once the X-rays had been taken Greg was returned to the room he had awoken in. The orderly who returned him to the room thoughtfully turned on the television before leaving. The evening news was on and the story of the day seemed to be a house fire in town. The place had burned completely to the ground. They started the section with still footage of the charred wreckage and then a cheerful sounding announcer cut in:

  “And now, proof that chivalry isn't dead. The following footage was taken while this house was still in flames. An, at this time, unidentified man saw the fire and with quick thinking and action saved the two inhabitants of the home. All three are currently in the hospital and their conditions, and identities, have not been released.”

  The scene flashed to a slightly grainy video, obviously enlarged from a smaller version. The video started with the scene of a man with a ladder charging across the lawn of the burning building. As the man slammed it into the ground and started to race up it, Greg flashed back to earlier in the day. After a brief moment of disorientation he realized he was watching himself. When he saw the portion where the ladder was blown away from the wall, with him and the woman riding it, he thought:

  Jesus! How did I survive that? I should have at least broken some bones if not killed myself!”

  “We do know that the man survived his dramatic rescue.”

  The scene flashed to Greg, strapped to a backboard, being carried into the ambulance.

  “It just goes to show you that heroism is not dead and gone. We have heroes all the time in everyday life.”

  “Just think of the firefighters and police officers who are out there every day, their heroism may not be as dramatic as this video but they do it day in and day out.”

  The two announcers continued their banter but Greg tuned them out. As he thought about it, the best he could figure was that he was so caught up in his movie that he reacted like the main character would have. He couldn't find any other reason why he would have acted as he did.

  The doctor came back into the room a while later:

  “Well Greg, we don't find evidence of broken bones of any sort in the X-ray. It appears that you just managed to badly strain the muscles in your back with your landing. We'd like to keep you overnight for observation just in case we missed something but after that you can go. We'll give you a prescription for some heavy duty pain killers and I recommend a week worth of rest, bed rest if you can manage it.”

  “Okay doc, but I need to make a phone call. I need to let my boss know I won't be in for a few days.”

  “We can do that, if you know the number offhand I can get you an outside line right now.”

  “Please do, if you would.”

  The doctor picked up the phone, punched in a series of number, then handed the whole thing to Greg.

  “Just dial the number as you normally would.”

  Greg dialed and waited as the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey boss, it's Greg.”

  “Oh, hey Greg.”

  “Um, I'm not going to be in tomorrow and probably for the next few days either. I'm in the hospital and the doc is prescribing pain killers and a week of rest. Bed rest if I can handle it.”

  “Heh! I just won twenty bucks. Murray's over here, and we were watching the news. I thought I recognized you in that clip, Murray told me I was full of shit. But it's no problem. I'll even give you two weeks off with pay if you manage to slip a mention for the business into some of the interviews I'm sure you'll be having
.”

  “Boss, who's going to want to interview me?”

  “You do realize that the evening news pulled that clip from Youtube? We went to look for it after. It's been up less than five hours and already has almost a quarter million hits. It went viral almost immediately. They'll be after you for interviews.”

  “Oh shit, I can't handle this crap. I've had a rough enough day already. Maybe I'll be able to deal with it in the morning. I'm gonna go boss, I'll talk you to later.”

  “Get better Greg, seriously it's no problem for you to have some time off. Hell, it's worth it for the video alone. I haven't ever seen action like that outside of the movies.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  Greg looked at the doctor:

  “Sure doc, I'll stay overnight and my boss said I could have time off for the rest you prescribed also. I'm wondering one thing though, how's the woman I rescued?”

  “Margaret? She's fine, or as fine as can be after some serious smoke inhalation. She'll be in here for a few days though. We've notified the father to come pick up the child, he'll be here later tonight to get him. Evidently he lives out of state now. She's under sedation but was awake and alert for a bit earlier on. So I'd say she's doing as well as can be expected. The boy is virtually uninjured.”

  “Good, that's a load off of my mind.”

  “We're going to give you a dose of painkiller again. This one won't have you hallucinating. It'll probably put you right out though. Sleep, relax, and rest. That's the best way to recover from this.”

  “Okay doc, see you in the morning then.”

  Greg's sleep was deep, and his dreams were haunted by the face of a sorrowful angel.

  * * *

  Chapter 3 – Interviews

  When Greg woke up he was famished. He found the call buzzer but before he could press it a nurse was entering the room.

  “Good, our resident celebrity is awake. Your identity was released last night as well as the fact that you'd be released this morning. There's a swarm of reporters in the lobby waiting to interview you.”