Sweatshirts and long pants
on a relatively sunny Memorial Day weekend when we are not near the shore is
unheard of! I cannot recall this occurring once, and this is my 48th
Memorial Day weekend. Sure there were some that were rainy and cool, and there
were many where we needed a sweatshirt at night, but during the day? No. It is
ten in the morning and the heat is running in our home. This is beyond bizarre!
Yesterday I was so excited
because I finalized the cover for the re-release of A Second Chance. Cal had
done a beautiful job and I felt the cover truly captured the story, then last
night I was flipping through the posts on Facebook and found another author was
releasing a novel next week and she used the exact same models in the exact
same pose on her cover. I felt ill! I sent Cal the link. He told me not to cry
(and I was close), made me laugh when he suggested putting a mustache on the
female model, but then he went to work on creating a new cover. We spent the
next four hours going back and forth with various ideas. Mind you this was
after I had given him the final approval and had paid for the work he had
already done. The last email came a little before one this morning saying he
would have a finished copy to me sometime this morning.
I cannot believe how
fortunate I am to have found Caligraphics and Cal, and all from a reply from
someone on LinkedIn on a question I posted on a completely unrelated subject.
This is just another little sign to me that God does answer even little prayers
by putting good people into our path who can help when we need them.
On to the challenge, but I
want to preface my reply by stating, this is a fictional story with the
exception of my husband and I did spend many years as EMTs on our local rescue
squad.
Yesterday’s challenge was:
My heart was pounding…
I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart pounded, the noise still vibrated
through the house. Because of many years spent as EMTs, my husband and I were
in the habit of undressing for bed and leaving the clothes we had worn the day
before next to the bed, so we could be fully dressed, shoes and all, and out
the door in under a minute if an emergency ever arose.
Fully dressed, I opened the bedroom door and found my three bleary eyed
children opening their doors. There was a faint burning smell starting to permeate
the hall. I told them all to get dressed, told my youngest to get the animals in
their cages just in case we needed to get them out of the house, told the
middle one to find her phone, and told the oldest dad and I might need help. At
this point we had no idea what was going on. Did lightening hit? There was a
storm raging outside. Did a tree fall on the house? We just didn’t know.
I flipped on the outside lights and headed out the front door, my
husband tight on my heels. We looked around and both noticed our lawn was
marred. We followed the path of scars to the corner of our house, and there
pressed up under my daughter’s bedroom window was a crumpled, smoldering car.
My husband and I ran down the stairs and to the car. The roof had a distinctive
crease from hitting the corner of our house. The window and windshield were
shattered. There were two unconscious occupants and the smoke was getting
thicker.
Years of training told us we shouldn’t move the people until they were stabilized,
but the possibility of the car catching fire trumped that. We said a little
prayer that we would be able to get them out and went to work. Through some
small miracle we were able to get the passenger’s door open. I checked the
woman quickly, unfastened her seatbelt then moved out of the way so my husband
could scoop her up and get her to safety.
I crawled back into the car to access the driver who was in far worse
shape because his side of the car took the full impact from hitting the house. I
reached for the seatbelt, but it was jammed. I couldn’t get it loose. The smoke
was starting to fill the car. It was burning my eyes and I was starting to
cough. I struggled for a moment then felt a hand on my arm pulling me back. I
resisted. I could not let this person burn to death. The grip on my arm
increased and I was pulled out of the car. Through the smoke I watch son
climbed in and cut the belt with a knife, freeing the man. Together we drag him
I got a lot done in ten minutes this time. Amazing
how productive you can be when it’s quiet and the dog isn’t jumping on you looking
for attention.
I think I may take a break from the blog tomorrow,
but we’ll see. Because of the rotten weather, we have absolutely no solid plans
for the weekend, so I may write more tomorrow. You will find your next writing
challenge very timely and I really hope some of you will be brave enough to
post your responses.
Your Next Challenge is:
What does Memorial Day mean to you?
You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right
or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is
allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.
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