Arrival
The Warmth Series
A TASTE OF PANDEMONIUM
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IGNACIA
The meteor shower was on every screen in the hospital for forty five minutes before Ignacia Torres’ instincts took hold.
She stood at the nurses' station with one hand resting on a growing stack of intake forms. On screen, the news anchor called it a once-in-a-generation event. People gathered on rooftops with champagne. It was one big party with a Mother Nature light show.
Ignacia noticed the trajectory arcs, quietly doing math in her head. This didn't look like a meteor shower.
“Ignacia.” Rafe, the charge nurse, came around the corner with a patient chart tucked under his arm. “You look like my Grand-mama before a hurricane.”
“Your grandmother sounds smart.”
“She's wrong half the time.”
“Half is a darn good record.”
Ignacia walked to the supply room and pulled burn kits. More than made sense. She stacked them on the lower shelf of a rolling cart. Something teased her instincts. Closer to the sensation she got when a patient's vitals appeared fine but their eyes were off. The body knowing before the chart caught up. Her gut was speaking in a language her medical training relied on.
The ground moved. A rumble, like a heavy truck passing.
Rafe poked his head into the supply room. “You feel that?”
“Yes.”
“Probably…”
“Get me more burn kits.”
He stared at Ignacia. Her instincts were sharp. He got more burn kits.
The first burn patient arrived at 11:47 PM.
A white male in his forties. Construction type. Broad through the shoulders. His wedding ring caught the fluorescents as the paramedics wheeled him through the bay doors. His wife ran alongside the gurney in house slippers. Her version, he'd just been standing in the yard watching the meteors and then he sat down in the grass. She'd thought he was crying but when she touched his shoulder…his skin was radiating intense heat.
Ignacia pressed two fingers to his forearm and pulled back fast. A sting like she'd touched a bacon skillet. The heat came off him in visible waves. The air above his body shimmered like air on asphalt.
“Core temp?” she asked.
“106 on arrival.” The paramedic met her eyes over the gurney. “107 now.”
“That's not possible,” someone said behind her. Ignacia didn't turn around. They were right. Patients didn't survive 107.
He wasn't screaming. She focused on this detail & couldn't release it. He wasn't fighting the gurney straps. His eyes were open and calm. Peaceful.
“Sir.” She leaned into his sightline. “Sir, can you hear me? I need you to look at me.”
He looked through her. His lips moved. She leaned closer before the rational part of her brain sent up a flare. The honey fluid on his lips. She straightened.
“Clear the bay.” Her voice came out loud & steady. “Full burn protocol. Nobody touches him without two layers and a face shield.” She turned. “Rafe, get the child in bay four away from those doors.”
“What child?”
“The little girl. Father came in an hour ago.” She was already snapping on her first glove. “Move her where she can see the TV. Put on cartoons, Bluey, if its on.”
Rafe darted off on his mission.
The ground shook again. A shudder. Deeper. The lights flickered and in the waiting room. A scream echoed outside. Through the narrow strip of window above the ambulance bay doors, the sky, a bruised orange.
Meteors landing. Closer than the last.
Ignacia pulled on her second glove and adjusted her face shield. She turned back toward the burning man. His temperature now 108. His skin was luminisce at the joints. An amber light seeped through the creases of his knuckles; like sun through paper.
She'd never seen anything like it. That honey liquid at his lips, they needed that for the lab. She got to work…
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MARIPOSA
Mariposa came in because of her headache and congestion. Sudden symptoms, like an allergy blindsided her.
She'd wanted to ignore it. Alone in the world made it easier to pretend it wasn't happening. Then it got bad.
Mariposa Reyes, thirty-one, single. No emergency contact. She'd left that line blank on the form. Shame settled over her like it always did.
She watched the meteor shower on the waiting room TV. They were beautiful. All that wonder. But no one to turn to share that wonder with, no one at all.
The congestion was a warmth in her sinuses. It moved from the headache at the back of her skull, down through the column of her neck. Slow and deliberate. It settled in her lungs. She rolled her shoulders. The chronic tightness she'd carried for decades, the tightness of a person who took up apologetic space in the world, began to ease.
Hello.
Mariposa looked around. The man next to her was asleep, chin to chest. The television murmured. A small girl across the room was clutching a nurse's sleeve, watching a distant door.
Hello, Mariposa.
Her name. Her name, in a hug. A warmth learning her… bliss. Being known. She pressed her hand to her sternum. Her heart raced. Not from fear. Excitement.
You've been so cold.
Yes. God, yes. It knew her. That her coldness landed and was understood. The cold of going to sleep each night without the sound of anyone else breathing. Of no one in this world, caring.
We know.
We. This voice, this warmth was a chorus. They knew her shame and offered to erase it.
A tear ran down her face. She didn't wipe it. It was the first honest thing her body had done in years.
The warmth moved into her chest. Her lungs filled with it, expanded. Her individual thoughts arrived thin and far away. As if noise from a neighboring apartment. The warmth pressed itself gently into every hollow place she'd tried to hide.
You won't be separate anymore.
Separate. She'd been separate her entire life. Her family didn't accept her. Mariposa carried decades of exhaustion. Ordering just one coffee. Purchasing groceries & cooking for one. Never invited to have a drink after work.
You can put it down.
The floor moved under her feet. The lights flickered. Outside the sky split open into a bruised peach.
She looked at her hands. They glowed. Warm. Beautiful. Mariposa never thought of herself as beautiful.
You are, the warmth said. You are, you are beautiful.
Mariposa Reyes, thirty-one, single, no emergency contact, set down every lonely year she had ever carried.
She said yes to the warmth.
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RITA
Daddy's hands glowed.
Daddy's hands, they lit up the kitchen, after he came inside from watching the lights in the sky. He'd held them out in front of him like they were someone else's.
Rita asked him what was wrong.
He'd said, “Nothing, baby, nothing. Go get your shoes.”
She'd gotten her shoes and Mr. Buttons, because Mr. Buttons went everywhere.
Mr. Buttons was a bear with one button eye and a red ribbon around his neck. Mama sewed his eyes on before she got sick. He was the right size for carrying under one arm. Exactly how Rita carried him. She had him under her arm when Daddy picked her up and she felt his fever. “Daddy, you're warm.”
He'd said, “I know, baby, I know. Let's go.”
In the hospital, he'd touched Mr. Buttons and burned off his ear. Oops.
They were sitting in the orange plastic chairs and she'd climbed up next to him. Mr. Buttons was in her lap and Daddy reached over….
Mr. Buttons caught fire.
Not scary fire. Just erased an ear gone. There were ashes on Rita's legs and the ribbon. Daddy made a sound she had never heard him make before then pulled his hand back. “Oh god, oh baby, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry…”
They took him away after that.
A nice nurse with the dark braid moved Rita to a different chair. “Honey, can you sit right here for me? Right here where I can see you.”
The chair was cold. The floor shiny linoleum. Everything in here was cold and too bright. It smelled like the cotton balls from the medicine cabinet at home. Rita's feet didn't reach the floor. They dangled. The TV had the lights on it. The falling lights.
Rita liked them. They were like a snow globe with long white tails across the dark. They held for a moment before they disappeared. Peek a boo lights.
A boy next to her had a plastic dinosaur. It was a green long neck. It was walking along his knee like it was a small hill. Rita watched it walk.
“Is your daddy in there too?” she asked.
“My mama,” the boy said.
“Oh,” Rita said.
The dinosaur walked.
The lights fell.
The floor moved.
Rita grabbed the sides of her chair and the lights went strange.
The boy looked at her. “Did you feel that?”
“Yes,” Rita said.
“The big ones are landing.” He said it the way big kids said things they'd overheard from grown ups.
She turned the words over in her mind. Landing meant arriving. Landing meant you'd gotten where you were going.
The nice nurse with the dark braid walked fast past the row of chairs. She was wearing big yellow gloves now. Her face had the same look as Daddy's hands.
Rita watched her go.
Daddy was going to come back. He was going to come back and his hands were going to be better. He was going to be sorry about Mr. Buttons. She'd had Mr. Buttons since she was a baby. One eye, loose ribbon, losing Mama, he was loved hard.
She would tell Daddy it was okay. She would say ~ Daddy, it was an accident, things happen.
Rita swung her feet and waited.
Daddy always came back.
My Creativity is fueled by tea. Lots of tea.
Written for Bradley Ramsey Prompts
I want to know more, and Rita and Mr Buttons need to be okay 😭
Beautiful and compelling, as always.