The man’s tall and stocky, wearing a blue button-up and a military buzz cut. If it weren’t for the thick brown mustache, I’d think he was a cop.

Instead, he introduces himself as Alphonso Griffon, fire marshal.

He settles in the chair Teddy vacated some unknown hour before and crosses one long leg over the other. His boots have thick rubber soles and I wonder idly if they’re heat retardant.

“You’re lucky,” he tells me. His voice is rich with solemnity, and I’m not sure whether he’s begun this way or has been talking for a while. “With all the synthetic materials in the modern home, occupants have roughly two to three minutes to get out. A minute more—”

Fuck luck, I think. “Fluck,” I say out loud, too tired to open my mouth fully. Tell that to my bedsores. To the raw, exposed flesh on my arm like hamburger meat slipped in plastic, reflecting my tenuous spot on the food chain. That my skin is thin, my body easily broken, my blood limited and susceptible to sepsis.

He gestures with his big man’s hands. “Luckily, since you sleep with the door closed, the fire was limited to your room.”

I snort.

Right, I think, with me trapped inside. The witch in the oven she prepared for Hansel and Gretel. Joan of Arc strapped to a stake. But I survived, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. A miracle.

“This enabled us to reach you more quickly. A second gained is a life saved.”

I wonder if that “life saved” slogan is framed somewhere at the fire station. His watch ticks loudly, and I stare at it as he observes me. If they had arrived two seconds sooner would I still have my eyebrows? My hair?

“When we got to you, you were unconscious, half on the floor, half hanging from your sheets. The flames had consumed the other side of your mattress and were racing across your bed. The damage had spread to the ceiling. At that point, cyanide and carbon monoxide levels were increasing at three thousand, four hundred parts per million. Your survival time was less than one minute.”

He says all this calmly, but the way his eyes jump from me to the far wall and back reminds me of a startled rabbit. He and his team risked their lives for me. Saw the flames, knew the danger, and still barreled into the hellish landscape that was my bedroom. I’m supposed to feel grateful—I know. But I can’t. I’m so tired. I close my eyes and hope he’ll get the hint.