Delivering His Package - Big Apple Love

Tears overtook me. I sobbed into the uncaring hot, acrid, smoky air. I was crying only because of the baby. Even if I had deserved all this, by hooking up for a reckless one-night stand, by having sex in the first place, by not standing up to Aiden and making him do his role as a father — the baby hadn’t deserved any of it. What would the baby’s name be? It would be a moot point now, maybe.

The door crashed open. It was the end. Acrid smoke poured in, and the room grew even hotter. Even the sweat on my forehead felt hot. I could only imagine what my baby was going through.

“Eleanor! I knew you were in here!” Aiden stood amidst the smoke.

It was like a surreal vision, a messiah walking in from the smoke, entering the room where I had been preparing to die.

Aiden pushed aside the teetering, half-destroyed door and walked toward me. Wordlessly, he crouched down, put his arms under me, and cradled me in his arms. He stood up. The smoke was more pungent in my nose and mouth when I was higher with Aiden, but I was in his arms. My baby was also in Aiden’s arms. As stupid as it was, in a hidden room in a burning building, I felt safe in Aiden’s arms.

“How… where…” How had Aiden gotten there? It felt like a dream.

His uniform was from UPS, not the Fire Department. It was a regular Friday afternoon. What angels had sent Aiden to rescue the baby and me from the fire? Were they the same angels who had sent Aiden to rescue me from loneliness and misery?

He reached under his uniform to his undershirt. He tugged at it with one hand, then two. He tore off a piece of the fabric. Then he handed it to me. “Breathe through this. We’ll get out.”

“Are you sure?” It was all I could ask. If Aiden were sure of it, I would trust him. I wanted to trust him.

“I’m sure I’ll try my darndest.”

Aiden carried me feet-first through the open door. I held the t-shirt over my mouth. The air still smelled like smoke, but at least it no longer felt like grit.

Aiden was calmly breathing through his nose. He was superhuman. Or at least he seemed superhuman.

Cradled in his arms, I saw the world sideways. He held me with one arm under the crook of my knees, the other arm under the small of my back. My head rested against his chest. I followed directions and held the piece of Aiden’s t-shirt against my nose and mouth.

He carried me into the hallway and toward the emergency exit around the corner. I didn’t even have to tell him where to go. Aiden was really superhuman. He didn’t even strain himself carrying me. I was no heavyweight, but I had been a good hundred-forty pounds before the pregnancy and more with the pregnancy weight. None of my previous boyfriends had tried to lift me up, much less carry me, much less effortlessly carry me out of a burning building.

“This man is the father of my child,” kept going through my mind. It was a fantastic feeling. Even if Aiden had only done me a one-time favor by impregnating me and another one-time favor by rescuing me from a burning building, even if I was never to see Aiden again, he was still the father of my baby. Aiden’s spirit, his generosity, his bravery would all continue in my life through the baby that he had fathered. Even if he was to be absent from my life.

Chapter Eight – Eleanor

Sunlight glimmered through a half-open door. Aiden was carrying me that way. He pushed me out from that exit door legs-first. Firefighters ran to the two of us. A cot came from nowhere, and they put it under me.

Aiden set me on the cot, then sat down on the ground. His face was sooty, coated with black and some kind of white chemical ash. He was, in fact, sweating hard and breathing hard, and his skin was flushed from the exhaustion and probably from the poisons he’d been breathing. Maybe Aiden wasn’t superhuman. Maybe he’d suffered when rescuing me just as a human would’ve suffered. But Aiden had apparently, somehow, run into that building, known where to go, found me, when nobody else had.

“You guys got out on your own?” a firefighter asked. He motioned for a paramedic to attend to my visibly burned hand.

“Yeah. I carried my coworker out,” Aiden answered. He raised his eyebrows slightly in my direction.

“You two work for UPS?” the firefighter asked, pointing with his eyes toward Aiden’s brown uniform. He must have forgotten what he was wearing when he claimed to be my coworker. And Halloween was still months away.