Fire

Brianna sighed as she walked through the automatic doors of the local hospital. An overwhelming smell of disinfectant attacked her senses the second she walked through the doors. The hospital smelled like that almost every day though, so she was use to it. Karen, a nurse who usually worked the burn unit, ran by Brianna on her way to the Emergency and Brianna stopped outside the Emergency doors, watching the paramedics bring in a badly burned little boy on a gurney. She frowned as she watched a woman in hysterics follow them. She turned around and continued on her way to the therapy wing. Her mind was wandering, hardly concentrating on where she was going.

“Brianna?” Brianna jumped, her thoughts instantly scrambling, and suddenly realized she had somehow managed to walk all the way to Dr. Coleman’s office. “You can come in now,” she stated. Brianna nodded, looked at her surroundings, still flabbergasted at how she managed to end up at Dr. Coleman’s office, and walked into her office.

"Why do you look so confused Brianna?” she asked just as Brianna took a seat in the chair placed in front of Dr. Coleman’s desk. Her office smelled like vanilla, the kind that always seems to calm you. Brianna looked around and noticed that there was a vanilla scented candle on Dr. Coleman’s filing cabinet and another on the shelf of her mahogany bookshelf. “Brianna?”

“Oh,” she said as she began to twirl a piece of her curly red hair. “I’m just a little puzzled on how I managed to get here. The last thing I remember is walking past the Emergency, thinking about what had gone wrong in my life.”

“You probably went too deep into your thoughts again,” Dr. Coleman stated, pausing to write something down in the file in her hand. “How many times do I have to warn you not to think too much when you’re going somewhere? You could black out and something potentially dangerous could happen to you again.”

Brianna sighed and frowned. “I know, doctor.” She watched as Dr. Coleman continued to scribble in her file. “What are you even writing in that damn file any way?” Dr. Coleman’s hand froze and she looked up at Brianna, giving her a calculating look.

“How did you sleep?”

“Fine. Can we just talk about what we’re suppose to so I can leave already?”

“Did you dream?” Brianna fidgeted nervously. Dr. Coleman always got too close to what she didn’t want to talk about.

“Yeah,” Brianna replied nonchalantly. Dr. Coleman smiled and scribbled something down on a yellow-lined notepad sitting on her desk. Brianna tugged nervously at her hair. “Can – can you not do that?”

“Do what; write things down?” Brianna nodded her head quickly. Dr. Coleman pushed the notepad and file away, folding her hands atop her desk. “Alright, so tell me about your dream.”

Brianna sighed and began to jiggle her leg up and down. “It’s the same as every other night.”

“Tell me about it again then.”

Brianna shrugged. “Why? You’ve heard it before.”

“Just humor me, Brianna.”

“Fine. I was walking down a lighted corridor but I couldn’t see anything, almost as if I was blind. I – I could,” she paused, coughing, and began to tug nervously at the ends of her hair. She restarted her sentence, “I was aware of my surroundings; I could feel a lot of people around me as I walked down the corridor. I couldn’t actually see them but deep down in my subconscious, I knew it was everyone who’d ruined my life.”

Dr. Coleman nodded, not entirely surprised by the anger in Brianna’s voice. “Who may that be? The people who you blame for ruining your life, I mean.”

Brianna stopped tugging at her hair and looked up at Dr. Coleman to glare at her. “You say that as though I think that it’s their fault my life is ruined. The thing is: I don’t think it, I know it. They ruined my life.” She stopped to inhale deeply, her fingers starting up a nervous beat on the armrest. Brianna couldn’t stand how Dr. Coleman did this every time. “I blame my family, my so-called friends, the police, the firemen, this world,” she paused, passing a hand over the scars on her face, “and the paramedics.”

“Brianna, you can’t blame everyone for something they didn’t do,” Dr. Coleman stated calmly.

“What do you know? You weren’t there!” Brianna got up and began to pace back and forth in front of Dr. Coleman’s desk. Her mind wandered back to that night. All those candles… There were so many; she couldn’t remember why there were so many lit. There were some on the cake; there were some spread around the kitchen table, kitchen counter, the dining room, everywhere. So many candles; her house smelled entirely like fire.

Brianna froze, suddenly remembering why Dr. Coleman’s office smelled like vanilla. She walked over to the bookshelf, licked her fingertips, and extinguished the flame between her index finger and her thumb. She walked back over to Dr. Coleman’s desk, and did the same thing to the candle on her desk. She sat back down in the chair, her leg instantly beginning to bounce up and down. “Fire,” Brianna pointed at the recently extinguished candle, “is dangerous. You should throw out all your candles and lighters. Fire – fire is bad.”

“Brianna, it is no one’s fault for what happened to you or how your life turned out after it happened. If it it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours,” Dr. Coleman paused to think. “You’re a people-pleaser, and that’s a very dangerous game to play. It is your fault and no one else’s for what happened to you.”

Brianna began to tug harshly at her hair, shaking her head back and forth constantly. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no – no!” Dr. Coleman sighed.

“Here’s what happened; stop me if I’m telling it wrong: It was your birthday and you had your friends over for some cake and games. When it was time for cake, your mother prepared the relatively small cake, placing the candles in it (they almost covered the entire thing), and lit the candles but just before everyone began to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you, your parents began to yell at each other, arguing about something. This lasted for a couple minutes. When they were finally finished, everyone was silent and everything felt awkward. You, being a people-pleaser and all, decided to shove your face in the cake to make everyone laugh. Except, you’d forgotten about the candles that were lit. The lit candles caught fire on the material of your shirt that went up to your neck. The fire spread to the rest of your clothing. Your father went into shock for a couple seconds then whipped out his cell phone to call 9-1-1. Your friends and your parents then proceeded to pull your face out of the cake, cover you with a blanket, and pat you down. But they didn’t react fast enough. Plus, the ambulance, the police, and the firemen didn’t get there fast enough to keep the damage to a minimum.

“So you had third degree burns all over your body. You had to stay in the hospital, in the burn unit, for over a year. When you were finally allowed out, you were covered in scars. No one could look directly at you anymore because you were so deformed. You couldn’t even get a–”

“Enough!” Brianna exclaimed, putting her hands over her ears in an attempt to shield herself from the painful memories. “Just stop, okay? I get it. It’s no one’s fault but my own. Even if my parents were arguing before and it was them that made everything awkward, it was me who wanted to cheer everyone up and chose to do something stupid,” Brianna stopped to take a deep breath. “So yes, I get it. It’s my fault. So can we end this session already?”

Dr. Coleman smiled and nodded. She pulled out a prescription pad and wrote something down on it then handed it to Brianna. “Here, this will help with your blackouts and help to give you dreamless sleep. Just take it to the pharmacy, and they’ll fill it for you. See you next week.” Brianna nodded, grabbing the paper out of Dr. Coleman’s hand, and rushed out of her office.

Everything seemed much more alive, much more cheerful on Brianna’s way out of the hospital than it did on her way in.