The memories of that scary experience and the smoke of the flames burning my lungs has been something I could never fully forget. Chunks of that faithful day haunted me long after I acted by pure instinct and ran into the burning house in an attempt to save the girl whose calls for help echoed throughout the neighborhood from the fire.
I’m still haunted by my neighbor’s voice yelling, “I called help already, don’t get inside. You are going to die.”
But as a 12-year-old boy, I didn’t think of any consequences. Everything I could think of at that moment was to get inside the house.
As I tried to make my way through the tiny window, I could hear my favorite jersey tearing apart. The palms of my hands were burnt, and I kept asking for the child inside to guide me to her with her voice through the fire.
After what seemed like an eternity, I spotted her under a wooden desk.
“I’m scared,” she kept repeating over and over again. “I’m scared too,” I said. “But we are going to make it out alive.”
She clung to me with her tiny hands. I thought to myself, “This girl isn’t older than eight.”
As I tried to lift her towards the tiny window, a heard someone saying, “I have her.” That same guy then pulled me out of the window and I collapsed in the ground, trying hard to gasp some fresh air.
“You are bravest young man I have ever seen,” one of the firefighters said to me and put his hat on my head. In the next moment, I was on my feet, with the girl I saved in my embrace, posing for a photo that would turn that moment into eternity.
Twenty-three years later, I still thought of the girl. Following the incident, I have never heard of her again. I always wondered how her life turned out and whether she thought of me as much as I thought of her.
What I didn’t know was that our paths would cross again in the most unexpected way over two decades after that fire.
That day, after a successful presentation on my emergency response system prototype that made an impression at the executives, I was about to meet my new boss; a woman named Linda. She was known for her bold decisions and for taking risks. Those who worked with her described her as a strict woman committed to her job entirely.
Once I got out of the elevator, a huge room full of office cubicles stretched out before me. “Welcome Mr. Eric,” the woman at the reception greeted me. “Follow me, please,” she said and guided me towards the corner office.
I felt a bit nervous because I didn’t know what to expect, but the moment I entered that office, my heart raced even more. On the wall, a familiar picture caught my eye. It was the photo of me as a 12-year-old boy and that little girl whose life I saved from the fire.
All the memories came flooding back like a restless river.
Linda, my boss, asked me if everything was alright. With a shaky voice I asked her why she had that photo there and where did she find it. She took it and went through the frame with her fingers. It felt as though she had done it plenty of times before.
“That’s me,” I barely uttered. “And you are the girl whose life I saved. I wondered what happened to you,” I said.
Looking straight into my eyes, Linda said, “Oh my God, it’s really you. I could never forget your eyes.”
Over time, we bonded through our job and our past experience.
We fall for one another and one day, we went to the place where we first met; the place of the devastating fire. Now, the empty space was covered in flowers and grass.
“This is where all started,” Linda said. “And this is where our new life begins,” I said as I got on one knee and proposed to her.
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