Chloe’s chest heaved as she coughed, she was so close to the door, but the smoke was getting too bad. From behind her, Max wheezed.
“Don’t… don’t open that.”
Her head wiped around, eyes stinging from the smoke. “Where then?!”
Max coughed a few times before pointing off to their left. “That way, other stairs.”
“Okay, fine!” Chloe shouted over the incessant crackling of the fire. “Stay right behind me!”
Max nodded weakly and the two crawled as fast as they could towards the far exit. Chloe heard a few people behind a door yelling. Can’t stop, gotta get Max out. Just keep going.
The corridor always seemed so short, but trying to avoid the encroaching inferno made it stretch impossibly long. She wanted to stop and check on Max, but she knew that if she stopped, she might not be able to start again. Her lungs burned and her muscles screamed in agony. It was all such a sharp contrast to how quiet their evening had been before whatever the hell had happened rocked the building and the fire spread like crazy. Max had immediately started shouting that they needed to escape and Chloe wasn’t about to argue.
After what felt like an eternity, her hand reached up to grab the handle. It felt moderately cool to the touch so she pulled and yanked it open. Smoke rushed in through the door, but she turned to grab Max by the collar of her hoodie and bodily hauled her through before shutting it. The air inside the stairwell wasn’t great, it was musty and tinged with smoke, but it was definitely better than the hell they had just escape.
Max lay on the floor, coughing and wheezing, her hands scrabbling at her throat. Chloe didn’t waste time, she wasn’t feeling so great herself but she wasn’t going to leave Max like this. With a grunt she hauled Max over her shoulder in a classic fireman’s carry and started hauling ass down the stairs. There were other voices in the stairwell, the sound of feet above and below her.
“You still with me?” She croaked as she hit the first landing.
“Yeah,” Max wheezed, “I’m still with you.”
As the number for floor 10 flashed by, she inwardly cursed at picking an apartment so high off the ground, and for not exercising more.
As she hit the 4th floor, firefighters started moving up past her, and she paused to shout at them, “I heard people in apartment 1103, on the 11th floor!”
A firefighter nodded and shouted something similar into a radio on his jacket. Chloe didn’t stop to make sure, she needed to get Max out into the air.
She slammed bodily into the fire door and out into the night air. Everything was sirens and milling people. Fuck I need an ambulance.
“Chloe, you can put me down.”
“Fuck that, you breathed hella smoke Max, you need to go to the hospital, like fucking now.”
“Please, I just need a second.”
Chloe sighed and found an empty patch of lawn and she gingerly laid her girlfriend onto the grass. She moved to brush Max’s face when she spotted it. “Is that blood?”
Max moved to hide it before sagging and nodding. “Yeah.”
“You promised.”
“I had to, when you opened that door it caused the fire to like explode and you were screaming so loud, I…”
Chloe closed her eyes as she hugged Max close. “Shit, I’m sorry baby.”
Her response was a huge coughing fit from Max that prompted her to pick her up in a bridal carry before hauling ass towards the sirens. “Okay, ambulance time.”
Max just kept up her hacking cough as Chloe started screaming for a medic.