Excerpt from ACTS OF COURAGE
by John Melady
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"So here I am, thrashing around, kicking every which way, and feeling all over with my free hand. Then I'd step on something, and I couldn't tell if it was a person or a toy, and I'd have to check. And then I heard a groan when I stepped on something."
Cheverie reached down and touched Shaye's unconscious little body. He went down on one knee, hooked his right arm around her waist, and lifted her under his arm. Tara reached behind him and grabbed her sister's hand. The policeman got to his feet.
At this point in his recounting of the event, Cheverie pauses, swallows hard, looks away, and then forces himself to continue. Remembering what transpired that night is obviously not easy.
"By this time, there was no air, no oxygen at all. I wasn't even holding my breath anymore, I was just sucking in, sucking in fumes, but I knew I had to get out of there now. If not, the three of us were dead.
"I somehow got to the top of the stairs, and the flames were coming up them, flickering all around us. And I remember coming down through them to the landing."
"On the landing, I could see through the flames, [see] all the other police officers at the door, and behind them clear air. But now, everything was engulfed: the walls, the stairs, the floor where I stood, in a tiny space with fire under, over and on all sides."
"I looked at the front-door opening, and even though it seemed like an eternity, it was only a split second and I thought, Now what do I do? But then I know I told myself, I've got to go on; I've got to go now, because I can't breathe."
With that, carrying Tara over his shoulder and Shaye under his arm, Cheverie found deep within himself a kind of superhuman will to endure. He ran down the last few steps, raced to the open door, and dived in headlong into the fresh air outside. As he hit the ground, he instinctively rolled to one side, away from the door. In that split second, he and the girls escaped one more terror.
Inside the house, the deadly concoction of gases within the smoke had built into what is called the flashover point. The front window crashed inwards, and a huge, rolling ball of fire exploded out through the front door. Cheverie lay on the lawn coughing and gasping for breath, and knew he had come very close to dying. He was not hurt, although his eyebrows, hair and moustache were singed by the fire.
From Acts of Courage, copyright © 1998 by John Melady.
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