The Day Two Sisters Burned for Husbands Who Never Came

My husband let me burn alive while he held another woman's hand. I just didn't know it yet.

Smoke poured under my bedroom door, thick and stinking of melting rubber. I was nine days from my due date, and my body had picked tonight to tear itself in half.

I dragged myself across the carpet, phone slick in my palm. A cramp ripped through my belly. I looked down. Blood soaked through my pajama pants, dark against the pale fabric.

Two babies. Mine. And the air was already turning black.

I hit redial.

First call. Voicemail.

Second call. Voicemail.

"Pick up. You're a firefighter. Pick up," I rasped, choking on the smoke.

Third call. Ringing, then ignored.

Fourth call. Declined.

Another wave of agony folded me in half. My forehead hit the floorboards.

Fifth call. A click.

"Soren!" I choked out. "Fire... the apartment..."

A woman’s high-pitched wail pierced through the speaker, drowning out my weak voice.

"Please, save me! I'm so terrified!" the woman sobbed on his end.

My husband didn't respond to me. He was talking to her.

"Hold on, Jenna, I've got you," Soren said, his tone gentle, frantic, entirely focused on someone else.

"Soren," I screamed, clutching my swollen belly. "I’m bleeding! The hall is on fire!"

"Eliza, enough." His tone turned icy the second he addressed me. "I am in the middle of a massive rescue operation on the north tower roof. Stop making trouble."

"I'm not making trouble! I'm in labor!"

"Jenna is trapped," he snapped. "I don't have time for your attention-seeking stunts today. Grow up."

"Soren, please, the smoke—"

The line went dead.

I stared at the screen. He hung up. I dialed again immediately, but it went straight to an automated message.

He actually turned his phone off.

"He's busy," I whispered to the empty room. "He's doing his job. I shouldn't add to his plate."

But the dial tone buzzed endlessly against my ear, shattering my excuses. He didn't just dismiss me. He didn't even believe I was dying.

The bedroom door flew open. Wood splintered against the wall.

Juliet, my sister, burst through the wall of gray smoke. She held a soaked towel over her mouth, her eyes watering. Even at five months pregnant, she moved with ferocious speed.

"Eliza!" She dropped the wet towel directly over my face. "Keep this on!"

"Juliet, my baby," I sobbed into the damp cloth.

"We are leaving. Now. Get up!" She yanked my arm over her shoulder.

"You can't carry me, you're pregnant!"

"Shut up and use your legs!" she yelled, hauling my dead weight upward.

We stumbled out of the bedroom. The heat in the hallway blistered my skin. Flames danced fiercely near the electrical shaft. Juliet wrapped her arm tight around my waist, dragging me toward the stairwell.

Every step sent a fresh shock of pain through my pelvis.

"Don't stop, Eliza," Juliet grunted, sweat pouring down her forehead.

"My stomach is tearing," I cried.

"Lean on me! We are not dying in this hallway."

Her face was dangerously pale, her breathing ragged. We hit the ground floor lobby and burst into the cool night air. Red flashing lights illuminated the courtyard.

Juliet lowered me onto the grass, her knees buckling the second my weight left her.

A security guard sprinted over, a flashlight trembling in his hand.

"Hey! Over here!" the guard yelled into his shoulder radio. "I need medics at the south entrance!"

"Where are the fire trucks?" Juliet demanded, clutching her side.

"They're all at the north tower," the guard said. "A hostage situation on the roof."

"Hostage?" I asked, my vision blurring.

"Yeah. But listen," the guard said, lowering his radio. "I checked the electrical room before the smoke got too thick."

"Was it a short circuit?" Juliet asked.

"No. The wires in the main shaft didn't short out. They were severed."

"Severed?" I repeated.

"Cut clean through with bolt cutters. Someone set this fire on purpose."

A sharp, guttural cry tore from Juliet's throat.

I turned my head. She was curled on her side in the grass, both hands gripping her five-month bump. Her knuckles were stark white.

"Juliet!" I reached out, my fingers brushing her shoulder.

"It hurts," she whispered, her eyes wide with absolute terror.

Blood began to pool beneath her dress, staining the green lawn a horrifying crimson.

"Help us!" I screamed at the guard. "Get a paramedic right now!"

The world spun out of focus. Sirens wailed, growing deafeningly loud, until unfamiliar hands were lifting me onto a stretcher.

The back of the ambulance smelled of rubbing alcohol and sterile gauze.

"We're losing the fetal heartbeat!" a paramedic shouted.

"Get the IV in her left arm," the second medic ordered.

"Eliza, you need to push right now!" the first medic yelled, pressing down on my knees.

"I don't have the strength!" I screamed.

"Harder! The baby is stuck!"

"It hurts too much!"

"Do you want to save your child or not? Push!"

I pushed until blood vessels popped in my eyes. I pushed until there was nothing left inside me but hollow, tearing agony.

Then, the immense pressure vanished.

I fell back against the pillows, gasping for air in greedy lungfuls. I waited for the sound. The beautiful, piercing cry of my babies.

Silence.

"Why aren't they crying?" I asked.

The medics stopped moving.

"Why aren't my babies crying?" I demanded, my voice cracking.

The medic didn't answer. He didn't look me in the eye. He simply reached for two small, white thermal blankets and draped them over the tiny, motionless forms in his hands.

No.

"Let me see them," I begged, trying to sit up.

A nurse gently pushed my shoulders down. "I'm so sorry."

Tears tracked through the soot on my face. My chest hollowed out, leaving a gaping void where my heart used to beat.

On the stretcher next to me, Juliet stared blankly at the ambulance ceiling. She was hooked to an IV, her hands still locked over her flat, empty stomach. We had both lost everything in the span of a single hour.

Through the open back doors of the ambulance, I could see the towering silhouette of the north building.

Up on that roof, Soren and Juliet's husband, Zach, were playing hero. They had ignored our desperate calls. They had left their wives to burn in a fire someone intentionally set.

I stared at the two tiny blankets resting on the metal tray.

Who exactly was Jenna? What kind of woman gets tied to a rooftop and makes two men abandon their own unborn children to save her?