The Night of Nights

The Night of Nights





      In the scope of things, November the seventh started just like any other day.  I put in a particularly boring day at work, and started the journey home at about six in the evening.  Little did I know, my night was about to become quite the opposite of boring;  In fact…it would change my life.

     

    I arrived home to my daily greeting from both wife and dog.  We were still getting acquainted with the house after just moving in a few months earlier.    The shotgun style home was a duplex, divided right down the middle.  Each side featured an upstairs bedroom with a walkout balcony connecting the two sides of the duplex.  Within minutes of my arrival, my wife Gayle kissed me on the cheek saying, “Honey, I’m going up stairs to read for a bit.”  I pinched her backside as she walked by, which got me smacked, but was worth it all the same.  “I guess it’s just you and me,” I said as I looked down at Zeus.  He looked back with perked ears and cocked his head a bit to the side.  Unable to resist the dog’s charm I knelt down catcher-style and grabbed him by the head.  “Who da man?” I said as I scratched him behind the ears.  I couldn’t help but laugh as his nub of a tail wagged at full speed.  “Life is good,” I thought.  It was then that I took it upon myself to make a series of monumentally bad decisions, unfortunately for which I would pay the price.

     

    I settled into my nightly routine.  Hit the john, ponder life (those two go together), check the e-mail, scratch myself, all things any self respecting caveman would do.  And things were going rather well until bright idea number one hit me.  Fried mushrooms!  At the time, what a fine idea it seemed; I went for it.  In the unfamiliar kitchen I struggled to find the fryer which prompted me to yell up the stairwell, “Honey, where’s the fry daddy?”  The response that came was one that chilled me to the bone:  “Babe, that thing was so old and nasty that I threw it away during the move.”  Apparently disaster had struck.  That fryer had been with me a long time, and we had been through some tough times together, it hurt but I would have to grieve later.  Fried mushrooms were calling, and plan B was set into motion. The Dutch oven style pot was in the pantry, I retrieved it and filled it about half full with good ole fashion Crisco oil.  “Caveman indeed”  I placed it on the dark coils of the electric stove and turned the front left coil on high.  “DING!! YOU HAVE MAIL”.  The sound came from the other room and drew me in like a moth to the light.  I knew very well that it took at least a few minutes to heat the oil, so I padded over to the computer desk and settled in.

     

      The email was from a friend that I hadn’t heard from in a while. Responding took me only a few minutes.  During my reply, the blank screen on the television sitting next to the computer monitor became quite bothersome, so I powered it up and was greeted by ESPN’s weekly golf show.  Golf is good.  Playing it appeals to me much more than watching it on the tube.  For that matter, I enjoy playing it on the computer a whole lot more than I like playing outdoors.  I sweat less, not to mention the fact that I’m infinitely better.  In computer land, and I say this very humbly, I’m perhaps the greatest golfer in the history of the world, or at the very least, in the history of hitting anything with a stick.  Ill beat Tiger Woods by 10 holes.  It’s very gratifying. What can I say?  It really is the little things in life.  My golf program was just a double click away, so I loaded it up and the next thing I knew, there sat the plush greens and fairways of Pebble Beach in all their splendor, beckoning me.  I did what any other self respecting sports fan would do; I teed it up. My first shot was a beauty, right down the middle of the fairway, with a little draw.  Zeus seemed to approve, nuzzling my arm from the side of my chair.  Silly dog.  My second shot was not so fortunate; during my backswing Zeus bullied my arm yet again, this time whining a bit under his breath.  “Starved for attention obviously,”  The shot landed in the bunker, and I was looking at barely salvaging par.  This was no way to begin a round. I addressed the ball and began my backswing.  “DAN THERES A FIRE IN THE KITCHEN!!!!!!”  She never calls me Dan.

   

    Time came to a standstill as I sprinted into the kitchen.  The sight that I was confronted with really was something to behold.  It appeared that someone had taken a jet engine and set it upright on my stove.  The jet was pointed straight at the ceiling, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear its power threatened to blast right through the tiles.  The sound it made was a low rumbling, and the heat was beyond intense.  Charcoal black smoke began to fill the kitchen, and the stairwell leading off the kitchen became a literal chimney.  The upstairs would certainly be the first to fill with smoke.  Before my very eyes, in the span of just a few seconds, the fire began to grow.  The cabinets above the stove were now burning on their own, as was the ceiling.  It’s amazing how hard it is to think in a situation like that.  If a teacher were to ask me in class, “Dan, what do you do in case of a grease fire?”  I would pass that test with flying colors.  However, while staring into the face of the beast, things become more complicated. 

   

    My first thought was baking soda. The location of which proved to be an immediate problem.  It could be found in the cabinet above the stove, which happened to be a raging inferno at the time.  My next idea would really cost me.  As I squinted at the pot I realized that what I had before me was a portable source of fire.  If I moved that source to somewhere less meaningful, half of my problem would be solved; the other half would burn itself out.  Flames began to spread out across the ceiling as I opened the back door, leading out onto a small-enclosed back porch.  Grabbing two square oven pads from the drawer, I set my mind to moving the flaming pot outside to the backyard. “Better to burn down the backyard than the kitchen,” I thought.  Even grabbing the flaming pot proved to be quite difficult.  The heat was unbelievable and I had no choice but to hold it as far away from me as my arms would allow.  I reached out as far as I could, turned my head to the side, and grabbed it with the protection of the pads.    I lifted the pot and swung it out into the middle of the kitchen, flames shooting straight to the ceiling.  I sensed my eyebrows and eyelashes begin to melt, when the desire to breathe came calling.  I knew I was in trouble when my lungs revolted at the temperature of the air I was trying to take in.  I could not breathe; they would not allow it.  They would not in good conscience take in air of that quality.  It became very clear that my current course of action was going to end poorly, so I improvised.  My next plan was to set the pot down, regroup, and perhaps evacuate. 

   

    What I didn’t know, due to the fact that the pot was too hot and bright to look at, was that the oil was actually boiling up to the very lip of the pot.  Any imbalance in either direction would send the flaming oil spilling out.  When I turned back to set the pot down on the counter, the momentum of me moving toward the door, sent flaming oil spilling out onto the oven pad and down my hand.  It was nearing seven hundred degrees.  When the oil hit me, I flinched.  It was just barely a flinch, but it was enough to send a waterfall of what felt like molten lava streaming over the other side of the pot.  My other hand went up in flames.  How I held onto the pot I don’t know, but thank god I didn’t drop it.  If it had hit the ground at my feet this would be a totally different story, perhaps told by someone else.  Doing my best to gently set the fireball on the counter, my immediate thought was, “I’ve got to put my hands out!”  With no access to the sink, I began rubbing my hands together in hopes of extinguishing the flames.  It was a virtual “stop, drop, and roll” of the hands, and it worked.  The only bad part was about eighty five percent of the skin from my right hand slid right off, and began dangling from my wrist.  It was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen.  The hanging skin held its shape perfectly.  It had been flash fried like a chicken wing, and it looked like a white glove hanging from my wrist, with fingers and everything.  My other hand was a little luckier but burned nonetheless.  Natures’ ability to shut down pain was the only thing that kept me functioning.  Adrenaline and endorphins were coursing through my veins. And unbelievably after that initial shock, I felt no pain.  Suffering defeat I decided to abandon ship.  Time was crawling; perhaps thirty seconds had passed since the fire started.  Gayle had not come downstairs, so I screamed up the steps. “Gayle, we’ve got to get out of the house!”  Silence.  “Gayle!”  Nothing.  Visibility was down to barely a couple feet, and deteriorated into pitch black as the stairs continued up.  I held back terrible thoughts of my wife lying upstairs on the floor poisoned by smoke, and raced upstairs.  Crawling on my belly in smoky darkness, I pawed around the floor screaming for her.  I came up with nothing so many times; despair began to creep in.  Then I heard her answer. It was definitely Gayle, but she seemed distant.  I heard her scream the word “outside” and I understood what had happened.  She had cleverly used the walk out balcony to access the other side of the house, where my sister lived, and had exited to the street with the cordless phone, and was now dialing 911.  Thank god there was someone with brains around.

   

    I scrambled back down the stairs and ducked through the flaming kitchen.  The fire had doubled in size.  The paint on the doors was bubbling, and I had succeeded in starting a new fire both on the floor, and about 10 feet to the right of where the initial fire started.  I was definitely hurting matters.  As I exited the house, I wanted to say something to assure my wife that everything was going to be alright, but all that came out was, “Honey, I’m hurt.”  How profound.  She saw my hands, and without the slightest grimace she pulled me to her. Hugging me around the neck she whispered, “It’s gonna be okay; they’re coming. You’re going to be alright.” It was in that moment that time resumed its original tempo.  It was dark outside, a beautiful star filled night, a bit crisp, and strangely silent.  The nearby stoplight went on doing its thing.  From a hundred yards away you would have never known that this drama was unfolding.  The silence was just killing me, and I finally realized why.  “Why the hell don’t I hear the fire engines coming?” I asked.  Through the front windows reddish light danced on the walls, and smoke poured out of the upstairs balcony door.  It was then that I saw Zeus.  He was standing on the balcony where he had never been in his life, looking as noble as a pure bread boxer can look.  He looked down at us and he clearly did not understand.  My heart broke right then and there, and I decided that I would be damned if I was going to just stand out in the street and watch my dog, not to mention my house, burn to the ground.  Still, there were no sirens.   

   

    I raced to the back of the house remembering that a garden hose was hooked up right next to the back door.    As I was opening the screen door a funny thought struck me, “How exactly did I plan to get through this screen door when I was holding the flaming pot earlier?”  I readied my hose and pulled hard on the door.  By this time the fire had taken on a life of its own.  With the opening of the door the flames began licking the ceiling of the porch, breathing out into the night.  The paint on the kitchen door was burning and bubbling all at the same time.  And there sitting on the edge of the counter was that damnable pot, still erupting into the air with no end in sight.  Under normal circumstances water is not the way to combat a grease fire, but this was my last shot. The hose afforded me the range of a good ten feet.  I just needed to stay low.  When I hit the pot with the hose, I became the first man to ever see a nuclear mushroom cloud in his kitchen.  The pot literally exploded, and I dove out of the porch onto the grass ahead of the fireball that followed.  It was like something out of a movie.  I sat up and stared down at my skin glove still dangling there, and thought to myself, “You really are going to get yourself killed tonight.”  The image of Zeus flashed in my mind and I was back on my feet, hose in hand, and headed back into the frey.  Much to my luck the pot had almost extinguished itself in the explosion.  The flaming oil had dispersed itself all over the kitchen in little bits.  The result of which turned out to be much better than having that single raging source to deal with.  I hit the pot again, and it was out.  Turning my attention to the rest of the fire there was a brief moment of amazement.  The cabinets were on fire in two places, and the ceiling was thick with flames.  It was as though the air itself were burning.  In some strange fashion it was absolutely beautiful and sinister at the same time.  My saving grace was this.  I happened to be a Discovery channel junkie and if it’s one thing I do know how to do, it’s put out a fire. All that money spent on cable was bound to pay off and tonight it did.  I remembered two key things “Spray a mist, Cool the air”.  I misted down the ceiling, and then hit the cabinets and floor with a nice thick stream of water, and before I knew it I was standing in a fire free kitchen.  It was burned all to hell, but fire free.  It would seem that a common garden hose had turned the tides in a battle that seemed all but lost.

   

    I walked to the front door and there standing before me was a fireman with a huge fire hose, obviously getting ready to unleash millions of gallons of water into my home.  The only thing holding him back was Zeus, standing dead center in the doorway not willing to move for some strangely dressed man to enter. I don’t know how or when he came back down the stairs, but there he was safe and sound, doing his best “guard-dog” imitation.  I informed the fireman that the fire was out, and begged him to please reconsider soaking the place.  After hearing my story, and seeing my condition, they relented with the hoses.  They did hack out the ceiling among other things to make sure the fire was truly out, but we managed to evade the hosing and water damage that accompanies it.  As I scanned the newly formed crowd for my wife, a very serious looking woman in a blue jumpsuit looked me dead in the eye and said, “Sir, you’ve done enough. It’s time you came with me.” Shortly thereafter they whisked me off to the local burn unit, where I spent the next week.  What followed were the worst, most pain filled, months of my life.  Debriedment, skin grafts, therapy, painkillers, it was all very, very bad.  However, it gave me a new view on life, and a new respect for dangerous situations.  Which I discovered is an extremely good thing to have.  Another good thing to have is insurance, it took care of everything, including a new kitchen.  And for Christmas I received three fire extinguishers, and a childproof fryer, complete with an attached lockable top. 



My friends are so clever.