Into the Flames

Before Vector could realize how long the night was going to last, he was already regretting going to the bar. But his boys, Luiz and Miguel, insisted so much about this night that he just was not able to deny. Actually, it was supposed to help him keep his mind away from the marriage issue, which has been scratching his thoughts for a couple of years now. Leah was passing for some mental health troubles that, even loving her so much, too much, he was starting to feel bad about his own feelings concerning the problematic she has been dragging him to.

– Bring us three more shots, Lilith! – Miguel screamed to the barmaid, already a bit drunk. – My boy Vec here needs to drown.

– Please don't… – He tried to run away, but the girl with the devil makeup had already left. – Guys, I think it`s time for me to go home, Leah could be needing me.

– Hell no. – It was Luiz who took place talking this time. – She was alright when you left, right? You told us so. Come on... You need this, that woman will make you crazy if you spend every second of your free time living for her.

– She’s not forcing me, guys. – He scratched his forehead. – She… she was there for me when I needed, I want to be there for her now that she needs, you both know it.

The conversation kept going for almost one more hour. They remembered their time in Little Heat High School and how awesome it was, the three of them being co-stars in the volleyball team and even participating in the national student competition when they weren’t even seniors yet. They didn’t win, but the school received them as champions of the world anyway, and it felt amazing. There was something magical about high school, those four golden years when a person was capable of dreaming anything and, even knowing that most of them wouldn’t become true, no one really cared – because they were high schoolers.

He met Leah long after that time. The dream of becoming a high-level athlete? Already gone, due to an injury suffered outside the field. The dream of keeping his mother safe and happy to her hundreds? Impossible, his dad made it that way. The dream of raising three beautiful children? Also gone, but he had no one but fate and genetics to blame for this time. In the following six years, Vector turned from a high school legend to an alcoholic addicted left alone in the streets of Little Heat, using almost all the money he got in a mediocre job to forget about the feelings he didn’t want to feel. And then that was Leah.

Some years older than Vector, she was the light that saved him from falling apart for real. An angel with fancy plates wings that fed him, took him out of the life of sleep drinking in the streets and gave him a job he could actually be proud of in her own restaurant. The first months of being sober were hard, but he passed through this with her by his side, and he would be forever thankful for that. Their relationship was stable and happy for a long time, but things slowly started to change. At first, she presented some not-herself behaviors that lasted no longer than a couple of minutes – nothing to be worried about back then. Then Leah began showing blanks spaces in memories of her own recipes and crisis of stress and sorrow that took each time longer amounts of time to go away. Two years ago, she was diagnosticated with bipolar disorder by a couple of fancy doctors in the capital that instructed her to include a series of pharmaceutical shots in order to prevent her state do get worse, but she refused to take such measures and chose a healthier diet constructed exclusively to her conditions by a nutritionist that was also a long-time friend of hers. Just like their favorite song, the psychologists told them it wouldn`t be easy, but they had no clue how hard it would get.

– Thanks, guys. – Vector hugged his friends softly. – It was really nice tonight. We should set up something like this again soon.

– What about tomorrow? – Luiz asked. – My wife will take the girls to some birthday party of some random boy from school. We could drink at my place, then.

Miguel agreed instantaneously. Vector said he would give his best trying to go, and that wasn’t a lie.

Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name was playing in his earphones while he walked back home. Not that he was thinking that his relationship was a prison that he could not break free, but that song got him dirty on his own thoughts. Suddenly, when he took the left way out of Saint Francis Avenue, getting into his own street, he saw tragedy arriving in his life again.

The smell hit him first, a terrifying and awful note of smoke and burning wood that, for his unluckiness, was coming from his own house. The flames were coming from almost the whole place, but he could note a major amount in the bedroom with a view to the street, which he and Leah called their little nest of love. Within seconds, Vector realized the facts and lost all the rationality he once had – his wife could be locked up in there.

Vector started to run, as fast as he was able to. Ignoring the agglomeration of apparently more curious than worried neighbors in front of his house, the desperate man used his keys to open the front door, barely able to do it, feeling his hands hurt by the heated metal of the door handle. The smoke was already taking all his ground floor, but it was only getting worse as he followed the stairs towards his bedroom. The door was locked not by a key mechanism, but by some wooden debris that probably felt from the ceiling when the fire took over. From the door crack, he saw her. She was just standing there, completely sessile and mute, even with the flames getting so close to her body. So little, so defenseless. Vector screamed calling her, but there was no response, and that was the moment he started to really lose his mind.

He destroyed the already charred door with kicks and shoves, bringing to more fallen pieces of the ceiling – he could even see a part of the sky for a bit, but the hole was easily fulfilled by the smoke.

– Leah! – He screamed, shaking her by her shoulders. – Please, honey, react!

Nothing, the woman remained quiet. Vector didn’t want to hurt her, but it was necessary, so he hit her face with the back of his left hand. It worked.

Leah pushed him away, hard.

– Get out of here, you fucking idiot! – She screamed as he had never seen her doing it before. – Leave me alone for once in my life!

– But Leah... – Vector couldn’t understand, but he knew that keeping his calm was essential to that situation. – What’s happening? Please… Tell me.

– So now you’re gonna pretend that you didn’t do anything? – She slapped him in the face, leaving a red mark with the form of her tiny hand. – I can’t believe I once loved you, you disgusting little cheater.

Now he could understand, she was having one more bipolar attack. It wasn’t unusual these days, but never passed the limit of stressful arguments and tears for “no reason”. However, it looked like she got a whole new level of reaction to her mental issue – she was trying to hurt herself. The doctors said that something like this could happen if she kept her opinion on not taking the pharmaceutical controlled treatment, but that it probably would take a lot longer to get as messy as this.

– Baby, just listen to me. – He tried to dodge a flaming wreck falling from the ceiling that was about to hit Leah, but she almost attacked again just to keep him away from herself. – I am not cheating on you, you’re not thinking straight. It will pass.

– Don’t you dare to deny it, I saw you two! – The flames brought a rageful appearance to her facial expressions. – The only moment I was not thinking straight happened years ago when I thought it would be a nice idea removing some piece of shit from the streets. I fucking gave you a job, cunt! You kept saying that your troubles were produced by sports enemies, fate, your father. At least your father had the courage to kill what bothered him, unlike you, you little piece of crap.

The speech took him by surprise. For a moment, the idea of letting her there to die consumed by the flames or asphyxiated by the black smoke looked almost possible, almost comforting. But as much as he knew that it would not be him, he knew that that was not her either. The following actions were chaotic and quickly done. Vector approached and escaped from one or two of her attempts to attack him and then hit her in the head, neither strong enough to hurt nor weak enough not to complete his goal – leave her unconscious, just like the lifeguards of the old surf school he used to go as a teenage always advised in situations when a person struggles not to be saved.

A few minutes later, Leah was being treated by the paramedics in an ambulance. She had small first-degree burns, mainly in her arms and ankles, but would be brand new in a matter of two or three weeks, according to the professionals. Vector didn’t really get hurt, but the cough was annoying, and his head was aching like someone was crashing it against the floor, mostly because of all the smoke he inhaled while trying to save his wife.

Even though her words were what was hurting him the most, he would love and save her a million times again, whenever she needed it. Because, through all those years together, him, her, his and her problems, Vector learned that those moments were part of her, but also was her love, her kindness, when the troubled waters passed by.

Although that killed a part of him, each crisis taking a little piece of his heart away, he did not regret it for a single moment.