The Fire

The Book of Ron · 30 of 48 · 4 minute read

This happened during a very difficult month of my life. In less than three weeks I had already been pinned under a tree during Hurricane Hugo, leaving my leg in a cast that ran from my foot up past my knee and halfway up my thigh. During that same stretch of time, I had also managed to fall down a long set of stairs, landing in a parking lot and adding a collection of bruises and minor injuries to the list.

Needless to say, it had not been my best month.

I was home recovering and moving around the house on crutches. Even the smallest things took effort.

One afternoon I was bored and restless and noticed the smoke detectors. I started knocking them down with my crutch so I could replace the batteries.

By the time I had taken them all down, the pain in my leg had become so severe that I simply didn’t have the strength left to go to the store and buy new batteries. I told myself I would get to it later.

That decision almost cost my daughter her life.

That night Veronica was upstairs asleep. We had recently picked up a stray kitten, and sometime during the night that kitten began licking her face.

Veronica insists the kitten woke her up.

I believe the Lord woke her up.

However it happened, she woke up and realized something was wrong.

Smoke had already filled the upstairs hallway.

Instead of panicking, she did something she had learned simply by watching life around her. Since Veronica was small, much like me when I was growing up, she was often on the job site with her father. She learned things most children never have the opportunity to learn — simply by observing, watching, and developing common sense.

So when she woke up and saw the smoke, she grabbed a towel and held it over her face to protect herself from breathing it in.

Then she made her way down the stairs.

By that time the smoke upstairs had already dropped several feet from the ceiling and was beginning to move downstairs.

I was asleep in bed when I suddenly heard loud noises coming from the stairs.

Veronica is completely deaf, so when she needs to get attention she makes whatever noise she can. She came running down the stairs making loud sounds and burst through my bedroom door signing urgently, “Fire! Fire!”

Half awake and still groggy from pain medication, I remember thinking to myself, this had better be good.

When Veronica burst into the room signing “Fire! Fire!” it turned out to be very good — and very bad — at the same time.

I jumped out of bed, wrapped a blanket around myself, grabbed my crutches, and hobbled toward the living room.

Smoke was already hanging low from the ceiling, and flames were rolling up the curtains and across the wall above the window.

The fire had started in the closed-caption device sitting on top of our television.

I pulled the blanket off myself and threw it over the television to try and smother the flames, but the plastic inside the device had already melted and the fire burned right through the blanket.

So I dropped the crutches.

I grabbed the television and began pushing it across the floor toward the front door. When I reached the door, I gave it one final shove and pushed the entire burning television outside.

Then I turned around.

Veronica was standing there staring at me in disbelief.

I was standing in the living room naked, the crutches were across the floor, smoke was everywhere, and the television was burning in the front yard.

“Get out of here!” I told her.

By God’s grace the fire was out, the house was still standing, and no one was hurt.

Later we laughed about it many times.

But the truth of that night has never left my mind.

The real hero of that story was Veronica.

She woke up. She recognized danger. She protected herself. And she came to wake me up.

My negligence in not replacing those smoke-detector batteries almost cost my daughter her life.

And that is not a burden a father should ever have to carry.

There is a companion workbook for this story. Open the workbook (PDF).