Author's Note: Hey, commercials are actually good for something. I'm pretty sure I got the idea for this story from one. I don't remember which one, shows how much they are working.

Chapter 1

First Indicator

"Oh my god! We have to do what? I don't remember him telling us to do that?" I asked Jackie over the phone. I am very urgently working on my paper that is due tomorrow, talking on the phone with Jackie about it, and really hoping the storm outside like burns down the school or something that would give her more time for the paper. The storm was raging enough that a tree might fall over onto the school or road or something.

"Well, we are supposed to type it, three pages, single spaced and has to include something about the survivors today. I have it all written down here. You know you were supposed to have this done by now right?" Jackie said.

"Yeah, I know, we were assigned this two months ago but I'm a procrastinator, what can I say? I can do this tonight… maybe." If only that lightning would strike.

"Laura! Get off the phone now!" my dad yelled up the stairs.

"Why dad?" I returned

"Because this is my house and I say you need to get off the phone. That and your mother needs to make a phone call." My dad finalized. God, he always uses the "it's my house" excuse when I challenged him. Where was that lightning when you…

::BOOM::

My entire house shook and the phone went dead. I stood up and walked out into the hall and saw smoke on the ceiling, coming through the seams in the walls. What the hell is this? Then the fire broke out on the stairs and raced down the stairs. I turned and fled almost on autopilot, seeing myself as if I looked down from the ceiling. I jumped through my window, out onto the roof. I grabbed a branch and climbed down to the ground.

Racing around the front of my house, I saw that neighbors were rushing toward my lawn. I didn't, however, see my parents. I looked inside to see that the fire had spread down the steps and had engulfed almost the entire front of the house. Sirens were sounding from the distance and I still didn't see my parents.

"MOM! DAD! WHERE ARE YOU!?" I screamed as loud as I could, almost as if I were yelling at the house itself and it having no ears. I waited for an answer, for them both to burs out through a window or be hiding in the crowd, anything that would mean they were ok. But no, I saw nothing of them. The sirens neared my house and an ambulance pulled up. Three fire trucks arrived and men in yellow fire suits moved into the house while water rained down through windows and onto the roof. No one bothered to shepherd the crowd away, no one wanted to go anywhere near the blaze. The whole house was aflame and the heat could be felt form 10 yards away.

My mind and body went numb. None of it mattered anymore, my paper, my house, my life. My parents were gone and I could do nothing about it. Just then, a fireman burst out onto the lawn from a shattered window carrying something. Another man trailed behind him, but oddly he wasn't wearing a fire suit. The dark mass in the fireman's arms moved. I knew the man standing up was my father, meaning that both my parents were alive.

That was my first thought, then I realized that my mother didn't walk out like my father, she was being carried. What could that mean? Maybe she wasn't ok. Maybe the only reason she was moving was just the fact that the fireman was walking. All thoughts rushed through my head until they passed. I could see my mothers face, saw her lips moving, and saw her chest moving in rhythm. I heard her wheezing but thought nothing of it, she must have just inhaled a lot of smoke.

Joy flooded through me and the next thing I knew, I was at the hospital in the ER waiting room with my dad. He had just been checked up and had some minor cuts and bruises, plus a few small burns. They patched him up in less than five minutes. My mother, however, was in a much worse state. I was leaning on his shoulder, feeling no emotion except fear. This fear was absolute because I thought I lost everything, saw my mother and father emerge from the house and regained it, yet was on the verge of loosing my mother. I stared at the wall, letting the fear wash over me so that it didn't explode should worst come to worst when my father spoke.

"She is going to be alright, you know that. She is a strong woman, that's why I married her." He put his arm around me and held me close. I could tell he was not so sure in what he said because he was shuddering. We stayed like that for over and hour until a doctor came into the waiting room.

"We have done what we can do. Its up to her whether she survives or not. Her left lung has collapsed and there are burns on the inside of her right one. She is breathing pure oxygen but still might not be getting enough. We can do no more for her. If you'll follow me, you can be with her." He turned and led us around the corner and into the first door on the right.

My mother lay on the far bed near the window. She was extremely pale where skin wasn't burned or charred. My father said nothing as he kneeled next to her and took her hand in his. I sat in the chair next to her bed and continued to let fear wash over me, but a glimmer of hope swam in the sea of despair and I held on to that, not wanting it to be drowned and lost. I held on almost as if, by loosing this hope, I would be letting my mother die before me.

After a while, my glimmer turned into a growing spot in the blackness, an opening out of this hell. It may be false, because it came from the fact that my mother held on, and had not died yet making me assume she would not. I could not help this but I knew it was false, because if it was one thing I learned, death came at the least expected times. As if on cue, her heart rate sped up. Doctors and nurses flooded into the room and pushed my father and me out of the way.

I stood in the corner as the EKG continued to speed up. The blips appeared closer and shorter as the seconds ticked by. I could see the pattern, it was flattening itself out. The fear began to push me to my limits, threatening to explode out of my control. Her heart beat flatlined and all I could think was You can't die, mom. You can't die mom. You can't die mom.

I closed my eyes and all sounds that previously assaulted my ears disappeared. I heard nothing, felt nothing, saw nothing. I withdrew into myself. The silence was absolute until something broke it. I heard the steady pulse of the EKG, then the more organized and calm motions of the hospital personnel, and then my own breathing, that of relief.

Author's Note: Okay, so if someone's lung collapses, can doctors inflate it again? Let me know so that I can change her problem if they can. Anyway, I had this idea in my head but I have no freaking idea where I'm going from here, so don't expect an update immediately.