I slammed my car door shut without a care in the world as I started to pick up my pace towards the burning household.

Lifting my loose t-shirt over my head and throwing it onto the ground, I took a quick, but deep breath before dashing into the flames.

The air was thick with smoke covering every layer. Each breath in was searching for fresh air, but my lungs getting desperate for clean air, wanted to collapse due to the dry air flowing into them.

Ignoring my own deep and messy coughs caused from the smoke, I quickly looked around every corner and doorway.

Seeing nothing but burning furniture in each room, my hope began to disintegrate. The flames were taking my air and all the hope I had left. I was near to giving up when a cough that wasn’t my own was heard.

“Hello?!” I shouted over the flickering of the extreme heat.

I got nothing in response other than strained coughs and a small whimper.

I charged into, what I assumed was the kitchen and saw a tanned girl with black hair curled up in a ball next to a dining table with her head just barely looking up to see my face.

“I’m here to save you, let’s get out.” I offered her my hand and guided her out through to the hallway once she took it.

Reaching the living room, I saw the door I had opened to enter this burning mess.

I stepped forward with the girl’s hands latched onto my arm, when one fourth of the ceiling collapsed onto my open arm.

Crying out in agony from the fire chewing on my skin, the girl noticed I was in severe pain and she began to cry.

“Go! Hurry!” I yelled through the façade of the pain I was enduring.

The girl looked at me with her tears being the only moisture in the house, before she lifted up the chunk of wood that had fallen on my arm just enough for me to fall onto the floor as I was released.

Getting back up on my feet and looking for the girl, I spotted her behind me, coughing and slightly swaying back and forth.

I knew her lungs were giving out and her head was getting dreary by now. If she didn’t get out of this house right now, she wouldn’t make it.

I turned my head to look at a way to get over the fallen ceiling before I turned back and instinctively caught the girl as she passed out in front of me.

Using all my strength, I hoisted the girl up into my arms and held her bridal style until I began to march over the fallen embers of the ceiling.

Once the fresh air grazed my nostrils, I set the girl down and sighed in relief.

Out of everything in that house, saving that young girl was worth any burn I could’ve gotten in the process.