Even from across the street the heat is intense.  People are all over, staring in shock and horror.  I steadily walk toward the burning house, my fears nonexistent.  A girl screams into a cell phone.  She is telling a dispatcher that one of her roommates is still inside.  Next to her a girl about the same age, probably another roommate, is huddled in a blanket.  I ask for the blanket, determination in my voice.  She woodenly hands it to me.  I ask where the other girl is located inside the house.  She points to a window on the second story above the garage.  I walk toward a man who’s hopelessly trying to fight the blaze with a garden hose.  I yell for him to hose me down.  He stares for a second, and then turns the water on me, soaking me from head to toe.  I put the blanket around me and he douses that too.  I move toward the front door.

I kick the door in.  The heat does everything in its power to pummel me into the ground.  I enter the house and walk up the stairs.  My feet do all the thinking as I move down the hallway.  Flames lick the moisture from the blanket that is protecting my skin from their destroying tongues.  A door at the end of the hall is slightly open.  Smoke blinds me but I know where to go.  The room appears empty, but somehow I know that the girl crawled under the bed when the smoke and fire came into her room.  I throw the mattress aside, revealing the girl.  She looks dead, but I know she’s not.  I wrap the wet blanket around her, my exposed skin immediately beginning to burn.  I throw a chair out the window.  A million glass crystals reflect the red-orange fury closing in on me.  I pick her up and step out the window.

The cool air feels like paradise, the room behind me the flaming jaws of hell.  My skin continues to burn as I make my way across the roof to a point above a Jeep in the driveway.  I hold the girl in front of me as I fall backwards onto the roof of the Jeep, which absorbs the impact as it collapses.  People rush over to help us off the Jeep and to the safety of the neighbor’s lawn.  I collapse on the lawn next to the girl as the sound of sirens comes down the street.  I know I have third degree burns and a few broken ribs.  I also know I saved the girl’s life. 

* * * * *

Dr. Fields looks up from Cody’s paper she’s been reading.  She looks at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then speaks.  “That’s an incredibly vivid dream, Cody.  How long did you say you’ve been having it?”

Cody has been staring blankly out the window while waiting for Dr. Fields to read his paper.  He looks haggard.  This is the third shrink he’s seen this year.  Something tells him she can’t help him either. 

“It’s been the exact same dream every single night for eighteen months.”  He answers dryly. 

Have you tried altering your sleeping habits?”  She asks.

“I’ve tried everything.”  Cody would sound angry, if he had the energy.  “It’s all in my file.”  He points to the stack of papers on her desk.

“Well Cody, I have a few ideas that I think might be helpful.”  She says in a condescending tone.  “I’m going to do some research and work them out.  For now I want you to keep taking the medications Dr. Saunders prescribed.  We’ll go over a strategy next time.  How does that sound?”

Cody mutters something resembling gratitude as he gets up from the chair and walks out of the office.  He can’t stand his medication and the headaches that accompany it.  As he gets in his car he lets out a long, exasperated sigh.  Again, he asks himself why he keeps doing this; why does he pay a so-called expert to tell him nothing he doesn’t already know?  He puts the car into drive.

The idea of going home sounds almost as bad as his sessions.  Home is where he sleeps, and sleeping is exhausting.  As he leaves the parking lot he decides to turn the opposite direction of his apartment.  Anywhere is better than his dreams.

As he drives he begins to pass unfamiliar neighborhoods.  He isn’t paying attention; his thoughts are on nothing.  Each mile takes him deeper into unknown parts of town.  Cody makes one random turn after another, until one turn brings him to a familiar site.  Then he realized he must have gone home at some point, and now he’s asleep, because this scene is never one he sees while he’s awake.

Everything’s the same.  The same people gawking at the same burning house.  He steps out of the car and approaches the girl with the blanket while her friend screams into her cell phone.  He goes through the familiar motions.  The man with the hose douses him and his blanket before he turns towards the house, but just before he kicks the front door in, he pauses.  Something’s different. 

It takes only a fraction of a second for him to realize what it is:  This time he has a choice.  He doesn’t have to do this.  He doesn’t have to walk into that inferno.  Suddenly his thoughts turn to the girl upstairs under her bed, the smoke suffocating her and burning her lungs.  He only has to picture her there for a second, and a second later he’s in the house.

Up the stairs, down the hall, through the door and to the bed; it’s all familiar to him.   His instincts have been fine tuned for this.  Like a machine with a single purpose, he does what he has been conditioned to do every night for a year and a half.  He throws the bed aside, wraps up the girl, and throws the chair out the window, just like he had done hundreds of times before.  Just like before he felt his skin melting, but just like before he didn’t let it slow him down.  He pulls her out the window and jumps down onto the Jeep, her small body only breaking a few of his ribs as they hit the vehicle’s roof.  Neighbors help them across to the cool grass of the lawn.  Above the clamor Cody can hear the sirens approaching like they do every night, but this time they’re much clearer.  Waves of exhaustion sweep over him as he turns to look at the unconscious girl he just saved.  Before he passes out, he manages to mutter one thing:  “Dr. Field’s is never going to believe this.”

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