My dream apartment, e commerce business was thriving, we had somehow manage to finally have our only baby, a girl, at 32 and I’m happy.
So after the call came in I immediately drove home. It was late but I had been trying to get a deal on an antique armoire to sell to a guy on eBay who would pay quite a bit and be thrilled to death to do it. I could see lights flashing from our corner in midtown Wichita,KS. I never thought I’d live directly on Broadway but there we were in this amazing commercial downstairs and residential upstairs downtown brick apartment. 1500 square feet in an old, run down but beautiful building. I’d been there 4 years when a friend called me to make sure we were alright. The radio had informed him that there was a building fire right at our intersection. I was racing home. The lights in front of me could’ve been red, I can’t recall, but what I can recall was the very bright red lights beyond them. It WAS my house. 4 years worth of my energy and my only daughter’s first everythings were in there. She was in there, her dad was in there. All of the merchandise I’d been selling online, my mom and dad’s urns, our dog. Why hasn’t anyone tried to call me besides Mike? I can’t get through the intersection so I turn down a side street and haul ass across Broadway into this empty lot next door to a used car lot and fly into the alley in the truck I’d borrowed from a friend to move the armoire. Silently fighting this fire, probably 20 men in full uniform at work, no one even looks at me. I’m about to faint. Where’s my family?! Oh my God! I can’t find Kerry and I’m really scared. Let’s sit down and cry now. Let’s faint. “No!” I start calling neighbors in our alley. They’re all sleeping right through this entire ordeal. All of my heart and soul were in there. Someone has to know where Kerry and Piper are! Finally Widom picks up and let’s me know that they’re not with him but he knows they’re alright. At that moment I finally start to realize it’s freezing and I’m shivering and I can hear my own breathing. No one ever came to talk to me. Someone eventually said it was old wiring that started to short out and somehow sparked a fire in the attic above the living room. Kerry and Piper ran to the neighbors across the street. They were ok so I was ok. Only now we’ve literally lost everything. Our entire business, gone. IDs and even my family’s heirlooms. Gone. Everything is gone. No water, no roof, no electricity and no light. Everything drenched in wet, hundred year old insulation! Neighbors starting to show their faces and some were already stealing what was salvageable. I see a girl walking across the back parking lot with my favorite bag on her back. This isn’t going to be fun.