The Night the Dining Room Burned Down, Version A

This is version A of the same set of events. A couple extra details in each one. Enjoy :)

Two years ago, almost to the day, we got covid.

I mean, I can’t prove it of course, because it was in January of 2020 and there was no testing available at that point. We hadn’t even heard much about covid, we just “knew” it was a virus from a bat in China that had jumped to humans. 

But fevers ran through us, coughing was rampant, appetites were suppressed, and kids stayed home from school on alternate days. And that was it.

After a few days, I sent a text to the moms of Sam’s friends that had been invited to spend the night for his birthday that weekend. I let them know we’d been sick and asked if they wanted to rain check.

Three of the four moms are medical professionals: two nurses and a doctor.

“As long as it’s just a respiratory virus and not a GI thing, I’m fine with it. I can handle some coughing, but not a stomach bug,” one mom texted back. Everyone else agreed and we proceeded with the sleepover.

But I will never forget that text. 

Because six weeks later, we shut down the world for that exact respiratory virus. 

Flashforward two years and we got the stomach bug.

Actually, first, we got covid again over Christmas break. Fevers, coughing, runny nose, some nausea, pretty much the same for every member of our household, both the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. But it was over in about three or four days. Nate was untouched. He wanted me to mention that. 

A few weeks after that, we got the stomach bug. 

It hit me first. On a Monday.

About an hour after dinner, I threw up.

Tighe, ever my hero, finished cleaning up dinner and got everyone ready for bed. 

I threw up again right before getting into bed. And then again just after midnight.

At which point Tighe reached for his phone and canceled his 7am flight to Austin. And I spent much of that night, lying awake, measuring the waves of nausea as they came over me, debating whether or not to run to the bathroom, and wondering whether it was a stomach bug or food poisoning. Stomach bugs are definitely worse than covid, I thought, as I tried my hardest not to think about food. Especially the foods I had eaten earlier that day that I was now periodically projectiling into the toilet. What a night.

I was fine the next day. Not great, but fine. Weak, tired, dehydrated and still had no appetite. But I’m a survivor.

My question was answered the next evening when Lou threw up all over me: stomach bug.

Two-year-olds, it seems, don’t have the foresight nor the life experience to know to get to the bathroom when they feel nauseous.

Instead he sat crying on my lap, turned to bury his face into my shoulder and threw up chunks and foamy froth all down my shirt, my pants, my shoes, and deep into my socks.

I stripped down while Tighe placed Lou in the tub and started a load of laundry. 

He threw up several more times that night—again, all over me and all over the kitchen floor.

Then it got Sam. 

That poor little threw up most of the night. He made it to the bathroom most of the times, but at least twice he didn’t. Both times he tapped on our bedroom door and then laid in a pathetic little ball on the floor while we changed his sheets and fetched him new underwear. 

The laundry accumulated and so we started a midnight load. The stench of vomit only gets worse as it sits and saturates your favorite Sherpa blanket. 

But our washer and dryer, those bastards, couldn’t handle it.  

We lost them both that night. Stomach bug casualties. 

The dryer suffered a busted heating element. Which is a pricey fix. 

And the washer reported a “drainage issue.” 

“There’s probably a goddamn mask stuck in there!” one of my friends suggested the next day. She’s probably right. But because we have a front-loading washer without a front panel to access the drain, the washer was a goner. (Trust me, I researched and I checked.)

So Tighe ordered a new washer and dryer to be delivered the following Monday. Oh, good! Only five days away!

We took turns starting and re-starting the cycles on both appliances to force them to sanitize all the pukey linens and clothing. 

But the next day, the whole house smelled like puke. 

Did I mention one of the dogs puked, too? Icing on the cake, I suppose.

“Ew, you guys! Who pooped?” our neighbor asked when she dropped off Nate’s homework the next afternoon.

No one had pooped. That was just our new household aroma.

Tighe still didn’t have his taste and smell back, so it didn’t bother him, but I couldn’t take it, so I started lighting candles on the first floor, including a 3-wick number in the dining room. Balsam fir or something. It smelled like Christmas, and it was in a shiny red glass jar.

For a few brief hours, our home was cozy and magical.

And then…

We were upstairs putting the kids to bed—pajamas, brushing teeth, a few stories. 

Then suddenly everything happened at once: Tighe was thudding down the steps, I smelled smoke, and Nate said “it smells like burning.”

“The dining room is on fire!” Tighe yelled.

I practically jumped down the entire flight of steps to the first floor. 

“Holy crap!”

The surface of the dining buffet, where that candle sat, an antique mahogany piece from my grandparent’s house in Baltimore, was on fire. Flames were climbing the wall and smoke was spreading around the perimeter of the ceiling. 

“Wow, smoke is so engulfing,” I pondered, musing at the situation and struggling to figure out how to help. 

The smoke was so mesmerizing. Lou and I read a lot of books about firefighters, airplane fires, and forest fires and I know for a FACT that the majority of casualties are because of smoke inhalation. Thank you, public library.

But there was no time for facts and statistics.

“Get out of the way!” Tighe yelled at me. Upon discovering the fire, he had tried to blow it out using lung power, like a birthday candle. Which, of course, only spread the flames even more, fanning them into the wall. Then he snapped to and ran to the kitchen, filled a pitcher with water and dumped it on the flames.

“I’m trying to help!” I snapped back. I moved an apple, then three mandarin oranges from the buffet to the dining room table. Fresh fruit is important to me. I saved their lives. 

The next two or three minutes—it all happened so fast—was spent sprinting back and forth between the kitchen sink and the dining room. It took 5 or 6 pitchers before the flames were finally out.

I got out a spray bottle of cleaning solution, a roll of paper towels and some plastic grocery bags while we waited for everything to finish smoldering and cool down so we could assess the damage. 

I’m no CSI, but I do believe in science, so my hypothesis, based on the evidence, is that the glass jar that housed the candle had exploded into three massive shards, the melted wax and the wicks must have caught fire to the wood buffet, at which point Sam’s nearby shoebox diorama, depicting the “awesomeness of plains,” ignited. 

By the time Tighe got downstairs, half of the 5-foot long buffet was burning and the colonial blue paint on the wall was blistering and bubbling.

We spent the rest of the evening scrubbing soot and ash off the wall and other nearby surfaces. The wall and the buffet were damaged—both will require sanding and a fresh coat of paint or stain.  

We realize we are very fortunate that the damage was not worse. We could have lost the entire house, not to mention the lives within it. 

But after a few minutes, we were laughing at ourselves and at our situation. Long story short: stomach bug, broken washer/dryer, house fire. 

I recalled my friend’s text from January 2020. Yep, I can handle a respiratory virus, but I can’t handle a stomach bug.