The Man They Blame

Belong to someone else

“Hang in there!” Derek shouted loudly.

He managed to make his way to the second floor, only to find the entire floor filled with blinding, toxic smoke.

Brett’s voice came over the radio again: “Derek, you’d better retreat! That old wooden building is extremely unstable and could collapse in sections at any moment.” Brett, who had been monitoring the situation, spoke in a desperate tone.

However, Derek had heard those shouts. He refused to retreat. Crawling on his hands and knees, he found a female secretary who had fainted. He then shouted over the radio, “I’ve found one person!”

The crew quickly responded by moving closer, while Derek dragged her to the relatively safe landing at the bottom of the stairs and placed his emergency mask over the woman’s head.

“Get ready to evacuate her from under the stairs.” He gave further instructions, which were immediately followed.

They came to retrieve the woman, but just as he was about to step back, the secretary briefly regained consciousness and clutched his sleeve. “Mr. West… the study… he’s still inside,” she said breathlessly.

The rescuers who heard this exchanged glances. “Someone’s still trapped.”

They looked toward the building and realized just how dire the situation had become. With the structural integrity of the second floor growing increasingly fragile, Brett—who had overheard the conversation over the radio—shouted, “Get back out of there right now!” he ordered.

Derek glanced at the evacuation route, then looked toward the black smoke. If he left that place now, Jacob West would be burned alive.

“One more minute,” Derek replied, cutting off the communication, as he handed the woman over to his team and rushed toward the office.

“Derek!” they shouted, trying to stop him, but it was too late, and they had to act immediately to get the woman out first.

Derek kicked the door open. Jacob West was brutally pinned between a collapsed ceiling beam and a heavy bookshelf. Nearly unconscious and suffering from severe smoke inhalation, Jacob’s hands clutched tightly onto a charred fragment of an old photograph. Derek assessed the situation: Jacob’s leg was trapped under the beam. Dragging him out would crush his leg. Suddenly, the ceiling above the door collapsed, blocking their exit with a wall of burning debris.

“Leave me… get out…” Jacob muttered deliriously.

Derek ignored him. Gripping an axe and a Halligan bar, he began clearing the debris with furious determination. He wedged the pry bar into a narrow gap, pushing a broken table leg and a bookshelf board underneath it as temporary supports, then slipped the loop of the rescue strap under Jacob’s arm. Using his own back to brace against the large beam, Derek applied the principle of leverage to create enough of a gap to drag Jacob out.

Since he had already given his primary rescue mask to the woman earlier, Derek placed his only spare mask over Jacob’s face. He pressed a wet towel against his own face, coughing violently as the smoke slowly seeped in and filled his lungs.

“Stay still, I’ll get you out of here.” He muttered the words with determination.

During the frantic rescue, a jagged piece of splintered wood tore a large gash in the back of Derek’s thick firefighter’s jacket. Beneath the torn fabric—smudged with soot but still clearly visible on his shoulder blade—was a unique birthmark shaped exactly like an orchid.

Through the smoke-filled haze, Jacob’s eyes were fixed on it. He froze, as if struck by lightning. “An orchid… an orchid…” he gasped.

Thinking the man was hallucinating about a potted plant, Derek snorted in exasperation. “Forget about that orchid. You need to get out of here safely.”

Derek hoisted Jacob in a firefighter’s carry, only to find that the emergency staircase had vanished completely and the hallway had turned into a tunnel of fire. The radio crackled with grim news: the front entrance was blocked, the outer walls were beginning to collapse, and the second floor had already been completely destroyed.

Thinking quickly, Derek smashed the office window. The aerial ladder, which had been waiting outside, was forced to retreat due to the collapsing facade, leaving only a sloped roof leading to the terrace.

As soon as they climbed onto the roof, a massive flashover erupted inside the office, sending a gigantic wave of fire shooting out the window. The force of the blast sent both of them tumbling down the sloping roof. Mid-air, Derek twisted his body, wrapping himself completely around Jacob to shield the older man, absorbing the full brunt of the brutal fall with his own back and shoulders.

The devastating impact, combined with severe burns, oxygen deprivation, and extreme exhaustion, finally caused Derek to lose consciousness. “Am I going to die?” he wondered in his fading consciousness before everything went dark.

His team rushed in just in time to evacuate them, immediately moving Jacob onto a stretcher. Jacob was on the verge of losing consciousness as he was carried away, but his eyes never left Derek. He watched as the paramedics turned the unconscious firefighter over to examine his injuries, cutting open his mangled jacket. The orchid-shaped birthmark was revealed under the emergency lights.

“Check his oxygen saturation.”

“Oxygen!”

“Hang in there, sir!”

Those voices echoed in the background as Jacob’s gaze, burning with intensity, remained fixed solely on him.

Fighting the pain from inhaling smoke, he managed to utter three words to the staff standing around him, “That boy… orchid…”

Hearing this, the elderly head attendant standing beside the stretcher turned deathly pale.

When Derek finally regained consciousness, he found himself lying in a spotless, luxurious hospital room. He was surrounded not only by his teammates. At the foot of his bed stood a group of impressively well-dressed strangers—they were Jacob West’s personal physician, lawyer, assistant, bodyguards, and the family’s elderly butler.

Seeing Derek open his eyes, a wave of restrained yet profound emotion swept through the entire group.

The elderly butler stepped slowly to the edge of the bed, his voice trembling with grief that had been buried for years and hope that had suddenly surged.

“Young Master… we’ve finally found you.”