Saving someone's life should earn you a medal

“Saving someone’s life should earn you a medal.”

I don’t know how many times I heard that logic growing up with a war-veteran father. In my father’s eyes, courage was only demonstrated through an individual’s willingness to give up their life for someone else. I never really bought into it. I was more interested in the people with enough courage to take life from someone else.

Luke Windermere was a firefighter. Luke grew to become somewhat of a town legend after a string of three-alarm house fires endangered dozens of residents. He quickly earned the name “Lucky Luke” after storming into three different houses to save residents within a week’s time. Amazingly, Luke managed to save seven out of the eight residents from a fiery end, even surviving a two-story fall as the integrity of a building was compromised by the fire.

What’s meaningful to me has nothing to do with Luke’s seven successes, but his one failure.

Luke crawled into a window as the doors were all blocked by flames. He had no idea how many people were in the house, but everyone saw a mother with her head out the window yelling for help. While the fire was too dangerous for a sane man to plunge into, Lucky Luke had a reputation.

Luke avoided embers spewing in every direction from the heart of the fire as he approached the stairs.  The bottom stairs were enveloped in flames, but the upper section of stairs was untouched. Luke leapt to grab the bottom of the railing and leveraged himself over the banister. After crawling over the banister, he sprinted in the direction of the woman in the window.

Upon entering the room, it was clear the woman wasn’t in her right mind. Her children were all perched on a dresser as she sat looking at a corner, muttering to herself under her breath.

“Ma’am, are you and your children okay?”

 Luke repeated the question several times.

Luke yelled that she needed to get up and he would help her, she still didn’t respond. Luke realized he needed to act fast, so he grabbed two of her three children and began towards the door.

Luke was struck on the back of the head with a leg from the bed in the room. Through his blurred vision he saw insanity in the woman’s eyes. He tried to force her down the stairs, but she only responded by clawing at him vigorously.

A voice came from Luke’s radio telling him he had less than 2 minutes to act. Luke knew what he had to do. The woman was sent toppling over the edge of the railing and hit the floor with a thud. She was swallowed by flames within seconds.

Luke gathered the three kids in his arms and raced down the stairs. He jumped the bottom section of stairs and nearly dropped a child.

When Luke emerged from the house with three children he was applauded by the audience for his heroics, but nobody would ever know how courageous he really was.
-David Lake