With no time to think, Stacy Keniston thought about her brother and niece.
The ones who died in a fire.
She thought about them when she smelled something burning in her Concord apartment Wednesday morning. And when she opened the door and saw smoke blocking the stairs. And when she called 911 from the bathroom and screamed her head off, desperately trying to tell the dispatcher her address. And when she noticed an orange glow building in the kitchen as she straddled the window frame, wondering if she’d have to jump from 15 feet above the ground to survive.
“I was thinking of my parents the whole time and about them losing another child and family member,” Keniston told me in her room at Concord Hospital Friday afternoon. “I couldn’t believe it. It was like a sick joke.”
Keniston, 38, jumped. She cracked seven ribs and fractured her sternum. It hurts to laugh and cry, and she did both during our interview. She wore a hospital robe while clutching a folded sheet tight to her chest. I wore the look of shock, trying to digest the fact that she nearly suffered the same fate as two others in her family.
Her two cats, Stash and Chubb Chubb, died in the fire; Keniston said her father found them on the couch, huddled together.
“That’s the emotional part that’s going to get me,” Keniston told me. “I could hear them but couldn’t save them.”
The cause and origin of the fire, which displaced five residents in the four apartments at 84 South State St., remains under investigation, Concord fire Chief Dan Andrus told me by phone. He said a decision should be released next week.
“I hope she’s doing okay,” Andrus said, referring to Keniston.
Her friends at SubStyle Vapors, a place Keniston loves, are making sure of that by collecting donations, gift cards and furniture through Dec. 16.
“Nice girl, always helpful,” SubStyle owner Alex Moody said by phone. “Even amid tragedy she has kept a positive face and been making jokes.”
Often, Keniston’s life has been no laughing matter. Her brother, Tom Keniston, four years her senior, the person she identified as her best friend, was killed in a house fire on Webster Lake Road in Franklin 14 years ago, along with her niece, 9-year-old Amanda Keniston.
“My brother was very protective of me,” Keniston said.
Eight years later, Keniston was arrested twice for driving under the influence, part of her battle with alcohol and drug abuse. She lost her license, lost her job as a medical assistant and lost her marriage. Four years later, back surgery and emotional problems cost her a job at Dunkin’ Donuts.
“It was hard emotionally because of the divorce,” Keniston said. “But it started in 2002 when my brother and niece died.”
She stayed clean and sober for a year, then relapsed last summer, four months before the fire sent her crashing to the ground and into the hospital. She smelled smoke near 6:30 a.m., waking up on the couch.
“How could this be, how could this be?” Keniston recalled thinking as she scrambled through her home. “My family had lost two family members. Again?”
She remembered feeling the heat building behind her, remembered hearing sirens blaring from down the street, remembered the apartment lights flickering, remembered she still had the cell phone in her hand after the 911 call, remembered a woman yelling for her to jump.
“It was a fast moving fire,” Keniston said. “I was looking down, out the window, thinking, could I get out? Could I do this? The smoke was so thick, black. Even sticking my body halfway out the window, it engulfed me.”
The next thing she recalled was lying on her right side, facing the street, unable to move. Later, the day before we met, she learned her father had buried her cats.
On Friday, three members of the medical staff came into her room as we sat together. The doctor removed an epidural needle, taped to her back, with a Velcro sounding tear. Her blood pressure was taken.
“Hang in there,” the doctor said.
Alone again, Keniston showed me Stash’s pink collar, wrapped around her right ankle. She told me she had dearly wanted to get her life back on track, leave her partying days behind her, when the fire hit.
“I’ve been sober since I got here,” she told me. “I have my name on three waiting lists for rehab. Maybe this will be the start.”
Then her thoughts moved to Tom. She said she felt his presence the morning of the fire. She said he was still protecting her.
“I believe my brother was part of this, helping me,” Keniston told me. “I feel in my heart he got me out that window.”