Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
REED
I n a sea of black, I search for red. The rounded handle pokes out beneath the fire shelter and I discard it to get to the medic kit.
“Do you have a knife in your pack? I need to cut off this section of his pants,” Hailey says, wiping her lips with the back of her sleeve.
She just threw up, and now she’s looking at me, eyes laced with desperation like she’s depending on me for this one thing. And my hazy thoughts slip back to that day at the airport when I lost my grandfather’s pocketknife. It didn’t mean much to me two months ago. But now? It would mean everything to have it in this moment for Hailey and Dean.
It’s Jack who thrusts a wooden handle into her waiting palm.
I drop into a crouch. I already know this can’t be good with the way Dean’s previously loose pants strain around his leg. Hailey uses the tip of Jack’s blade to poke a hole two fingers wide in Dean’s cargos right below his hip. Without moving the limb, she shreds an opening, exposing skin.
I have no idea what I’m looking for, but the area beneath his crush injury is more of a swamp now. A puddle of red-and-black gunk that has doubled in size. With his pant leg ripped away, I can see a jagged branch impaling his thigh just above his knee cap.
Hailey presses her fingertips against his pale skin. As if it’s been replaced with rawhide pulled taut, the tissue doesn’t dip with her pressure. I have next to no medical training, but even I understand skin shouldn’t look like that.
“There’s saline solution and bandages in the side pocket,” Hailey says, pointing to the first aid kit I’m still clutching.
All I see is the spot where Dean’s torn flesh hugs the broken branch. “We need a chainsaw and a helicopter. You can’t fix this problem with a Band-Aid,” I argue to the only one of us with a medical license.
Let them in , let them help . I hear Dean’s voice inside of my head.
But they are helping. It’s me who feels helpless.
“Go,” she says to me. “We’ve got this handled.”
The only thing that has me walking away from her is knowing that this was the decision I should have made all along.
I don’t bother with my line pack. There’s no fire shelter in it anymore, and it’ll just weigh me down. Leaping over charred branches to the top of the hill and sliding the slippery slope to the other side, I find the crew halfway down.
The sight of all fifteen of them hauling our gear in a single file line nearly breaks me.
“Morgan, what happened? You guys have been gone for hours.”
Between the heavy rainfall and the collective headlamps, I blindly guess it’s Ramirez leading the pack.
“I need a chainsaw and a helicopter!”
Murphy lifts the radio to his lips and presses the call button. “Iron Summit to Copter 105, we’ve got a down firefighter in need of medical care. Our location is five miles northeast of Appaloosa Ranch.”
“ This is Copter 105. We need to get rid of the water on board. Estimated thirty minutes .”
“We don’t have that kind of time!” I shout at Murphy.
“They’ll get here as fast as they can,” Murphy reminds me.
Between the fallen tree, the sudden fire, the gush of rain, and the lack of a helicopter, it all feels so out of my control. Doesn’t anyone get how long he’s already been waiting? But I can control one thing. I’m getting this tree off my friend.
Ramirez slips a sawyer pack off his back without question and gives it to me. My knees nearly buckle when the weight transfers from his arms to my upper body.“We’ll be right behind you,” Ramirez says, and I nod, not even sure he can see it.
It takes longer to terrain the slope uphill than it did going down it. But I keep my focus on the path ahead and the cadence of the footfalls matching my own behind me. I’m not alone in this, I remind myself.
There is a collective gasp when we reach the black. Even I had a hard time telling until now how far the burnt ground stretched.
“I could use some more light,” I call out, and a couple of guys circle around the trunk that’s trapping Dean’s leg. I slide on protective eyewear and start up the saw. The second the metal grinds an inch into the wood, somebody screams.