by Grey, Helen
She laughed. “That’s right. He has a penchant for that. Since the moment I introduced myself to him, I’ve been Sam.”
I had to smile at that. I wondered about her, and I could imagine by the assessing looks she gave me that she wondered about my own relationship with Matt. As we neared the base camp, she finally asked. I was glad she did, because I wasn’t about to.
“How did you meet Matt?”
The crew truck came to a halt and the doors opened. I rose from the seat and stepped out, with Sam close behind. We walked together toward the mobile kitchen trailer. “I work at Santa Fe General Hospital as an ER nurse,” I explained. “Matt just came down, transferring from Sacramento. So actually, I’ve known him for about a week.”
We stepped up to the mobile kitchen, where several volunteers were handing out metal trays. Cold cheese sandwiches, an apple or an orange, a bag of chips, and either Coke, water, or coffee.
My throat was scratchy and dry so I opted for the Coke. I still had water in my canteen. Sam did the same and then we walked together to the covered tent with the tables. We sat down and began to eat. After swallowing a couple bites of sandwich, I continued our conversation. “What about you? Where did you meet Matt?”
“Up in Seattle,” she said, opening her bag of chips. “His wife and I were best friends in high school—”
“Matt has a wife?” I asked, stunned. I nearly choked on a chunk of cheese I had pulled from the sandwich. What the hell? Why hadn’t he said anything about—?
“Had,” she said. She said nothing for a moment, but began to pull one potato chip after another out of the bag, chewing thoughtfully as she consumed each one.
I wanted to ask her questions, but didn’t want to seem too curious or forward. Finally, when Sam had finished off the bag of chips, she popped open her can of Coke and took a deep sip. Then she looked at me.
“Matt’s wife and little boy died a few years ago in a car accident.”
I froze. My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. Matt had a wife and child? They were both dead? In a car accident? How horrible. I supposed my eyes expressed my shock, because Sam spoke up.
“You didn’t know.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. I shook my head. I glanced down at the other half of my cheese sandwich, but I had lost my appetite. Still, I knew this was all I’d get to eat for who knew how long, so I had to choke it down. I took another bite.
“Not surprising,” Sam said. “He doesn’t talk about it. It hit him pretty hard though, naturally. After the accident and then the funerals, he left Washington and headed to California. I tried to keep in touch with him over the years, but he’s pretty much made himself a loner. I knew he was working in the ICU in Sacramento, but I had no idea he’d moved again, down to New Mexico.”
“I didn’t know that much about him,” I said. “He told me he was born in Colorado Springs, so I just assumed he came from there.”
“He did, but his wife, Tracy, came from Seattle. They met at Denver University. They fell fast and hard for each other, were married within six months, and then before I knew it, bang, they were pregnant.” Sam paused a moment, sipping her Coke, gazing out the tent opening.
I felt nothing but shock. Not that I expected Matt to divulge everything from his history, but I pretty much had, hadn’t I? To know that Matt also shared tragedy in his past overwhelmed me. I knew how much comfort Matt had been able to give me, but if Matt said nothing to me about his own pain, loss, and heartache, how could I reciprocate?
“I was really happy to have Tracy back in Seattle,” Sam continued. “At the time I was still married, and Tracy and Matt, myself and my ex-husband would hang out together on weekends, have barbecues, you know, the whole domestic thing.”
I nodded, although I had no idea what “the whole domestic thing” entailed. My mind was still reeling with the fact that Matt had not only been married, but also had a child. They were both dead. I wanted to know more, but at the same time, I wished I didn’t know anything.
“Matt was at work at the hospital up in Seattle. At the time he worked in the emergency department. I worked there too, but not in the ER. I worked up in pediatrics. Anyway, one day I heard that two accident victims were coming in—a mother and a small child, a two-year-old.” She paused. “They were both in bad shape. I went down with a pediatric surgeon, couldn’t believe it when I recognized Benjamin lying on the table in the ER.”
Benjamin. Matt’s little son? “Oh my God, that must’ve been horrible for you.” I couldn’t imagine. I couldn’t imagine how devastating it must’ve been for Matt.
“Matt was standing there, at the head of the gurney, holding his little boy’s hand, working the Ambu bag, tears streaming down his cheeks.” She shook her head, her eyes glistening with the sheen of tears. “God, it was the most heart-wrenching sight…”
I stared at her in dismay. Matt had been there when they brought in his little boy?
“I looked in the next bay and there was Tracy. It was obvious she was already gone.” She shook her head ruefully. “She was gone by the time they got her to the hospital. Benjamin was in critical condition. They whisked him up to surgery and after he made it through that into the ICU. The poor kid managed to hang on for a couple of days, but his little body couldn’t withstand the injuries.”
Sam blinked rapidly, brushing at the tears that ran down her dirt-streaked face. I also felt the burn of tears in my eyes. My heart thudded dully. I knew what it was like to watch loved ones die. Yet another commonality that Matt and I shared, sadly enough. That was the kind of commonality I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. My heart ached for him. Sam took another sip of her Coke and looked at me.
“You seem to care about him,” she said.
Again, it was a statement. Not a question. I nodded.
“After the accident, Matt took chances, reckless chances. For a while, I wondered if he had a death wish. He struggled with survivor’s guilt for a long time. He had always taken good care of himself, but he let himself go. Even started drinking. About six months after the accident, he quit his job at Seattle Hospital. It was then that my ex-husband went to have a talk with him. It must’ve done some good, and I still don’t know what my ex told him, but Matt quit drinking and went to see a shrink for a while.”
I finished my sandwich, though it seemed to settle in a congealed lump in the pit of my stomach as Sam told Matt’s story.
“A few months later, he sold the house, and then came over, looking pretty much like he does now, and told us that he was moving to California to start over. He couldn’t bear living in Seattle anymore. Too many memories.”
I understood that. Well. I had been relieved that my aunt and uncle, who had taken me in right after the fire that devastated my family, lived a couple of towns away. My grandparents lived even farther. Since the night of the fire, I had never gone back to the old neighborhood. Never wanted to.
“He looks good now,” Sam commented.
“He’s an excellent nurse,” I said. “Extremely competent, compassionate, and he certainly knows his stuff.”
“And you said he’s working in the emergency room department down in Santa Fe?”
“Well he was, until we came up. He arrived last week and I was serving as his mentor, just until he gets familiar with the facility. Whether he decides to stay in the ER or go up to ICU or another department is up to him.”
“Well, just the fact that he opted for an emergency department slot says a lot about how far he’s come. I’m glad.” Sam shook her head, finishing off the last of her Coke. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him. Maybe we can catch up at some point, but with this, it’s hard to say,” she said, gesturing to the fire.
I agreed, shoving the apple in my pocket.
Sam smiled. “Matt turned into quite the philanthropist after the accident,” she said, lifting her tray from the table and taking it to the trash bin where she emptied the paper plates into it and then stacked the tray
on top of the others.
I followed suit. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?” I asked, curious. Looking outside, I saw the hustle of people hurrying back and forth in the base camp, a group of men huddled around the maps mounted on the command post trailer. I glanced back at Sam and she seemed hesitant now, as if she had said something she shouldn’t have. I think I knew what she was going to say, or had meant to say before she changed her mind.
“You mean about him being rich?” I asked.
She sighed with relief. “Oh, you know.”
I shook my head. “Not really,” I explained. “We did ride-alongs as part of the hospital mentoring program, with the group of paramedics and firemen.” I shrugged. “One of them thought he recognized Matt from a magazine article. Said something about him being a billionaire. I didn’t know what to think of it… thought for sure he was confusing Matt with someone else.”
Sam shook her head. “He wasn’t. Matt’s a billionaire, many times over.”
I wasn’t surprised, but at the same time, I was. Once again I wondered what the hell he was doing working in an emergency room, an ICU, becoming a fireman, a Hotshot. All of it.
“You’re wondering why he does what he does.”
Again, it wasn’t a question, but a statement. Sam had an odd way of talking like that. I responded just as bluntly. “Yes. Do you know why?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Matt’s always been something of an enigma to all of us. All I know about his family is that he comes from Colorado. Apparently, his great-grandfather, or something like that, made a bunch of money in silver mines back in the 1800s. That’s how the family got most of their money. The rest of it came from careful investments.”
I didn’t know what to say. What could I say?
I had to admit that I was a little disappointed that Matt hadn’t shared something of his past with me, especially after I had pretty much bared my own emotions and literally my soul after sharing the tale of my own tragedy. Didn’t he trust me? Then again, he didn’t owe me anything, and I didn’t owe him anything. We weren’t even in a relationship, per se. While I considered us friends, maybe he felt differently. It made me wonder.
The break over, Sam and I returned to the fire line along our section of the mountainside. As I replaced one of the people on the fire line, I saw Matt climb into the crew truck with several others to take his break. I waved at him, but I don’t think he saw me. If he did, he didn’t respond. I don’t know how long he was gone, but I wasn’t really paying attention anymore.
It was back to digging, chopping, and clearing brush—one backbreaking foot after another.
By midafternoon, the entire line clustered together and watched as a bulldozer was finally able to make it through about the last hundred yards we had been working. It was clearing even more ground, taking down some saplings, weaving its way in between larger trees as it went. I stood with the others, watching, as Matt spent a few moments speaking with other members of his crew. I didn’t want to feel like an intruder, so I held back, just pretending to watch the progress of the bulldozer. To be honest, I was starting to feel a bit neglected.
Several moments later, I saw Matt speaking with the crew chief, and then he was calling my name and gesturing for me. I turned to begin walking toward him, but he gestured for me to hurry, so I gathered that it was important. I picked up the pace and jogged over to him. “What is it?”
Just then, a helicopter roared overhead, heading toward the north end of the fire line, up the slope. Moments later, an ATV pulled up to the crew. The driver got down, spoke to the crew chief, who pointed to Matt. He handed Matt a red bag with a white cross on it. A first aid kit. Matt climbed onto the ATV. I paused, unsure what to do. He looked at me once again and gestured for me to hurry and join him. I approached the ATV and was just about to ask what he needed me to do when he gestured for me to climb on behind them.
“Hurry up, get on! There’s an injured firefighter up near the top of the ridge!” He shoved the canvas first aid bag at me. I grabbed it and didn’t ask any questions; just quickly hopped on. I tucked the kit between us and wrapped my arms around his waist. Hard, firm muscle. I pushed any thoughts of sex out of my mind as he put the ATV in gear and off we went.
I had never ridden on an ATV before. Under any other circumstances, I might’ve thought it quite fun. An injured firefighter? Not so much.
Even over the sound of the ATV, I heard the chopper overhead. I glanced up. Through the treetops, I saw the helicopter a short distance ahead, circling. If that’s where we were heading, it was directly up slope, toward the fire line just over the ridge.
My heart leapt with a combination of anxiety, fear, and excitement. The ATV bumped and slid its way up the slope. I held tight to Matt, felt my butt lifting up off the seat several times as we bounced over ruts and tree limbs. Eventually, sliding and slipping a little bit, we made our way up.
Several times, members of the fire line further up the side of the mountain had to get out of our way, but word along the line had obviously made it through. As nurses, we were classified as medics for this section and come to the aid of other firefighters who were injured in the process of battling this massive wildfire.
“There!” Matt briefly lifted one hand and pointed about one hundred yards up the slope and off to the right.
I looked in that direction. I saw several firefighters wearing yellow long sleeved shirts and hardhats clustered around a fallen tree, trying to put out the fire that streamed along the top of it, as if someone had drizzled a line of gasoline along its top. They feverishly shoveled dirt on it, while another cluster of men hovered near the other end. As we got closer, I saw that the entire tree had pulled free of the roots and toppled. Half of the trunk was blackened, the roots old and rotted.
In the midst of the branches of what looked to be a spruce fir, I saw a splash of yellow. Matt quickly maneuvered the ATV as close to the fallen tree as he could, and then we both hopped off, quickly approaching as several of the firefighters shouted bits of information.
“…fell on him…!”
“Broken leg and—”
The sound of the chopper overhead drowned out their voices. The blades kicked up a huge amount of dust and debris. I was afraid if the fire was too close, the chopper would send embers flying in our direction, but then realized the crew would not get that close. If there was danger of whipping the fire in our direction, they would abort and we’d have to carry the firefighter down by hand.
Overhead, the chopper continued to circle. I could see that the crew up there was just beginning the process of lowering a Stokes basket. The drafts from the wind and the rising smoke and fire buffeted it, rocking it gently from side to side. I glanced back down at the tree. Matt was struggling to make his way through the fallen branches. I followed, clutching the first aid kit close to my chest.
When we got to the man under the tree, I saw that he was awake and conscious, though grimacing in pain.
“My right leg,” he pointed.
I looked down and saw that the lower half of the firefighter’s body was trapped under the top end of the trunk.
“We tried to lift it, but it’s too heavy,” a firefighter shouted. He gestured over his shoulder. One of the guys is coming with a chainsaw!”
“Hang in there, Bill! They’re going to help you.”
Words of encouragement made their way toward us as Matt and I knelt down beside the fallen firefighter, pushing and shoving branches out of our way and away from his face. Matt gestured for a hatchet or axe. A moment later, he was chopping at some of the branches as I performed a cursory examination, checked the man’s pulse and found it relatively strong. I bent down close to his ear.
“Anything hurt beside your leg?”
He shook his head. Matt was trying to look under the tree limbs closer near the trunk to see if he could see any bleeding.
“No signs of any blood,” he sho
uted in my direction. “But it’s hard to tell.”
Moments later, another firefighter arrived carrying a chainsaw. Without wasting time, he pulled the cord and revved the chainsaw to life. With Matt directing him where to cut, watching that the blade didn’t get too close to the firefighter, I continued to monitor the injured man’s condition. Slowly, limb by limb, the chainsaw operator managed to clear some of the limbs from around the fallen fireman. He carefully manipulated the saw and started cutting chunks of the trunk a short distance away from the firefighter, attempting to cut the top end off the tree so that the others could lift it off the fallen man.
In a matter of minutes, enough weight had been removed from the tree that, together, the five firefighters clustered around their fallen comrade were able to lift the tree. Matt knelt beside the man’s legs. I didn’t see any blood, but his right leg was twisted at an awkward angle just below the knee. That kind of damage could cause internal bleeding. Matt quickly fashioned a makeshift splint, using several of the gauze rolls from the first aid kit to fasten a couple of pine branches to either side of the man’s leg. It would have to do.
“Bill, can you move your neck and wiggle your fingers for me?” I asked. He did. “Super. Now, what about your feet? I watched carefully as the man moved his left foot, and then, grunting in pain, he did manage to move his right leg just a little bit. I nodded at Matt. It didn’t appear that the man had any spinal injuries, but one couldn’t be too careful.”
The other firefighters grabbed at the Stokes basket as it made its way down from the helicopter hovering overhead. Inside the basket was a short backboard along with a blanket and tarp. Working together, Matt and I carefully turned the firefighter in a log roll, keeping his hips and his spine aligned as we slid the backboard under him. He was trying not to cry out at the pain, but a groan escaped his throat as we turned him.
Making sure he was fastened, Matt, I, and several of the other firefighters gently lifted the injured man and got him into the Stokes basket. We strapped him in, and then with Matt holding onto the basket, he gave a thumbs-up to the crew overhead in the helicopter. He helped to keep the basket from twisting until he couldn’t reach it anymore.
