Page 13 of Smoke Season

True offered a sense of relief that soothed the Bishop household like a balm. Just the presence of another adult hanging out on the deck at Highline, firing up the barbeque on a long weekend, kicking back with Astor, teaching her how to make hemp bracelets strung with scraps of river-polished rock, took the edge off in a way a glass or two of sauv blanc never could. Mel craved those evenings and lazy days when just a bit of the weight of being Astor and Annie’s mom lifted from hershoulders, the heft of it temporarily shifted to True, who bounced Annie on her suntanned thighs and made her giggle.

It was this wish to dilute parenthood that cut deep and ragged, when she let herself dwell on it. How could Mel and Sam look to True to share all this responsibility with them, like Annie was a burden instead of the blessing and miracle everyone always reminded them she was? What no one pointed out: taking care of a child with a life-threatening, lifelong heart defect day in and day out wore a personout. Some days—no,mostdays—Mel felt fifty instead of thirty-eight, and some of those days, and not even the hardest ones, a little voice in her head whispered,It’s not fair.On the hardest ones, the ones when they had to call 911, when even the morphine and beta-blockers couldn’t touch the tet spells, Mel wondered ... if God only gave people what they could handle, how had a deity who was supposed to be so damned perfect made such a serious fucking mistake?

Mel sighed and stood, the heat of her breath moistening her Buff. The flames licking at the ground cover before her still seemed docile enough, so why was she still feeling on edge? Was White right? Was she worried about nothing, orwasthe fire going to take a run?

She scanned the camp of crew members for Lewis again, spotting him refilling a collection of five-gallon Gatorade water dispensers. She walked over to make her case a second time.

“The crew’s getting restless,” she noted, then corrected herself, deciding to own it. “I’mgetting restless. Something about this fire doesn’t sit right with me.”

Lewis hefted the last empty water dispenser toward the tap. “Then let’s go with your gut. The wind direction has been nagging at you ever since we staged here.”

Was this Lewis’s way of acknowledging he knew it washerobservation of the fire’s behavior that had been snatched up and recycled by White? If so, it cost him nothing. No man working his way up the fire-station ladder had to worry as much as she did about stepping a toe out of line. But still, the surprise must have shown on her face. One ofthe first things you learned working for Uncle Sam was that you didn’t shake rank, and Lewis was a by-the-book kind of guy.

“Just tell White it was your idea,” she muttered.

Lew laughed but obeyed, and a minute later, Mel heard that self-important voice cut across the assemblage.

“New orders!”

Deklan and Ryan lifted their heads with interest, while others wandered toward White to hear the latest, including officers from additional stations. As first on scene, Carbon Rural retained seniority, at least for now. “While we wait to see what nature has in store for us,” White bellowed, “we can be proactive. Starting with cutting some firebreaks, to meet the sheriff’s department’s bulldozer line between the base of Flatiron and town.”

He nodded to Lew, who had the grace not to look Mel in the eye. She focused on Janet instead, who gave her a wink before waving her over and spreading out their Forest Service map on the hood of a water-tank truck.

“See here?” Janet said. “We can use FS 7312 as a starting point, curving the firebreak with the grain of the mountain.”

Mel traced the route on the map with one finger, following the almost delicate topographical contours of the elevation lines. “If we get all our ground crews on it, we can have Flatiron encircled by midafternoon, evening at the latest.”

Ryan tugged at his Buff, already dusted with the ash that fell from the sky to accumulate on their helmets and hats. “Ha, like a moat,” he noted, leaning over Janet’s shoulder, his voice muffled under the thin cotton.

Mel clapped a hand onto his shoulder, brushing off a layer of soot. “Exactlylike a moat.”

Each ranking officer dispersed to convey the new order to their respective teams, Mel following suit. Digging containment lines was grueling work, but at least now she could finally grant her crew their wish for something more to do than spend the night in the woodsin their sleeping bags. She saw Deklan first and, noting that all his gear looked in order for a change, told him, “Go get first pick of the Pulaskis, kid.”

It was gratifying to see his eyes light up. Over by the stack of gear off-loaded by another rookie, he tested the sharpness of the axe and adze heads of each Pulaski with a hesitant fingertip, weighing each heavy fire-line-breaking tool in his hand, deciding which one to wield. Soon enough, the sweat of manual labor would replace the pinch of pink excitement in his cheeks, but in this moment, his boyish optimism had her imagining Sam at that age, headed off to boot camp with only false bravado for company, and her heart constricted.

CHAPTER 7

While Kim searched the radio channels for any useful information and Astor got herself Froot Loops from the kitchen, Sam used the time Annie still slept—albeit fitfully—to get the girls’ go bags ready. Mobilizing Annie was no picnic, even in the best of times, and he went through the list of necessities now: oxygen tank (never stable in an environment like an evac), heart monitor (needing power), morphine, in case of the worst (must be temperature-controlled), and her portable heart monitor and the pulse oximeter they called her Pac-Man, for the way it clamped onto her finger as though taking a big bite.

He and Mel learned everything they could about tetralogy of Fallot starting the minute the diagnosis left their cardiologist’s lips. The way the combination of four different defects—yes, four—prevented the blood leaving Annie’s heart from delivering the oxygen needed by the tissues of her small body. The way this chronic lack of oxygen wore her down day by day, cyanosis tinging her lips and nose blue.

“We can repair it with patches, but only for now,” Dr. Newman had told Sam and Mel, and Sam had leaned forward across the doctor’s desk at Seattle Children’s in utter disbelief.

But yeah, they’d heard that right.Patches.

Sam had immediately envisioned the rubber squares heat-ironed onto leaks in True’s rafting boats. Eventually they peeled and water bubbled around them, causing a distressing little hissing sound. And thenTrue always said, “Well, that’s that,” and pried the patch off altogether and started over.

“Are you kidding me?” Mel had said, trying to rise out of her chair, letting out an involuntary moan when her C-section incision protested. “That’s the best the collective medical community could do for a human being’sheart?”

“No,” Dr. Newman had said calmly. “She will need open-heart surgery. Most likely multiple surgeries, but for now—”

“‘Multiplesurgeries’?” Sam had interjected. Because how could a baby be expected to go through that?

“‘Open-heart’?” Mel had echoed at the same time. That was how they’d been back then, tag-teaming each other’s sentences.

Dr. Newman had explained with graphs and diagrams. Annie wasn’t eligible for the less invasive catheter procedures she wished she could perform. The first surgery would repair what was possible now, and a second, probably around five years of life, would be needed to widen the arteries of Annie’s heart.

Each to a tune of about $50,000. Annie’s birth alone justified a bill of twenty-two grand, and apparently her stint in intensive care cost $3,500 per day. Plus meds. Plus oxygen. The only person Sam and Mel had seen more during their eighteen days in the NICU than the cardiologist was the rep from Seattle Children’s billing department.

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