The waves of nausea continue with the pain. Being burned like this feels like you’re still on fire. Nothing and no one can stop it.
They wrap my leg and arm loosely with dry, clean gauze, my clothing hangs from me in tatters, but still in place where it isn’t cut open and soaked through with water as the inbound chopper sounds. When it lands, I watch as it’s loaded up. My medic designates Sup as my patient liaison.
I fade in and out as I’m loaded.
“Keep you posted, Tim,” Sup calls out.Tim.That’s the medic’s name.
“We’ll be there in less than fifteen. We’re going to Bakersfield,” Sup tells me reassuringly. “Seems like mostly seconds, you got a fucking horseshoe up your ass, boy,” he says.
I think I nod, but I’m not sure. The moment the pilot’s voice speaks over his comms to Bakersfield letting them know we’re on route, I close my eyes. I will myself to fall back into the sleep where Violette’s smile was all for me, and then I let the darkness take me.
“We’re going to send you for an echocardiogram, Mr. Rath. Your heart is still harboring a little arrhythmia. We just want to make sure it isn’t something that needs a deeper look, okay?” I tell the fifty-something-year-old electrician who has been in my care for eight days. He came in with third degree electrical burns, and his heart has been acting up since, which isn’t uncommon.
“Whatever you tell me, Vi.” He grins. His pain is a lot better now.
“All right, someone will be in to help you into the wheelchair in a few minutes,” I tell him, pulling the latex gloves from my hands and popping them with my disposable gown into the soiled bin at the edge of the semi-private room.
I duck out and enter in the meds I just administered into the rolling computer outside his door. It’s a quiet night, I only have two patients in my wing right now, so I’ve been able to pay close attention to them, which is the way I like it.
I make my way to the nurses’ station and sit down behind the desk, picking up what’s left of my iced coffee. I don’t normally drink caffeine at night but the first night of my six-night stretch is always the worst. I rotate through one overnight shift of six nights per month, which is better than my previous every other week cycle.
I’m hoping with this new schedule I won’t be zombie mom half the time. I pull my phone out. 9:30 p.m. I quickly text my mom.
How’d she go down?
Mom
Just fine, darlin.
I sigh in relief, hoping we’re on the right track now with bedtime.
Thanks.
Mom
At some point you’re gonna have to stop thanking me for watching after my own grandbaby. It’s my job and I love it.
I smile.
Thanks.
Mom
I laugh.
Mom
Besides I can catch up on housewives this way, your dad will never watch it with me.
I laugh and stuff my phone in the back pocket of my scrubs as the desk phone rings from the ER.
Casey, the other nurse on my floor, answers it. I semi listen as I add some notes to Mr. Rath’s chart.
“They didn’t ice him, did they? I’ve been telling the fieldies not to do that, it always makes it worse,” Casey says to the other end of the line. That gets my attention. Fieldies means medics with the woodland firefighting crew.
“Fieldies did everything they could.”A memory of hearing that when Jacob came into the hospital flashes through my mind. I blink and try to take a deep breath, it doesn’t come.
Something happened on the line. I’ve been watching the fires burning in Skykomish all week. I know our local hotshots are on it because my dad has been talking about it. My blood instantly starts racing at the thought of someone I know being hurt or worse. The familiar crushing weight settles in my chest. I try to breathe and remind myself that Casey is too calm for it to be really bad. Whoever it is, he must be okay. Right?
