Expectant Father (22 page)

T
HE FIRE HAD BURNED
through the tree tops at high speeds, leaving some areas untouched and some small, spot fires on the ground where bushes had caught fire. Not that anyone could have survived the heat of the crown fire without a shelter.

Spider picked his way down the hill, trying to estimate how far his father could have gotten before the fire would have overtaken him. He had to move slowly and look at everything twice—every charred bush, every blackened rock, every spot fire of more than a few feet in diameter—just in case it was his father burning.

The other firemen were staying up in the meadow awaiting pickup. Spider was alone, which was the way he wanted it when he found the remains.

The smell of charred flesh filled his lungs and Spider couldn’t stop himself from gagging. Then he saw a smoking mound in a stand of trees. At first, Spider was convinced it was his father. But as he came closer, he realized it was too big, three times the size of a man. It was…a bear.

Aiden moved on, climbing to the top of an outcropping of rock. Even though rock wasn’t combustible, it had taken in the heat of the fire. He could still feel it through the soles of his boots. He looked around, nearly jumping out of his skin when something moved under the ledge of rock.

A booted foot.

“Dad.” Spider jumped down, his feet sinking a few inches in ash. He crouched low until he could see his father’s body wedged within a fissure in the rock, expecting the worst.

That’s when he heard the low moaning and realized his father’s body was trembling, his shirt and pants singed.

His dad was alive. Barely.

Aiden reached toward his father, but was afraid to touch him for fear he’d cause him more pain.

Spider yanked his radio off its strap. “Doc, are you out there? I need a medic sixty feet south of the meadow. I’m going to need an evac ASAP.” His voice was surprisingly calm, with no indication of the bile pressing at the back of this throat.

He’d done this to him. Spider had signed his dad’s death warrant when he’d accepted his shelter. “Help’s coming, Dad.”

His dad didn’t answer.

With a hand that trembled, Spider steadied himself against the rock. Through his glove, the heat was still uncomfortable. How had his father survived such heat? Spider was afraid to touch him, but he was worried that his father might be literally cooking inside the rock. Should he pull him out?

Torn, Spider put a hand on his father’s leg.

“You hang in there, Dad.”

His father continued to tremble, not uttering a sound.

“F
IREFIGHTER DOWN
! How soon until we can get a chopper out here?”

“Aiden!” Becca had been walking out the door of the IC tent when she heard his voice. She rushed back to the radio, flooded with relief.

“We’re sending out a bird. Can you move the wounded to the meadow?” the communications operator asked.

“Negative, not without a stretcher. We can’t make one. All Pulaskis and shovels were burned in the fire.” Aiden sounded shaken.

Overcome with concern, Becca grabbed the mic. “Aiden? It’s me, Becca. Are you all right?”

“Becca, put down that microphone,” Sirus commanded.

Ignoring him, Becca pressed the talk button again. “Aiden, I want to take you up on your offer. Do you hear me? This baby is—”

“Becca, don’t.” Sirus cut her off, putting his hand gently over hers, loosening her hold on the button.

“For crying out loud,” Maxine said. “She’s in labor. Let her say her piece.”

“I’m trying to tell Aiden that he was right.” She fought back a sob and pushed the button again. “I want you to know that I love you.”

The airwaves were silent. No one so much as breathed within the tent. The microphone cord was dangling at her feet, having come unplugged during her breakdown. Aiden hadn’t heard her, but everyone in the IC tent had.

“Becca, give up the mic,” Aiden ordered. “I’ve got a man down who needs medical attention immediately. He was out in the fire without a shelter.”

Becca drew a shuddering breath. It was too late for them. She’d had her chance. She’d dealt with Aiden the same way she dealt with everything. She’d stuck to her plan, waiting for the right moment. Only with Aiden, the right moment had never come.

And now she’d lost him.

“Get her to the hospital, Jackson. I need the medics in the chopper,” Sirus said.

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and turned Becca toward the door.

“Thank you.” She handed the useless microphone back to the communications officer, completely aware that she had
probably made the biggest fool of herself in forest-fighting history. “I’m ready to leave now.”

“W
HAT DO YOU THINK
, Doc?” Aiden asked.

With Doc’s blessing, they’d moved Spider’s dad inch by slow inch out of the crevice he’d crawled into. His face and ankles were burned, and he was having trouble breathing, as if his lungs had filled with too much poisonous gas. His gloves were melted to his hands, but his helmet and fireproof clothing had protected the rest of his body.

Roadhouse’s eyes were glazed over and the only sign that his body was alive was the shallow rise and fall of his chest and the trembling of his arms. Spider sat helplessly at his side.

“He’s in shock.” Doc exchanged a glance with Spider. “It’s his body’s way of protecting itself.”

Spider knew it was also the body’s last defense before death.

“Where’s that chopper?” Spider searched the sky, seeing nothing more than thick smoke.

“They would have had to fly around the fire,” Doc said quietly. “They know we’ve got a man down. They’ll get here as soon as they can.”

“Chainsaw’s waiting in the meadow to lead them down. It’s no use sending up a flare with all this smoke around,” Victoria said, kneeling next to Spider. She’d come down with Doc. “He’ll make it. He’s a tough old man.”

Looking down at his frail, unconscious father, Spider found it impossible to agree.

“Y
OU’RE NOT BREATHING
,” Jackson reminded Becca for the third time since they’d left base camp. They were driving Bec
ca’s SUV to the hospital. “I’ve had two kids. Breathing is an important part of the labor process.”

“There’s something…about a man I…barely know telling…me how to breathe…that’s a little…hard to take,” Becca said between gasps of air. “If I told you…to shut up…would you be offended?”

“You’re just worried about the teams on the mountain,” Jackson surmised. “And in pain. So feel free to lay into me as much as you want.”

Instead, Becca grew silent. There’d been no word about the injured firefighter on the mountain. Becca didn’t know who it was or how badly they were hurt. But she knew it was her fault. She should have been insistent about the fire lines. She should have lobbied for it earlier. Aiden and others had risked their lives to build a long, two-sided firebreak that was now just ash. The fire had traveled more than a mile in less than fifteen minutes. She’d known the front would do that. It was the Coyote fire all over again.

S
PIDER SAT HELPLESSLY
at his father’s side through the bumpy helicopter ride to the hospital.

“Talk to him,” Doc encouraged, yelling over the helicopter’s whining blades. “He can hear you.”

“Dad.” Spider gulped and blinked back tears. “Dad, you made it. Jeez, you wily old coot, how’d you find your hidey-hole?”

Eyes closed, his dad didn’t respond. His body’s trembling had all but ceased when they’d popped an IV into his system before takeoff.

“Keep going.” Doc rolled his hand. “You’re doing great.”

Spider felt as if he were going to choke, his throat was so tight. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you move as fast as you
did today. Those knees were pumping. Of course, you were going downhill.”

Nodding his head, Doc squeezed the IV bag.

“Apparently, there was a bear that wasn’t as lucky as you. He was roasted.” Spider cleared his throat. “Just a few feet away from you. Did you fight him for that crevice?”

“The hospital’s still twenty minutes away,” one of the paramedics said. “Keep talking.”

For a moment, Spider panicked. What else could he possibly say that would keep his dad’s spirits up? He’d missed twenty-five years of Spider’s life. They had a lot of catching up to do. And Spider hoped they’d have lots of time to do it in.

And suddenly, he knew. “Dad, did I ever tell you about the time I played in the Little League World Series? I was an all-star shortstop….”

“M
R
. R
ODAS
,” the doctor said as he entered the Missoula hospital waiting room in green scrubs. He looked tired and worn out.

Spider feared for the worse. He stood on shaky legs, then sank back down into the chair when his legs gave out on him. Doc was immediately at his side.

“Your father’s condition has stabilized. He’s in critical condition, so he’s not out of the woods yet, but I’m hopeful that we’re over the worst of it.”

Aiden breathed a sigh of relief, hanging his head in his hands and pressing his palms over his eyes. He would have remained weak with relief, except that he heard the doctor’s footsteps retreating. Spider lifted his head. “When can I see him?”

The doctor took in the state Spider was in with a disdainful look. “There is a huge risk of infection with burns.”

Spider looked down, realizing he was covered with dirt
and soot. Doc stepped forward. “Look, we’ve been out fighting a fire and could use a shower. I know there’s probably an empty room around here somewhere where my friend can clean up. In the meantime, we’ll run out and find him some clean clothes. But it would help if you’d find us that room.”

With a nod, the doctor left.

“Thanks, Doc,” Spider managed to say before the energy drained out of him completely. He propped his head in his hands and tried to pull himself together. His father was going to make it, after all. They’d been granted a second chance. Now he just had to figure out what to do with it.

“Y
OU’RE VERY LUCKY
, Ms. Thomas,” the maternity-ward doctor told Becca over an hour later. “We were able to stop the labor. We’ll keep you here a few days, confined to bed, until we feel it’s safe for you to deliver the baby.”

Absently, Becca thanked the doctor. Tubes ran into her arm. A monitor was strapped across her belly. Other monitors were taped to her chest. Machines beeped and hummed at her bedside. The baby was fine, but Becca’s heart was not. Where was Aiden? Had he continued to fight the fire after the wounded were airlifted out?

Becca lay in a room with three other beds. Behind thin curtains, two other women labored, their husbands or lovers encouraging them to breathe, telling them how proud they were of them, making jokes with the nurses.

Becca was alone.

Jackson had driven her down the mountain to the hospital in Missoula, and then had left her in the capable hands of the maternity-ward staff, promising to check on her later. He’d gone in search of information on the Flathead fire burn victim.

Becca supposed she should call her parents, but they’d just come and make a huge fuss over her. They certainly wouldn’t provide her with the support she wanted.

Only Aiden could do that.

She was alone. From the moment she’d conceived the idea of having a baby, that’s what she’d wanted.

Be careful what you wish for.

Becca turned her head away from the doorway and surrendered to the tears.

“T
HIS IS ONE HECK
of a hard ward to find,” Golden said when he entered the burn unit at the hospital. He nodded at Doc, who was reclining on a couch in the corner with one eye open.

“I wish I wasn’t sitting here waiting.” Spider folded the letter he’d been reading and returned it to the plastic bag in his lap. He’d like the chance to get to know the man who wrote those letters. That man who obviously loved his son.

Golden sank into a chair next to him.

The details all came spilling out. “He’s got second-degree burns on his hands where his gloves melted, and a third-degree burn on his left cheek where it rested on the rock. The doctor thinks he’ll recover ninety-percent use of his hands with a couple of surgeries and therapy…if he pulls through.” God, let him pull through.

“Was he burned anywhere else?”

“His lungs may have been damaged by the hot gases he was breathing.” Spider had never seen anyone burned this badly and live.

“But they think he’ll pull through?”

“They don’t know.” Spider went cold just saying it. Life couldn’t be so cruel as to bring he and his dad back together only to have him die like this.

Golden laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be around if you need me to sit here for awhile. I’ve got some experience sitting in hospitals.” Jackson’s son had been born premature and very weak. Golden had stayed many a long night with his son at the hospital.

“I won’t be going anywhere,” Spider said, flexing his fingers. “By rights, it should be me in that burn ward, not him.” At the moment, Spider wasn’t sure he had it in him to go back to fighting fires. Even the strength needed to fight for Becca seemed beyond him.

He’d let his father give him his shelter. What kind of man was he?

“How are you holding up?” Golden asked. “I heard it was pretty rough out there.”

Swallowing thickly, Spider shrugged.

After a minute, Golden cleared his throat. “You know, I nearly quit the Hot Shots after I fought fires in Russia.”

Spider’s eyes widened. He hadn’t known.

“When things break down out in the field, you tend to doubt your reasons for continuing. You tend to doubt yourself.” Golden’s face pinched up into a fierce expression. “Anyone who says they don’t get scared once in awhile is either stupid or a liar.”

The two men sat in a silence broken only by Doc’s snores.

Finally, Spider admitted, “He gave up everything for me. I feel so…so…weak.”

“It’s no more than you did for Victoria, and no more than you’d do for your own child.”

Spider was horrified to find himself blinking back tears.

“I’m going to give you the same advice I got back then, whether you want it or not.” Golden looked down at his hands and began twisting his wedding ring. “It’s the balance of love
and fear that keeps you careful out on the fire. You can still enjoy the rush of the excitement, but those two things will bring you home safe.”