Page 101 of From Air

I shake my head. “I-I’m almost there.”

“Why don’t you call me back when you’re at your apartment? Focus on getting there safely. Okay?”

“Yeah. O-okay.”

Just as she disconnects, I slam on my brakes. My seat belt locks.

“Oh my god. Oh my god!” I cover my mouth, gaze affixed to the biker I nearly hit.

He flips me the bird as the car behind me honks. I drive slower than fifteen miles per hour the rest of the way. When I get to my apartment safely, I rest my head on the steering wheel and just breathe.

Dwight is confused. Maybe I didn’t hear him correctly. I was focused on getting him to eat and take his meds. I grab my bag and head inside the building. The sweet smell of pot greets me, along with yelling. It has to be the couple down the hall from me who were fighting all night. How can they still be screaming at each other?

I need a long shower. Then I need to call Melissa back and calmly talk through everything. She will help it make sense. I’m tired, thanks to the couple whose door I’m approaching. When people are tired, their brains don’t work as well. That’s it. That has to be it.

“Shit.” I bend down to pick up my keys after dropping them. As I stand straight, the door to my left opens (the bickering couple). I turn slightly, ready to ask them to please take it down a notch so I can think straight. In a panic, the young woman stumbles into me and trips, falling to the—

Whack!

Chapter Thirty-Two

CALVIN

It’s a jaw-grinding day when someone makes a shitty decision to let a small fire burn when we could have dropped two to four men and snuffed it out. The “let burn” is now a vast conflagration we’re flying past on our way to a smaller fire that no one will know about if we get to it soon.

That’s the point. We put out fires in remote areas that rarely make the newsbecausewe put them out quickly and efficiently.

We bank left and get a good look at the fire, an angry dragon seeping a slow-rising column of smoke.

I’m out of the plane once I get the slap on my shoulder. The wind has its way with me for several seconds, a dizzying blur of tilting landscape at ninety miles per hour.

The sky.

The plane.

The horizon.

The ground.

I go through the count, and then it’s peace. A serenity like nothing else. And in this moment, I tell myselfthisis the reason I do it.

But who am I kidding? I think the same thing when I’m on the ground cutting a line, sawing trees, or crawling around on my fucking hands and knees, feeling for hot spots.

What bugs me is this constant need to remind myself just how much I love my job.

Beyond the ominous clouds, there’s something off about the day. A sudden shift in the wind adds an unplanned hundred-or-more yards of drift. Trees. I’m headed for the trees. By some miracle beyond my experience steering my ass out of a bad situation, I find a tiny clearing and manage to land without snagging my chute on a tree or body slamming a boulder the size of a small car.

Alan, a rookie, doesn’t fare as well; he finds a tree—thankfully a shorter one.

“Fuck!” His displeasure echoes.

When the other two land, I remove my gear and radio for the supply boxes.

While making my way to Alan, I check my phone. There’s a message from a number I don’t recognize.

Hi Calvin, it’s Melissa. Jamie’s fine. There was an incident. I flew in this afternoon. I’m at the hospital. She was accidentally attacked yesterday. A concussion and a broken nose. She’ll go home tomorrow. She didn’t want me to tell u, but I thought u might want to know

My hand drops to my side, clenching the phone as I watch the plane drop boxes of supplies.What the hell?How does one get “accidentally” attacked? Was it a patient?

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