I suddenly felt heavy, and then panicked as bitter bile rose in my throat.
“I was just kidding. Are you all right? You look a little green,” Tyler said.
“I’m nauseous all of a sudden.”
“Bathroom’s down the hall, second door on the right.”
My stomach lurched, and I gagged, covering my mouth. I didn’t wait for it to happen again, sprinting to the bathroom just in time. Just as I bent over the toilet, I thought about my camera being dunked in toilet water and covered in vomit, but it was hovering over my right ear, held by the hotshot I loved to hate.
“Why am I so stupid?” I moaned, my voice echoing off the porcelain.
Tyler was holding my camera with one hand, my hair in the other.
“Is she okay?” one of the guys asked from the hall.
“She’s fine, Smitty. She’s caught that stomach bug going around,” Tyler said.
“What a bad ass,” Smitty said. “I was in bed for two days with that shit.”
I hurled again. Both men made the same sound, equally surprised and disgusted.
“I’m super excited to have an audience for this on my first day,” I said.
“Sorry,” Smitty said. “Feel better, Ellie.”
“Not humiliating at all,” I said, puking again.
CHAPTER TEN
“Whoa,” I said, taking a step back. I’d been on several house fires and car fires, and even a few grass fires my first week, but Tyler was right. Wildland fires were different.
Tyler kept eyes on everything around him while guiding me to a safer area. I was bundled in a base layer, thermal, fleece pullover, with oversized flame-retardant jacket and pants for a top layer, making it more than difficult for him to keep a grip on my arm. He was in a fire-resistant shirt and tan cargo pants, with maybe thermals underneath, wearing goggles, a gear bag, and a hardhat.
A line of Alpine hotshots—most of whom I’d just met two days before at the fire camp, but who Tyler loved, including his brother—in bright yellow jackets and blue hard hats were digging a line at the bottom of the hill. A symphony of their pulaskis and rhinos clanging against roots and branches bit through the constant drone of radio communication.
Tyler had brought me as close as he could, trying to help his crew while keeping an eye on me. We’d camped for two nights, and excluding any embers jumping the fire line, he predicted we would be packing up by nightfall. No one was more surprised than me that I wasn’t looking forward to it.
There were no engines with hoses or pumper trucks full of water. The hotshots fought fires with drip torches, shovels, and chain saws, digging trenches to pull everything out of the ground that could fuel the fire.
I wasn’t scared of heights, but a strange combination of fear and exhilaration came over me as I looked down at the valley below. The wind was blowing chunks of my hair into my face, and I realized it was also blowing the fire toward the Alpine crew. Time slowed down as I stared at Tyler. We were stuck in a moment I’d never been in before, not skiing a summit, not on a wave runner off the beaches of Thailand, not hiking Machu Picchu. We were on top of the world, the only force between the fire and the houses I could see from the mountain we were standing on. Holding my camera, freezing, and a mile from flames that could burn me alive, I’d finally found what I didn’t know I was looking for.
“Back up, sweetheart,” Tyler said, reaching across my chest like my mother used to do when she’d slow down the car too fast.
I was nearly hanging over his arm, leaning forward, hungry to be closer, snapping shot after shot, devouring the adrenaline as fast as my body could produce it. It was better than any high I’d ever had.
The flames made a low roaring sound as they crawled over the dry brush and leafless trees like a line of soldiers pushing forward without fear. The walk to the fire site was a difficult trek. We’d driven almost two hours to the fire camp, and then hiked for nearly an hour through ice and snow, climbing steep inclines and through the aspens. My feet and face were numb before I even smelled smoke, but I’d forgotten about the cold hours ago, looking through the lens of my camera.
Taco ran up the hill, out of breath and drenched in sweat and dirt, stopping in front of Jubal to report. “Fuel break completed on the eastern edge.”
Smitty was behind him, panting and holding a drip torch in one hand, his pulaski in the other. Watts was holding a chain saw, his shoulders sagging. They looked equally exhausted and content, every one of them in their element and ready for their next order.
Jubal slapped him on the shoulder. “Good work.”