Chapter 7
Lilly sat in the chair next to her aunt's bed, studying the sleeping woman. In the week she'd been back in Atlanta preparing for an extended stay here in Bend City, May had taken a turn for the worse.
The doctor had warned her it could happen, but Lilly was not prepared for it. Before she had left to go back to Atlanta, her aunt was lucid and good-humored, if not a bit frustrated by her limited mobility and stamina.
When she'd returned a couple of days ago, her aunt had been irritable and had trouble following conversations and seemed very tired. Her limbs were beginning to swell, and her dialysis had trouble keeping up.
Her doctors were now talking about moving her to hospice and it was a reality check for Lilly and a glimpse of what was to come. Her aunt was not going to be getting better. It would be a perpetual downward slide, managing pain and symptoms for comfort, not cure, until she succumbed to her disease.
And now Lilly found herself overcome with helplessness and a sadness that was compounded by her guilt. She'd missed so much time with her aunt and now she had to face the inevitable reality that their remaining time together was short.
Her heart ached and she wished she could go back in time. She would have pushed aside her petty reasons for not wanting to visit. She would have paid closer attention to May's health.
She brushed away a tear that had leaked out of the corner of her eye and thought about all the times her aunt had been there for her, like when her parents began arguing openly about the different expectations they'd had of their only child when she turned fourteen.
Her aunt and uncle's house had been a refuge and May always made time to listen to her, hold her hand while she cried herself to sleep, offering hugs when she needed one.
She'd been the first adult Lilly had come out to. And when Mitch had been thrown out by her parents when they were caught in her room making out the summer before their senior year of high school, it was Aunt May who took Mitch in.
Lilly smiled fondly at the memory because even though at the time it felt like their world was coming to an end, it had actually only solidified their feelings for each other, and it was Aunt May who'd given them the space, love and guidance to get there.
May even gave them their first jobs at the bar working as bar backs and filling in in the small kitchen when needed. She would even round up their hours and pay them a bit extra, especially when she and Mitch moved in together and she started community college courses and Mitch started the firefighting program.
"June?"
Lilly looked up at her aunt and saw her staring back at her with a look of pleasant surprise. But June was Lilly's mother's name. She thinks I'm mom, her sister, thought Lilly.
"Oh, May," Lilly said as a lump formed in her throat. She was unable to keep the tears from forming now and she let them flow freely.
Mitch felt sweat dripping down the small of her back as she raked small shrubs and dry grass away from their deployment site.
“No firefighter ever wants to hear the words deploy your shelters, but it is a fact of wildfire fighting. It is rare, but it happens, and this is why we prepare.” Walsh shouted as he moved along the perimeter of the clearing. “Remember, the more area you can clear, the safer you’ll be. The shelters are fireproof, but only up to a point. Take fuel away, give the shelters the best chance to save your life.”
Mitch called to her crew to toss their tools and gather inside the deployment site. “Remember, feet in the direction of the fire,” she said and pointed to where their imaginary fire was coming from.
"Last one to deploy gets to sharpen all the pulaskis and oil the chainsaws before going off shift," Walsh yelled as he pulled his arm up and looked at his watch. "Deploy!" He barked and the crew began unclipping the chest straps of their packs, slinging them off their shoulders to the ground and ripping out their fire shelters from their designated pouches.
Mitch and Fish exchanged a glance, competitive grins showing, and simultaneously dropped to the soft dirt and laid out flat, elbows and tips of their steel-toed boots holding down the bottom and sides of their shelters.
Mitch hated doing these drills with a passion. She was claustrophobic and any amount of time spent closed in her fire shelter made her heart pound and her skin grow clammy. But she knew how important it was to run them, God forbid they should ever have an actual burn over.
So, she practiced her measured breathing techniques and let herself be distracted by Walsh's voice as he yelled at the rookies who had yet to perfect the proper deployment.
“Remember crew, these are a last resort if you get cut off from your safe zone. They will protect you if used properly!”
"Johnson, you're going to be a crispy critter if you can't get those size thirteens into the bottom of that shelter and pull it up over your shoulders!" Walsh shouted and Mitch could hear him kicking the rookie's shoe lightly.
"Your entire body must be inside the shelter or you'll be in a world of pain!" She listened as her supervisor continued to move, bending down to shake each shelter, simulating the strong winds that came with a fast burn over.
"In a real burn over, you won't be able to hear anything but the roar of the fire. You'll feel like you are in an oven. You'll be clawing the ground trying to find cool air to breathe. You must not panic!" Walsh shouted as he continued to each bag.
"Sims, you just lost your hands!" Mitch peeked out from under her bag to see Walsh jerk his shelter up with ease. It had come loose immediately, leaving the man to grope for it with his hands to bring it back down.
After another few moments, Walsh ordered everyone to get up and repack their gear.
"Who was last, Sup?" Mitch asked as she'd be tasked with making sure whomever it was got all the pulaski axes to sharpen and chainsaws to oil.
"Well, it was nearly a tie with boats-for-feet Johnson and brick-shithouse Padgett... but Padgett got his shelter down last," Walsh said and everyone swung their eyes to the bear of a man who was muttering obscenities as he angrily folded his shelter up with choppy, impatient movements. He was two years in, so not a green rookie anymore, but he still had trouble mastering the one-size-fits-all deployment shelters.
"I can't help it if I barely fit in these goddamn bags." Mitch heard the man say and gave him a sympathetic pat on the back.
"Well, perhaps Sup can give you a five second head start next time. Or tell the fire to hold up," Mitch said in a mirthful tone.
"Fuck you, Cap," he said with a crooked smile.
Chapter 8
Lilly blinked her eyes and then rubbed them as she looked at the figures again. They couldn't be right. But she'd gone through them three times.
"This doesn't even make sense," she muttered as she pulled up another spreadsheet and plugged in the numbers once more. She thought coming to the bar that morning before visiting hours would help her focus on something other than her aunt's failing health, but instead it just added another stressor.
She was in a bit of a limbo as she wasn't the owner of the bar and had no legal authority. But she'd managed to get login information, albeit reluctantly, from Mark. She was shocked he'd known the financial logins as well. It had become clear in her few days back that May had been letting Mark take care of everything for quite some time.