At four o’clock that afternoon, I heard a knock on the door and assuming it was the pizza I’d ordered, I pulled it open.
It wasn’t.
"Girl ti," Poppy exclaid, walking in with Lily and Tillie Quinn following her.
"What are you guys doing here?" I asked, hugging each of them.
"We brought wine and snacks," Tillie said, holding up wine and my pizza she’d intercepted, while Lily held up bags of groceries.
"If that’s okay," Poppy rushed to say. "We don’t want to intrude. I just know that Flash left today so we thought you might want so company."
"I’d love so company," I said. "Co in."
The ladies walked in, and Poppy started to pull dishes from cabinets to set up our snack station.
"Did Flash get to Cali okay?" Tillie asked.
"Yes," I said. "He called when he landed. All safe and sound with the fire captain."
"Do you want red, rosé or white?" Poppy asked, pointing to the wine.
"Red, please." I grabbed glasses.
"Tillie? Wine?"
"Rosé all day," Tillie teased in a sing-song voice.
Lily groaned. "I’m good with red as well."
"Oooh, I get the whole bottle of white to myself?" Poppy squeaked.
"Where are your kids?" I asked Poppy.
"Maverick and Devon are hanging with Hatch and Maisie," Lily said. "I think they’re heading over to my parents’ in a bit. Ace and Cassidy were there for dinner, so they offered to watch all the kids for a few hours. A recruit drove us over."
"This all ans we can get a little tipsy," Tillie exclaid, grabbing her wine with a grin.
"I like tipsy," I said, and Poppy handed a glass.
For the next four hours, I discovered what it ant to be part of a girl squad who all loved and respected each other. I had that with my sister, definitely, but I’d been hard-pressed to find it with other won. They were far more like Madison, so I steered clear.
"Oh my god, you have to tell us what it’s like working for Mack," Tillie demanded. "He’s so hot."
"Ew, Till," Poppy said with a groan. "He’s like our uncle."
"He’s like our hot uncle," Tillie pointed out.
She was right. Mack was hot. Not as hot as Flash, but still gorgeous for a dad.
"Well, working for him is kind of aweso," I admitted. "But it hasn’t been very long, so only ti will tell. Right now it’s all honeymoon stuff."
"When do you take the Bar?" Lily asked.
"Hopefully in February." I sipped my wine.
"I wish I knew what I wanted to do with my life," Tillie breathed out. "Y’all have known what you wanted to do since you were two."
Poppy laughed. "Um, hello, you know what you want to do, you’re just in a really competitive area."
Tillie was a singer and an actress, and her parents had basically given her carte-blanche to pursue her dreams with their full support. They gave her a free place to stay while she spent her ti practicing her craft.
Tillie still worked her ass off as a bartender at night, so she could audition and rehearse during the day, and I was kind of in awe of her confidence to constantly put herself out there.
"I just need sothing more than a fucking vagina comrcial."
"Didn’t that comrcial make you a mint?" Poppy asked.
She sighed, sipping her wine. "Yeah, it did. But I kind of wish it didn’t because now I’m known everywhere as the girl with the whistling hoo-ha."
I glanced at Poppy who burst out laughing, which made lose my composure and then all of us were rolling with laughter at the thought of Tillie’s giggling vagina.
"Oh my god, bitches, I need more wine," Tillie said, once we’d pulled ourselves together.
By the ti the girls left , I was calm and happy, and finally felt like I could relax. I fell into bed, sleeping soundly even though Flash wasn’t there to wake up to. I was actually looking forward to my case load the next day and couldn’t wait to get started.
Flash
Two days into my attempt to help with these goddamn fucking fires, we’d barely put a dent in any of it. I’d been flying back-to-back runs and I was exhausted. I wanted to find the asshole who decided it would be fun to let off illegal fireworks in the middle of July, in one of the highest risk areas of California and put a dent in his head.
My chopper was fitted with a "bucket," a flexible vessel used to haul and deliver water to fire sites. My job was to collect water from swimming pools from the Sacranto neighborhoods closest to the fire zone. The bucket held over two-thousand gallons of water, and according to my flight logs, I’d flown eighteen trips in two days and was looking forward to my shift ending soon.
I was flying what was scheduled to be my last mission when a distress call ca in over the radio. A volunteer firefighter got separated from his group and was trapped behind a twenty-foot wall of flas that was closing in around him. He was completely cut off from everyone in the area, making a ground rescue impossible.
"This is Firebird Helo, callsign Bravo Zero Niner Delta," I said, turning around. "I am within range of your firefighter and should have enough fuel to reach him."
"Be advised, Firebird. Onsite landing is a no go. I repeat. There is no place to land at the rescue site. Proceed with extre caution."
"Understood, base. I am proceeding to the rescue site now."
As I approached the site, I wondered if I was already too late. The sky was filled with thick black smoke, and I struggled to make out anything on the ground as I circled above. After a number of passes, I was starting to run low on fuel. I needed to find this guy soon if we had any chance of making it back to base.
Suddenly, through the darkness, I saw a faint flash of white light coming from down on the forest floor. I flew in a little closer and could clearly see it was blinking. This was an ergency beacon. The kind worn by every firefighter.
I lowered the chopper directly over the beacon and could now see the trapped firefighter waving his arms wildly. re minutes away from being completely engulfed in flas.
I flew low enough to set the bucket on the ground next to him and he wasted no ti crawling inside. Once I was sure he was safely inside I climbed above the tree line and headed for a safe place to land. My heart raced as I flew my precious cargo over the fire zone, searching for anyplace that wasn’t on fire.
That’s when a violent gust of wind caused by the thermal updraft of the fires slamd into the helicopter, and I struggled to maintain control as we went into a flat spin. The chopper pitched and yawed wildly as my attitude and altitude alarms buzzed. If I couldn’t regain control quickly, this was going to be one short rescue mission.
I grabbed for the radio. "Mayday, mayday. This is Firebird Helo Bravo Zero Niner Delta. I am in distress. Location sowhere east of zone five."
The chopper continued to spin.
"Co on, you piece of shit," I groaned, pulling on the stick as we plumted toward the ground. I thought of my poor passenger hitting the ground a second before and the helo landing on top of him. However shitty my death was about to be, his was gonna be worse. Then, I thought of Tate, and how pissed off at she was going to be for dying. I imagined her at my funeral, standing over my open casket, slapping my big dumb face over and over.
I slowed my breathing, focused on the controls, and with the ground rely one hundred feet away, finally pulled out of the spin and regained control of the aircraft... just in ti to see the power lines.
I didn’t have enough ti to climb above the power lines without slamming my passenger directly into them. My only choice was to fly under them and pray my rotors cleared them without flying too low and dragging the firefighter along the ground inside the bucket. Without a split second to spare I dove, holding my breath and bracing for the worst, barely managing to clear the lines.
I found a safe spot to land in a cow pasture and set the bucket down before releasing the line. I then set the helo down about fifty yards away and checked on the firefighter. He was suffering from smoke inhalation, dehydration, and was dizzier than hell, but he was alive and grateful.
My chopper was another story. The tail rotor was bent, and half of the instrunts were dead including the radio due to what appeared to be an electrical short. There was no cell service in the area, so we grabbed all the water that was in the chopper and started walking toward the nearest highway.
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