58 | June• 2019
A little later, the litter team loaded
me onto the inf latable backboard.
I mustered a smile when they put
aviator s unglasses on me to protect
my e yes, anticipating that the heli-
copter was about to arrive. We even
made time to snap a family photo.
At 2.07pm, the litter team carried
me to the helicopter pickup point.
That’s when things started to unravel.
Montoya discovered that he couldn’t
transmit radio calls from the canyon.
A garage fire had broken out in
the service company town. From
where he stood, Garrett could see
black smoke. Between us and the
f lames was a grass field that three
years earlier h ad torched in half
an h our.
“If we don’t get him out of
here now, we’re going to have
a critical patient on our hands,
and I don’t have the meds to
deal with him,” Yardley told
Montoya. The drugs had run
their course; my symptoms had
returned.
Then, while the seven first
responders stood around me, a
bee stung my thigh. “I’m aller-
gic!” I said. Yardley told some-
body to get an EpiPen.
“Please don’t,” I pleaded. I was
worried that the epinephrine
would agitate the snake venom.
About then the helicopter final-
ly appeared over the ridge, and
Yardley gambled that if I hadn’t
gone into anaphylaxis yet,
I w ou ld n’t.
It was 4.30pm. The brush beat about
in the downdraft and a cable was low-
ered. I felt myself tugged from the
ground and a surge of relief.
As the thumping of the helicopter
faded, Turin gave in to dark thoughts.
She and my parents broke into sobs.
Bridger didn’t make a sound. He
hadn’t cried since the bite.AFTER THE HELICOPTERtouched
down at the hospital, nurses wheeled
me into the emergency room and
cut off my shorts and T-shirt. Five-
and-a-half hours after my bite, they
hooked me up to my first IV laced withKyle out of the hospital with his
mother and TurinPHOTO: COURTESY KYLE DICKMAN