”Trust Me“

How a raging prairie fire in eastern Colorado changed this EMTs life and faith

- Jennifer Struckmeyer

THE AMBULANCE SCREAMED down the highway. I’d been an EMT for six months, but this was the hardest run yet, the one I wasn’t sure I could ever make. “Ten minutes to Western States Burn Center,” the driver barked into the radio. I looked into the eyes of the man we were transporting, badly burned in a freak hot tub mishap.

“What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.

“They’ll take you to a shower,” I said, trying to stay calm. “To clean your wounds. It’s going to hurt something awful, but there’s no other way. Trust me, it gets better. You’re going to be okay. Trust me.”

We pulled into the burn center and rushed the gurney into the ER. Memories flooded my mind. I’d been certain I was over everything that had happened the past year. Now I wasn’t so sure.

I thought of when we’d picked up the man at the hospital, how his family had held hands, heads bent in prayer. Remembered how my loved ones had prayed for me in this very burn center. The memories, the emotions, were overwhelming. I couldn’t take it. I went outside. I needed to breathe. All I could think about was that day.

Sunday, March 18, 2012. Heartstrong, Colorado. Standing beside the fire department’s pumper truck, I gasped. In the distance, maybe a half mile away, a sweeping wall of fire was devouring everything in its path, flames more than 40 feet high. “It’s huge!” I said to Pam, my sister-in-law and fellow volunteer firefighter. We’d been on the force for about a year, joining our husbands, who’d been volunteer firefighters since their teens. Out here on the high eastern Colorado prairie, it’s just a given: neighbors helping neighbors.