Helmet Day at the Lek

I got to the lek perimeter at two in the afternoon with a clipboard, two pens, and a paper cup of chai I'd already finished. The giveaway tents were still coming down across the field at the park edge, kids' helmets stacked in rainbow piles, and past all that was the display ground, the low scrub ring where the spruce grouse did their spring thing every year. Rani Kot had a lot of strange venues for city business, and this one was my favorite.

Willis Prescott was waiting at the gate. He's the senior safety coordinator, fifty-two years old, twenty years at this facility, gray at the temples and calm the way deep water is calm. He had the exam folder under his arm and a pair of binoculars hanging off his neck.

"Tabby," he said. "Good, you found it."

"I found it three years ago, Willis. I've run debriefings here twice a season."

"And yet every spring I worry." He smiled to show it was a joke. Mostly.

He walked me along the fence line while he explained the setup, though I already knew half of it. The final practical for the safety officer post had to happen inside the display ground, among the birds, because a real emergency never waits for a quiet room. The grouse were still active this late in the season. The males were drumming and strutting on their little territories, and the rule was simple: the candidate had to run his drill without sending the birds into a panic. If the birds flushed, points came off.

"Distraction," Willis said, tapping the folder. "That's the whole point. A crowd, noise, animals, whatever. The officer who can keep his voice level with forty birds glaring at him can keep it level with a panicked human."

"And if he can't?"

"Then he gets more training and we try again in the fall." He handed me the folder. "You observe, you score, you debrief. You know the drill better than I do."

I did know the drill. I've been the simulation debriefing coach at Rani Kot for three years, since I moved out here for the job. It's a good fit for me. I like watching people under pressure and telling them the truth about it afterward. What I don't usually get is nervous about it, but I'll admit I smoothed my shirt down twice while we waited.

The candidate's name was Saul. Thirty-eight, six months in the city, applying for the permanent safety officer post. Willis had put him through the written part and two simulations with me running the debrief. He was steady on paper and steady in the chair when I picked his performance apart. He listened without flinching, which is rarer than you'd think. He was also, and I noticed this in a purely professional way the first four times, a very good-looking man. Broad through the shoulders, dark hair going silver at the corners, hands that looked like they knew how to be careful.

The gate clanged and he came across the scrub in his orange safety vest, boots crunching, clipboard of his own tucked under one arm. The nearest grouse stopped drumming and turned a flat yellow eye toward him.

"Mr. Saul," Willis called. "This is Tabby, your observer and debriefer. Her scores carry weight, so be nice to her."

"I plan to be very nice to her," Saul said, and shook my hand. His grip was warm and dry. "Ma'am."

"Don't ma'am me, it makes me stricter. Wait here."

I went back to the supply crate by the gate and dug out what I'd brought. The maintenance office had given me a paperboard tube from a finished roll of blueprints, about three feet long, light and hollow. I'd taped a red band around the middle of it so it read as a prop from a distance.

"Here." I handed it to him. "Your casualty. You're doing a simulated extraction. This tube is your injured hiker, found unconscious at the far marker. You'll secure, assess, package, and carry him out along the east line. Without," I pointed at the birds with my chin, "upsetting the locals."

Saul weighed the tube in one hand and looked at it seriously, the way he looked at everything. "He's a skinny casualty."

"He's also two-dimensional, so keep your complaints out of the debrief."

That got a short laugh out of him. Willis checked his watch, told us he'd observe from the fence, and left us to it.

I planted myself at the center marker with my clipboard. Saul moved off toward the far end of the display ground, where an orange cone marked his starting point. Between us, three male grouse were holding their little courts, fanning tails, popping their tail feathers up and down. The females browsed along the scrub edge, ignoring everyone.

"Begin when ready," I called.

He began well. I'll say that straight. He approached the cone at a walk, knelt, called out his assessment in a clear voice, the whole script, airway, breathing, circulation, spine check. His hands moved like he'd done it a hundred times, which he had, in the sims. He packaged the tube with a folded blanket from his kit, snug and neat, and lifted it into a carry position.

Then he turned toward the east line and took his first step too fast, and his boot caught the edge of a dry tussock.

The tube shifted. He lurched half a stride to correct it, and his elbow swung up, and the nearest male grouse exploded off his court in a clatter of wings.

The whole lek rippled. Two other males flushed, the females scattered into the scrub, and for about four seconds the air was full of wings and that dry rattling call they make.

"Stop," I said.

Saul stopped, tube in his arms, standing very still.

"Come back to the marker."

He came back at a walk, slow and careful, and set the tube down at his feet. The birds were resettling. A male had dropped back onto his court and was already strutting again, feathers up, like nothing happened.

"Do you know what you did?" I asked.

"Startled the bird on my left. I moved too quick on the correction."

"You didn't just move too quick. You moved before you thought. You had the package secured and then you got impatient with your own feet." I stepped closer. In the sims I stay behind the table. Out here there was no table, so I just stopped maybe two feet from him and let him have all of my attention. "In a real extraction, that lurch is a dropped patient. Here it's four points off and a lek full of stressed birds. Which do you think costs more?"

"Points recover, ma'am," he said. "Patients don't."

Something in my chest went warm at that, and I pushed it down and kept my voice flat. "Correct. So why did your feet go before your head?"

"Because I wanted it done well," he said. "Wanted it too much, maybe."

Most candidates argue with me at that point. They explain, they justify, they get tight in the jaw. Saul just stood there in his orange vest with a paper tube at his boots and took the correction like it was information, which is all it ever is.

"Again," I said. "From the package step. Slower. The birds will forgive a slow man. They will not forgive a jumpy one."

He nodded once, picked the tube back up, and walked it back to his last good position, unhurried this time, shoulders level. Behind him one of the males resumed drumming, that low thump-thump like a far off heart.

I watched him run the carry again. This time he moved like he was walking through a room full of sleeping people, and the nearest grouse just watched him go by, unbothered, and I wrote a number on my clipboard that was higher than the first attempt by a good margin.

Willis came partway through the gate at the halfway water break. "How's he doing?"

"He'll pass if he keeps his feet quiet," I said.

"High praise."

"Medium praise. Don't inflate my numbers in front of the candidate."

Willis grinned and went back to the fence. When I turned around, Saul was watching me instead of stretching, which he was supposed to be doing.

"Problem, Mr. Saul?"

"No, ma'am. Just thinking you're the first debriefer I've had who could scare me with one word."

"I'm not trying to scare you."

"I know," he said, and something easy and warm lay under it, and I looked back down at my clipboard before my face could do anything about it.

"Second half in five minutes," I told him. "Casualty's got a compromised airway this time. Drink your water."

He drank his water. The birds drummed on, and the afternoon went on getting warmer, and I had two more hours of shift, one more candidate to score, and a growing suspicion that this was not going to be the uncomplicated last week I'd planned.

Willis came back through the gate just as Saul finished his water. He looked at his watch, then at the lek, then at me, and he did that thing he does where he decides something without consulting anybody.

"I've got a call with the giveaway tents," he said. "Crowd control question about the helmet tables. Tabby, finish the second half, score it, and clip your sheet in my folder here. After that, give him his debrief out here. Thirty minutes, no interruptions." He set the folder on the fence post. "I'll sign off from your numbers tonight."

He was gone before either of us could ask a question. The gate latch clicked, and then it was just Saul and me and about forty birds who didn't care about our paperwork at all.

I looked at Saul. Saul looked at me.