Rescue (21 page)

Each is a domestic scene, painstakingly rendered. Another picture shows three bowls against the backdrop of the horrible flower-print
curtains they had in their apartment. Another is of a cut lemon, so realistically painted that one can almost taste the juice.
The background is the wallpaper in Sheila’s kitchen. Another is of a chair against a table, a trio of apples, and a book.

“They’re called sharp-focus still lifes,” Sheila says.

“Where did you learn to paint?”

“In Mexico.”

“You paint from memory.”

“I do.”

“They’re really very good,” Webster says.

“Thank you.”

There is a long silence between them. What does he hope? That she’ll change her mind right here?

“Well,” he says. “I’d better go.”

Reluctantly, he walks to the door. He examines Sheila for another few seconds. He wonders if this will be the last time he’ll
ever see her. Her hands are tight fists. Her entire body is rigid.

He won’t beg. He won’t try to negotiate. In a way, he gets it.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Webster says.

Sheila opens her mouth and then closes it.

He jogs down the steps and shuts the front door behind him.

He drives furiously out of the city, having no idea where he’s going until he comes to a sign that reads,
ENTERING QUINCY,
which he knows is south of Boston and not where he wants to be. He pulls the cruiser onto a side road. He’s lucky he didn’t
get a ticket.

He rolls down the window and breathes in metallic air.

He takes out his cell phone and punches in his daughter’s number. She picks up on the second ring. “Hello?” she whispers.

“Rowan, it’s Dad,” he says.

“I know.”

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“Dad?”

“Yup?”

“It’s twenty past one.”

“OK,” he says.

“I’m in
history
class. If I don’t hang up, Mr. Cahill is going to kill me.”

“Oh, sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You OK?” Rowan asks, still in a whisper.

“I’m fine. Talk to you later.”

Webster leans his head back and shuts his eyes. He decides he’ll stop at the first decent restaurant he finds and eat a proper
meal. Then he’ll find a map and drive like a normal person back to Hartstone.

C
addyshack
is in the DVD player for the hundredth time. The probies watch it over and over during their first three months. They need
the mindless laughter to calm their nerves.

The radio sounds out the tones at 3:10 a.m. Powell, a probie who has the haircut of a marine and the skinny frame of a geek,
pops up from the couch like a jack-in-the-box.

“Attention, Hartstone. We need a crew at 35 High Street. Fifty-one-year-old female, difficulty breathing and severe chest
pain.”

Webster responds: “602 and 704 in the building. Any other info?”

“Patient made the call. Appears to be alone.”

“You drive,” he tells Powell as they run to the rig.

It’s Webster’s first shift with the kid, and he needs to monitor him as well as take care of the patient. Webster glances
at the speedometer. “You want to push it as high as you can without danger of causing an accident. Almost all rig accidents
take place in intersections.”

The probie is memorizing acronyms. Webster can see it on his face.

“Remember how to get to each call, not only because you might be called back to the same place, but because it’s the best
way to learn the geography. Though you should be studying the maps, too. You studying the maps?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Name’s Webster. We don’t do sir.”

“Understood.”

“Where did you train?”

“Saint John’s Hospital. This was the only job I could find.”

“You move here?”

“Yes.”

“Family?”

“No.”

Webster shakes his head. The guy’s probably renting a single room in someone’s home. Bathroom down the hall. A probie’s salary
is grim. “You ever had a code ninety-nine before?”

“Just in training.”

The house is at the end of a driveway badly in need of a regrade. Powell has to slow down for a massive bump.

The probie takes the backboard and his jump kit. Webster has the med box and a flashlight. They walk straight in and find
a middle-aged woman sitting forward on a kitchen chair, a large cooking pot by her feet. Webster can smell the vomit.

“You take the vitals, I’ll do the history,” he tells the newbie.

Webster has a pen and pad in hand. “Ma’am, can you tell me your name?”

“Susan.”

“Susan, we’re here to help you. How old are you?”

“Fifty-one.”

“Can you tell me where your pain is?”

Webster watches the rookie take the pulse as the woman vomits into the pot again.

“Susan, on a scale of one to ten, can you tell me how bad the pain is?”

“Eight.”

“Can you show me where your pain is?”

The woman pats her chest. “Heavy,” she says.

Elephant on the chest.

Webster puts an IV line in. He can see that the newbie is having trouble with the blood pressure cuff. “Probie, what’s your
problem?”

“No problem.”

“What’s the BP?” he asks.

The newbie hesitates. “One-eighteen over eighty,” he says.

“Other vitals?”

“Pulse, a hundred twenty-four. Respirations, thirty-six,” he snaps out.

The patient seems confused by Webster’s presence. More confused than when Webster entered the house. “Probie, we need another
light. The switch over there,” he says as he points.

Powell turns on the overhead while Webster checks the woman’s airway and listens to the lungs. He slaps on the non-rebreather
mask. Webster examines the cardiac monitor. “Let me see that cuff,” he tells the probie. “Watch for vomit.”

Webster takes the blood pressure. “Eighty-six over fifty-eight,” he says aloud.

Webster hands the cuff back just as the cardiac monitor signals V-fib. Webster catches Susan, and he and the probie lay her
on the wood floor.

“I’m going to shock her,” Webster says.

Webster checks to see that the pads are securely in place. The probie has done something right. He removes the oxygen. “Is
everybody clear?” he calls out.

Before he can administer the shock, he sees, from the corner of his eye, Powell reaching for the IV bag.

“Don’t touch that!”
Webster shouts.

The probie freezes, his hand six inches over the bag.

“Sit back,” Webster says. He waits a second. Powell looks like he wants to swallow his arm. “Is everybody clear?” Webster
repeats. He administers the shock.

“Keep the compressions going,” he tells the probie. And then, after a minute, he adds, “I’m going to shock her again. Is everybody
clear?”

This time, the probie scuttles backward so fast, Webster thinks he’ll fall over.

Webster turns up the joules and shocks Susan again.

“Let’s get her onto the stretcher and into the rig. Keep up the CPR.”

They slide Susan into the rig. Webster goes with her, taking over the CPR. Still V-fib on the monitor. Webster wants to bring
her in alive. He removes the oxygen and administers another shock, this time a hundred fifty joules. He gives her one milligram
of epi, shocks her at two hundred joules, and then delivers one hundred milligrams of lidocaine.

He radios the hospital. “Hartstone Rescue to Mercy. “

“Go, Hartstone.”

“We are en route to your facility with a fifty-one-year-old female. Patient was conscious initially, but arrested shortly
after our arrival. The monitor is showing V-fib. Patient shocked and defibrillated a total of four times. We’ve administered
a total of two migs of epi and two hundred migs of lidocaine. Patient is intubated.”

“What’s the down time on this patient?”

“Four minutes.”

“Continuous CPR?”

“Yes.”

“Per MD number twenty-three, administer one amp sodium bicarbonate. ETA?”

“Five minutes?”

“We’ll be waiting for you.”

“OK, Susan,” Webster says to his patient, who looks as dead as a person can be. “You and me, we’re going to do this together.”
Webster removes the oxygen. “I’m clear, you’re not.” Webster shocks the woman again. He replaces the bag valve mask and administers
the sodium bicarbonate.

“You married? Your husband at work? Kids? You a smoker?” Webster stops the CPR, removes the oxygen, turns up the joules, and
goes through the procedure again. “Hey, Susan, seriously, you gotta do your part.” He starts the CPR again.

“OK, Susan, we got nothing to lose. Hold on to your eyeballs.” Webster repeats the routine and turns the joules up to two
hundred fifty. “I’m clear, and you’re dead if this damn machine can’t do the job.”

The woman’s body rises right off the stretcher. Webster’s eyes are locked onto the monitor. He watches as Susan converts to
a normal sinus rhythm.

“Beautiful, beautiful!” Webster says with awe. He loves the normal sinus rhythm. Loves it. “Way to go, Susan!” Webster says,
pretending to high-five the woman.

“ETA,” he shouts to Powell.

“Two minutes.”

“Step on it.”

When they reach the ER, a med tech and a nurse run out to
the bay and take over. After the ER has transferred the patient from the rig stretcher to the hospital’s, the probie rolls
it back to the rig. Webster heads for the medic room and completes his report: what they saw and what they did. He tears off
the ER copy, takes it back to the cubicle, and lays it across Susan’s legs.

“Good work,” says the attending. “I was sure you were bringing in a DOA.”

Webster shrugs and nods.

Back in the bay, Webster sees that the rig’s back doors are closed, indicating that it has been cleaned and disinfected. Powell
is in the driver’s seat already. Webster climbs in and faces the kid.

“You lied about the BP,” he says to the newbie.

Powell has red circles on his cheeks. His ears are enormous. “I couldn’t get it.”

Webster doesn’t need to raise his voice. “Never lie. Never. Just tell me you can’t get it. A wrong BP can lead to wrong treatment.
And wrong treatment can lead to a disaster. Do you understand me?”

The probie nods his head.

“And what the hell was that with the IV bag?” Webster asks. “You could have shocked yourself to Montreal.”

“I didn’t think,” the rookie says.

“You didn’t think. From now on, probie,
think
. Think so much your brain hurts. Every move, every procedure. I can’t have a situation where I’ve got two patients on the
floor.”

“No, sir.”

Webster rolls his eyes. “Everyone you come in contact with for the next week, I want you to take his BP. I see you without
the cuff, you’re suspended. I want you taking BPs twenty, thirty times a day. We clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The name is Webster. You can’t say your partner’s name, you’re going to have a real problem. Let’s go.”

The ambulance rolls out into the night. On the horizon is the first lining of dawn.

Webster leans his head back and closes his eyes. He hasn’t had a save in three months. He smiles. Nothing better than waking
up the dead.

W
ebster sits in the cruiser, uniform on, the field not twenty feet from him. The kids are used to his car. Even the uniform
won’t bother anyone. He checks his watch. He has maybe a half hour before he has to report to Rescue. During the season, he
tries to get to as many games as he can.

Today, he feels the need to see something normal taking place—something so far removed from what he does for a living and
his visit to Sheila that he might as well be in Kansas. At some point, he’ll have to tell Rowan about his trip to Chelsea.
What the hell will he say? I found your mother, but she wants nothing to do with you?

He locks the cruiser and walks, with his hands in his pockets, to the end of the bleachers. The girls have games on Saturdays
and Wednesdays, mostly Wednesdays, which allows Rowan to keep her job. He can’t tell what inning it is because there’s no
scoreboard. He could ask, but he doesn’t need to socialize. He knows most of the parents in the bleachers—by sight, if not
by name. He’s been sitting with them for years at one game or another. Rowan, in her maroon uniform, plays first base, her
reach and her stride long, her arm accurate. She likes the spot because it provides her with action.

The runner is off the bag two long steps. Rowan, glove extended,
is watching the pitcher for any sign of a pickoff. Webster hopes for a double play. He’s made it to about half the softball
games this season. Just watching his daughter on the field brings back memories of sitting for hours during Little League
games when Rowan was six, seven years old. Rowan with her cap too big for her, her T-shirt hanging down to her knees, running
as if she had a load in her pants. At some point, her posture changed and with it her center of gravity, but those early years
were the great ones.

The batter gives the ball a good wallop. Rowan leaps into the air to catch it. The runner takes off to second and keeps going
when she sees that Rowan has missed it and that the ball has rolled out onto the field. Another player, whom Webster doesn’t
know, shoots it back to Rowan for the cutoff. Rowan throws it to the catcher in time to prevent a homer. The runner waits
on third.

Rowan couldn’t have caught that ball off the bat anyway, Webster decides. Too high.

When the team runs off the field at the third out, Rowan, ponytail flapping through the hole at the back of her baseball cap,
gives a quick wave in his direction. Though it isn’t cool to wave to your dad during a game, Rowan usually does. A teammate
throws Rowan a bottle of water, and she drinks it straight down.

Webster asks a guy standing near him what the score is.

“Seven–five, Hartstone’s losing.”

Rowan ditches the empty water bottle and walks to the batting circle, searching for her favorite bat. The first batter flies
out, so Rowan makes her way to the plate. Webster can tell by Rowan’s stance and her practice swings that she wants to hit
it over the fence.