Rescue (12 page)

Each day after work, Webster sprinted up the stairs, nearly desperate to see his little girl, who was rapidly approaching
perfection. He found Sheila playing with the baby on a pad on the floor, or dozing on the couch, nipples making wet circles
on her shirt while Rowan slept in a crib. Though Webster couldn’t feed
his daughter, he changed her and put her to Sheila’s breast as his wife gradually woke. Once the feeding was over, Sheila
rose and started dinner while Webster gazed at the baby.

Rowan had hair just like Sheila’s, which Webster thought the best genetic luck. The baby’s eyes were blue, and her limbs were
long, a characteristic from either parent. Webster’s mother swore that Rowan looked just like Webster’s grandmother, but when
Sheila and Webster examined the picture of a dowdy woman Webster couldn’t remember, neither could find any resemblance. Webster’s
parents were christened Nana and Gramps.

Webster’s life upended itself. Sheila and he slept on different schedules, neither of them getting enough and neither of them
minding. Webster convinced himself that Sheila and he had produced the most beautiful baby he’d ever seen. His mother took
up her knitting needles, and it seemed that every time she came to the apartment, she had knit another item for Rowan: baby
clothes and blankets when Rowan was a newborn; stuffed toys and sweaters and a beautiful green and blue coat for when she
could sit up. Burrows and his wife gave Sheila and Webster a snazzy stroller that came apart and seemed to be able to do everything
except cook dinner.

With Rowan in his arms, Webster rubbed noses with her and told her she was a pain in the ass. He walked her all over the apartment
showing her the lights. He did and redid the same five-piece puzzle with her a hundred times while she smacked her mouth in
surprise whenever she made it come out right. He imagined that Rowan, at nine months, must have found the backyard a vast
and exciting territory. In the summer, Webster’s mother brought over fresh vegetables that Sheila cooked, put in the blender,
and then froze in ice cube trays. When she fed Rowan
each lunch and dinner in her high chair, she defrosted a cube, warmed it up, and spooned it into Rowan’s mouth, employing
the same airplane trick Webster assumed every parent used.

Webster found himself using the word
love
all the time and indiscriminately. He felt he’d stumbled into a life that he was meant to live, though he couldn’t have described
it before he met Sheila.

Sheila, with her gradually slimming silhouette, seemed to experience life as her baby did, first living within a cocoon that
stretched the sixteen feet from bed to couch to sink, then expanding into a car for drives to Nana’s with the baby and then
for errands at the supermarket, Rowan behind her in the car seat.

One late afternoon in August, Webster arrived home to find Sheila and Rowan asleep on the grass in the backyard. He hadn’t
wanted to wake them and so had pulled up a chair next to them and watched. A warm breeze blew over the three of them, keeping
the mosquitoes away.

He wondered what had happened. Sheila and Rowan were sitting together and had just decided to have a nap? What a funny picture
they made, the two females with the same shade of glossy brown hair, one tiny head tucked beneath another. Were they breathing
in sync? Webster wished he had his camera with him, but he didn’t dare move to get it. He could hear the bustle of customers
out in front of the ice-cream shop. A perfect day for a cone. The yard had privacy when the leaves were on the trees. The
patch of land that Sheila and Rowan slept on had the most grass.

Rowan woke first, which then woke Sheila. Sheila brushed the grass off each of them. “Hi,” she said dreamily. She stood with
the baby in her arms, and Webster stood with them.

“I suppose I should get dinner going,” Sheila said. Webster stopped her with a kiss.

“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s just go around front and get ice-cream cones.”

Sheila didn’t protest as he thought she might. Usually she made sure that Rowan ate only healthful food. This time, however,
she smiled.

“You have wonderful ideas, Mr. Webster, you know that?”

He picked up Rowan, who was still wiping the sleep out of her eye. “What do you say, ice cream for supper?”

She nodded her head and laid it against his shoulder.

Webster knew he was the happiest he had ever been.

I
t was SIDS, the infant dead for hours when Webster and Burrows got to the house, a small cottage at the edge of the creek
that paralleled 42. It was built to be a summer place only, and at first Webster wondered if the mother was a tourist. The
home had no insulation. The mother insisted to the 911 dispatcher that the baby was still breathing.

Blankets and stuffed animals littered the crib. No one knew for sure what caused the senseless and heartbreaking death. Webster
felt only sadness and disgust.

He reached for the brachial pulse in the arm. He wondered at what point the mother had last looked at her baby and for how
long she’d been avoiding reality. Burrows began CPR, even though both medics knew the child was dead. For the sake of the
survivors, they had to do everything they could.

Webster glanced around the tiny living room, the crib next to the sofa. He always tried to get a picture of the life inside
the house when they made a call. A one-bedroom, baby in the living room. The infant was maybe ten weeks old.

Burrows called in to Dispatch to tell them they needed a police officer and a coroner to meet them at the hospital. With SIDS,
there had to be an autopsy.

“Ma’am, what’s your name?” he asked.

“Susan.”

“Susan, where is your husband?”

“He’s at work.”

“Where is that?”

“He’s on a construction site near Rutland.”

Her answers were quick and lucid. Her hair was dirty, and her teeth were a bad shade of yellow. Webster could smell the foul
breath from six feet away. Despite the sunny day, it was gloomy by the sofa.

The woman pulled the sides of her pink cardigan closer together with her fists. “Why aren’t you working on my baby?”

Webster squatted in front of the woman. “We are working on your baby. See that medic there?” Webster was sweating through
his uniform shirt. “What’s the baby’s name?” he asked.

“Britney.”

Webster wouldn’t be the one to break the horrific news. That would happen in the hospital. It was working on a dead baby that
screwed with your head.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” the woman said.

“We’re still working on her. We’re doing everything we can.”

“I know she’s dead.”

Grief hit the woman full force. Her face crumpled, and her body sagged to the sofa. She brought her hands to her mouth, beginning
a series of
Nos—
wails tapering off to whimpers. Webster sat beside her and put a hand on her sleeve. She, not the baby, was his patient now.

Webster stood and quietly asked Burrows if meds were indicated for the mother, but he shook his head. “When the cops are done,
we’ll see how she is, maybe bring her in then.”

“It’s unbearable,” Webster said.

“This your first SIDS?”

Webster nodded.

“It’s the worst,” Burrows, never a softie, said. “A whole life gone, and for no good reason. No matter how many times you’ve
seen it, it makes you crazy.”

“The mother’s known for hours, hasn’t she?”

“You blame her for not wanting to face reality?”

“No, not at all.”

“You’re shaking,” Burrows said, suddenly examining his partner.

“I’m fine.”

“Look, it didn’t happen to you,” Burrows said. “Rowan is fine. She will be fine. She’s long past when you have to worry about
that.”

“I know,” Webster said.

“You go outside and wait for the cops. I’ll sit here with the mother.”

“You sure?”

“Go,” Burrows said. “That’s an order.”

Webster walked outside. He felt tears popping into his eyes and stared up at the sky so that they could leak back into his
head. He’d never live it down if Nye showed up and he was bawling. He thanked God out loud, wherever he was. With Rowan, there
had been no SIDS, no respiratory distress, no abnormalities, no twisted cord, nothing. He could hear the cop car bumping along
the dirt road. He had no excuse for why he was outside. He turned and walked back into the house. Things would happen fast
now.

Webster shed his equipment as he walked, calling out, surprised not to see Sheila with Rowan in the living room. He called
again and heard an answer from the bedroom. There, in the dark of a
late October afternoon, Sheila sat on the bed nursing their fourteen-month-old daughter. Sheila had on a pair of jeans and
a white button-down shirt that allowed Rowan easy access to Sheila’s breast. Webster pounced on the bed, joining them. He
laid a finger against Rowan’s cheek.

“Don’t get her going,” Sheila said. “I’m trying to put her down. She hasn’t slept all day.”

Webster registered the snappish tone. Sheila’s hair was stringy, and there were dark shadows below her eyes. If Rowan hadn’t
slept all day, neither had Sheila.

“As soon as she’s done,” Webster said, “put her down and then you can sleep. Or if she won’t go down, I’ll take her.”

“You’ve been working two shifts.”

“I’m in better shape than you are.”

Sheila nodded.

Webster stood and undressed. He didn’t want any part of his job to touch the baby. Taking off the uniform was a way of putting
aside one life and taking up another.

He slipped on a pair of jeans and a black sweater, then went into the bathroom to wash his face and hands. Back in the bedroom,
standing in front of the mirror at the dresser so that he could finger-comb his hair into place, he caught a cameo of Sheila
and Rowan on the bed. On impulse, he turned and swooped in to give Sheila and the baby a kiss. His foot kicked a glass, and
Sheila turned her head away.

He picked up the glass from the floor. It still had a residue of amber liquid in it. He smelled it. The whiskey shook him.

“Where is it?” he asked.

Sheila didn’t answer. He could tell by the set of her jaw that she was angry. Hell,
he
was angry.

“I’ll find it,” he said, “so you might as well tell me.”

“Be my guest,” she said.

“What the fuck, Sheila? You’re nursing. It’s like giving Rowan a shot of Jack Daniel’s straight.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” she said.

Webster took Rowan from his wife. Sheila’s arms hung empty. After a few seconds, she stood and slipped behind him. She slid
her feet into her boots.

Rowan, ripped from the breast, started crying. She began to flail, revving up for a good one.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Sheila said.

“What I’ve done?” Webster asked. “What I’ve done? How long has this been going on? Sheila, I need to know.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Yeah, you do. It’s my baby who’s been sucking on whiskey.”

“Your baby.”

“Our baby.”

“Oh good, I thought maybe I was the wet nurse.”

“Sheila, stop this.”

She walked out into the living room, and Webster followed. He watched as Sheila picked up her purse.

“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t go.”

“If I don’t get out of here, I’ll go nuts.”

Webster placed himself between the door and Sheila, Rowan wailing.

“What the hell happened?” he asked. “Everything seemed fine when I left yesterday.”

She faced him, her stare hard. “It’s fucking eight degrees out,
and it’s not even November. I can’t take the baby anywhere. She’s been crying all day. This whole thing is a mess. Just a
fucking mess. I feel like a trapped lunatic.”

“Everybody feels like that when winter starts. Baby or no baby.”

“But at least you’re out. You’re someplace.”

“Maybe it’s time to think about going back to work,” Webster said.

“I don’t want to go back to work. I just want to…”

Webster felt his blood go cold. “What, Sheila? What is it that you want to do?”

“Get in a car.”

For a time, he couldn’t speak.

“You were my best shot,” Sheila said.

“Best shot at what?”

“Safety. You
exude
safety, Webster.”

His head spun. Webster shifted the baby in his arms and patted her back to calm her.

“It happened once, OK? I had a drink. You happy now, Mr. EMT? It happened once, and it won’t happen again. And you should
take another look at your precious medical books. A mother has a small drink, you know how little gets to the baby? Practically
nothing.”

“Where’s the bottle?”

“Rowan needs a change. And she needs to take a nap. And you’re standing in my way.”

She put her hands on him and pushed him to one side. Though he could have stopped her at any time, he stepped away from the
door. He thought of telling her not to come back unless she was prepared to stay sober, but he knew the threat to be an empty
one.

*    *    *

After Sheila left, Webster sat on the couch with Rowan. Had Sheila really picked him out as her best chance in life? The thought
sickened him. Didn’t she love him as he did her? Hadn’t they fallen into their life together?

Or were Sheila’s words merely tossed out in the heat of the moment? Would she come home and take them back?

When Rowan began to squirm and cry again, Webster fetched the pink diaper bag from the bedroom and selected what he needed.
He laid his daughter on the pad on the coffee table to change her. She smiled as if he were tickling her. Though Rowan might
have sensed the tension in the air, she’d never know what her mother and father had said to each other. Sheila’s words were
pebbles at the bottom of his stomach.

After he changed his daughter, he put her into her yellow pajamas. He sat for a moment in a kitchen chair, holding her, making
faces and clucking.

Had Sheila deliberately gotten pregnant because he was her best shot? Who would do that? But then Webster thought about the
confusion over the contraception the first time they’d been together. He shut his eyes. The night under the .9 moon had been
a precious memory for him.