Rescue (6 page)

“The police will arrive soon,” Burrows said to the girl. “You should be prepared for that. They’re going to have a lot more
questions than we do.”

“Shit.”

“What the hell did you think was going to happen?” the mother cried.

Burrows leaned into Webster. “We could call the cops off. Kids do stupid stuff to drive their parents crazy all the time.”

“She’s accused a guy of assault and rape.”

“What’s your gut tell you?” Burrows asked.

“Hoax. To drive the mother out of her mind.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I gotta call it in,” Burrows said. He took his radio off his belt. He called Dispatch. “Scene appears to be safe,” he reported.

“Any weapons involved?”

“No. Can you give me a better ETA for the PD?”

“They’re just finishing up now. Should be another fifteen to eighteen minutes.”

“We going to wait until the cops get here?” Webster asked Burrows when he was off the radio.

“I guess,” he said. And then he shrugged. “We’ll wait in the rig till they come.”

Had Burrows and Webster not been twenty minutes into overtime, Webster later thought, they might have shown better judgment.

Webster walked over to the sullen teenager on the couch. She lay back against the pillows with her legs wide open, as if she
were either the most relaxed person in western Vermont, or the most seductive. “It’s a serious offense to lie to a nine-one-one
operator,” he said. “Don’t do it again.”

As he walked away, Webster was sure he heard a mincing echo.
Don’t do it again.
He wanted to turn around and give her a harsh lecture. He didn’t.

They climbed up into the rig. Webster drove to the end of the long driveway and they waited fifteen minutes before they saw
the cops approaching. Nye rolled down his window. “What’s up?”

“A hoax,” Webster, in the driver’s seat, said. “A girl trying to piss off her mother.”

“Just what we need.”

McGill groaned.

“It’s up to you,” said Webster. “Maybe the girl needs a talking-to, I don’t know, but she’s breaking her mother’s balls.”

Nye rolled his eyes.

Webster and Burrows took off for Rescue. They weren’t a mile from the house when Dispatch signaled again. “Report of serious
injuries at your previous scene.”

“It’s a hoax,” Burrows radioed in. “A daughter trying to drive her mother nuts. Prank call.”

“I don’t think so,” the dispatcher calmly disagreed. “Cop called it in. There’s someone screaming in the background.”

Webster reversed the rig and pushed it hard. He sprinted when they got to the house, thinking if this were still a hoax, Burrows
would have the girl arrested. He pushed through the front door. There was no sign of the girl, but the mother was screaming.
There were burns and blisters down the right side of her face and along her throat. Her scalp showed where her hair had burned.

“Fuck,” Webster said softly.

Nye was trying to get the woman to lie on the sofa.

“We’ll take care of that,” Burrows said. “You find the girl? She’s probably upstairs.”

“McGill’s got her. Also found an empty bottle of toilet bowl cleaner on the floor.” Nye pointed to where the bottle had rolled.

Burrows took over the airway. The vapor from the acid could burn the woman’s throat. He intubated and then started an IV for
the pain. He tried to calm the woman.

“Hydrochloric acid,” Burrows said to Webster. “We have to
flush it out. Get me a large pitcher of cool water. Jesus, it’s in her eye. It’s full thickness on the cheek.”

Burrows cut her clothing off and removed all of her jewelry. There might still be acid on her clothing. He covered her with
a blanket.

He gave the woman fentanyl for the pain.

When Webster returned with the pitcher, Burrows began the flushing, making sure he wasn’t causing any acid to spill onto healthy
tissue.

“You guys were just here, right?” Nye asked.

“Yes,” Webster said, “but everything was fine.”

Nye stared.

“Everything seemed fine,” Webster amended. “No injuries.”

“Why did you leave?”

Burrows spoke. “It looked like a hoax. The girl saying the mother’s boyfriend had raped and beaten her. The girl struck me
as lying about the injuries.”

“Did you examine her?”

“No. She wouldn’t let me touch her.”

“You take the mother to Mercy. We’ll deal with the daughter. I’d say you and the probie here just stepped in a big one.”

It was worse than either Burrows or Webster had predicted. Evidence of sexual assault was collected from the daughter at the
hospital. At least two crimes had been committed: a fifteen-year-old girl had been raped; the same girl had thrown acid at
her mother. The mother had serious burns, including to her cornea.

“I’m gonna get my ass hauled,” Burrows said to Webster on the way back from the scene.

“I was with you every step of the way,” Webster said.

“Noble, but it doesn’t fly. I was the crew chief. I was in charge.”

“I’ll back you up.”

“You’ll stay out of it. You hear me, probie? You followed my orders. That’s it. Me, I’ll keep my job. You? You’ll be outta
Rescue before you finish washing down the Bullet. They question you, you say you followed orders. Is that understood?”

Webster nodded.

“What was that?” Burrows asked again, this time in a loud voice.

“I got it,” Webster said.

“All we had to do was fucking stay put,” Burrows muttered, shaking his head.

Webster had had patients die on him, and that was hard enough. But to have harmed a patient by not remaining at the scene
was brutal.

They drove past the town hall, a brick ranch turned into the seat of government. The library had two stories and a stone facade,
but it, too, looked fake, as though it might once have been a feed and grain store. Webster had never been a scholar, but
he read at night for pleasure.

The rig passed by Keezer’s Diner, nearly full now at 11:30, every vehicle outside a pickup truck with tools and blue tarps
in the back. He wondered if Sheila was working. Mother’s Country Kitchen had gone out of business, but the Quilt Shop was
still hanging in there. Webster was familiar with every shop and service in town. Sometimes he liked to cross the border into
New York and drive to a place he’d never been before. Explore a town in which he knew no one.

They passed the Maple Leaf Gift Shop, Armand’s Pizzeria,
and Roberts Funeral Home. On a lane behind the funeral home was the American Legion Hall, the place where just four years
ago his class had held its senior prom. Webster took the next left into Fire Rescue. He parked the Bullet in its spot: facing
out, ready to go again. Burrows headed for the building.

Webster walked to the front of the Bullet and stared out into the morning. The snow was still on the trees from the night
before, and the sun turned it all into crystals. He had a hankering to go skiing. He wondered if Sheila skied and thought
not. He’d looked up Chelsea on a map, and it was a long way from anything with a chairlift.

He moved just outside the garage door opening. He would go to see her as soon as he got out of work.

He longed to get Sheila out of that porch room with the creepy landlords who ate Devil Dogs. He couldn’t imagine what they
looked like, and he hoped he’d never have to meet them. But get her out where? He couldn’t bring her to his parents’ house.
Out of the question. She didn’t have anything but the earnings from her hustle and maybe a week’s paycheck. He’d like to get
on a plane with her and go someplace warm. It would take him months to earn enough money for two plane tickets, without dipping
into his savings. Where would they go? Florida? Mexico? The two of them on the beach, he in bathing trunks, she in a bikini,
a pair of piña coladas between them.

“Webster!”

Webster turned to the door of the squad room.

“What the hell are you doing, probie?” Burrows asked. “Making snowmen?”

“No, sir,” Webster said.

“You’re still on duty, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

W
ebster pulled back the curtain. He knew what town he and Sheila were in, but he’d seen it only at night when they’d driven
to the B and B, both of them a little drunk, she more than a little. The streets had been dead at eleven, but now the town
had action: pedestrians pitched forward against a sharp wind, pickup trucks traveling in both directions, a glare already
on the crust of the snow. The B and B was Sheila’s idea. On recent successive Saturdays, they’d gone on day trips, stopping
at a bar and a cheap place to eat on each excursion they made farther and farther away from Hartstone. But this time she’d
wanted to make a weekend of it. Webster sometimes felt as if he were a rubber band, liable to snap back to Rescue at the first
tones from his radio. He’d have to learn to ignore that summons. He was off duty.

He stood in his boxers. The room was overheated, and they had no control over the temperature. When they’d arrived the previous
night, the heat had been welcome. Almost three months in Vermont, and still Sheila hadn’t bought a winter jacket or hat or
proper boots.
Spring’ll be here any minute,
she’d say whenever Webster brought up the subject, as if she’d never have to experience winter again. Never another winter
in Vermont anyway.

Two weeks after that night under the .9 moon, Webster had been promoted to full-time and stayed at Rescue during his shifts.
He’d been given the graveyard tour: midnight till eight. Sheila worked days at Geezer’s, as she’d come to call it, which made
him wonder why someone else hadn’t thought up the nickname earlier. When his tour was over, he’d hang around Rescue for twenty
minutes to talk to the new team, and then he’d go over to the diner for breakfast. She looked demeaned in the shiny gray uniform
with the white apron. She usually told him he looked like hell, and he told her she looked nice. Sometimes she’d manage to
brush her hand against his. Once she’d bent down and wrapped an arm around him, pretending to be reading an article in a newspaper
Webster had spread on the counter. For Webster, breakfast in the diner was a necessity, but he ached when he left. He thought
of Sheila as a drug that had hooked him after only one hit.

Sometimes Sheila asked him questions about his night. He’d tell her everything about each case, getting rid of the images
and smells. She never made wisecracks about his work. Maybe the memory of her own accident was too fresh. He wondered what
she did at night.

Four days into the third week, he’d ridden into Rescue with Burrows. They’d had a bad night, and the images weren’t pretty.
Webster unloaded the back of the Bullet and hefted as much equipment as he could into Rescue and onto the counter in the squad
room. So intent was he on getting the equipment into the basins without dropping something that he missed her over by the
coffee machine. He noted an odd silence in the room and looked up to see Sheila with Callahan, a new recruit who’d arrived
for the next tour.

For a moment, Webster felt paralyzed. What the hell was Sheila doing there? She had on her leather jacket, a black turtle
neck, a different pair of jeans. Her hair was pinned up. A jolt traveled from his groin to his chest and back again. Burrows
put a hand on his shoulder. “Relax, Webster,” he said. “It’s not as if anyone can keep a secret in this town.”

Webster joined Sheila at the coffee machine, and Callahan slid away. A manufactured banter behind him broke the silence.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I came to buy you a drink.”

“It’s eight o’clock in the morning. There isn’t a bar open in the entire state of Vermont.”

She leaned against the counter and cocked her head. “How about Albany?” she asked, teasing him. “That’s a city, isn’t?”

“I’m not driving to Albany.”

She put a finger to her cheek, mock thinking. “The bar at my place is open,” she said, as if it had just occurred to her.

“At this hour?”

“Yup.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I’m at the dentist’s,” she said with a smile. “That’s what Geezer thinks, anyway.”

“I have to clean the equipment, pack it away. Talk to the next crew. Give me twenty minutes.”

Webster worked steadily, aware of the glances of the other medics. If one of them was going to report him for fraternization,
then so be it. He should be mad at Sheila for so casually jeopardizing his job.

After he left Rescue, he got into his car, Sheila already in the passenger seat.

Once inside the house with the jalousie porch, he took a quick glance around the kitchen, then grabbed her by the soft sleeve
of
her jacket, turned her around, and kissed her. She broke away and laughed at him. She guided him onto the porch. He didn’t
care about being close to the road. Let the whole world watch.

She sat on the daybed and took off her clothes in a perfunctory way, as if she were alone. Another woman might have made a
tease of it. For the first time, Webster saw her breasts, her pubic hair, the scar across her belly.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” he said. Then he nodded in the direction of the scar. “Won’t that hurt?”

“I doubt I’ll notice it,” she said. “Though if you stand there with your jacket on much longer, I might get bored and fall
asleep.”

The Sheila who’d had a no-nonsense way of removing her clothes slipped into a woman who was at least as pent up as Webster.
It might be weeks before they could learn to take it slow.

Webster watched Sheila sleep in the overheated room of the B and B, the sheet pulled up over her breasts, a slender arm exposed
and relaxed. The glossy brown hair on the pillow had always been a talisman for him. Around her, the flowered wallpaper and
the antique reproductions faded out to nothing. In recent weeks, she’d become a tourist.

“You have wanderlust,” he’d once said to her in the car.

“What’s that mean? I like to fuck and walk at the same time?”

Webster slipped back into the bed, unwilling to be away from her. He knew how her skin felt everywhere—the down of her arms,
the hard muscle of her inner thigh, the sweet curve of her hip. If she woke with a hangover, she hid it well, apart from a
terrible thirst.