“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.
Webster 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 b
y 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.
Rowan swings and misses. Strike one. Webster loves the chatter from the dugout. Hey, batta, batta, batta. Rowan sets up for the second pitch.
It’s as solid a hit as he’s seen from his daughter all season. Keeping his eye on the center fielder, Webster watches Rowan take off, running as if the World Series were at stake. Part of her speed is due to the fact that Webster is watching—the Parental Effect—but part is pure Rowan. As Rowan rounds second, he feels the old familiar hope soaring. The center fielder leaps, doesn’t even get her glove on the ball. While she is scrambling behind her, Rowan keeps up the pace, beating the shortstop’s cutoff throw to the catcher. Home run.
All right, Rowan.
Webster watches her team high-five her. Rowan grabs a towel to wipe off her face.
Webster checks his watch. He has ten minutes left. Maybe he’ll get to see another inning.
He’s aware of a person moving toward him from the direction of the bleachers. He turns to see a woman he thinks he knows but can’t immediately place.
“Mr. Webster?” she asks.
He turns. “Yes, hello.”
“Hi, I’m your daughter’s English teacher, Elizabeth Washington.”
“Of course,” Webster says, wanting to smack his forehead. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she says. “My daughter just joined the team this year. She’s a sophomore. Julie Washington?”
“Is she playing today?”
“No, she’s on the bench for now.”
“The coach will give her playing time,” Webster assures her.
“I was wondering,” Mrs. Washington says, “if Rowan has been OK at home.”
The hair prickles on the back of Webster’s neck. The woman has on a gray blazer and sneakers. He puts her in her late forties. Her eyes look pinched, or maybe that’s just the sun in her face.
Webster doesn’t want to tell Elizabeth Washington about Rowan’s drunken episode. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to seem an oblivious parent, because he isn’t. “She baffles me sometimes,” Webster says. “Sweet one day, moody the next. I don’t always know why.”
Elizabeth Washington nods. “That’s just normal teenage behavior, and maybe this is partly that, too. She’s letting her grades slip. All second-semester seniors do it to some extent, but she’s in danger of failing English. Calculus, too. I checked. She’s not doing the homework, not paying attention. Not doing the reading.”
Webster rocks back on his feet. Elizabeth shades her eyes.
“I’m… I guess I’m shocked,” Webster says. “Rowan’s always been such a good student that I long ago stopped checking her homework. I talk about it with her sometimes, but I always thought she had everything under control.”
He tries to remember her last report card. B+ in English, he’s pretty sure. C+ in math, and he questioned her about that. He can’t remember what Rowan’s response was. She didn’t seem worried, even though her grades weren’t as good as they’d been in the past.
“She could make up some of the work,” Elizabeth says, “but it’s only two weeks to graduation. I’m concerned. If she fails English and calculus, UVM may not take her in the fall. We have to send the final transcripts along to the college.”
“Will she graduate?”
“She’ll graduate. She’s had enough credits since early fall. But it isn’t just the grades. I guess I’m trying to find out if anything’s amiss at home.”
“Hard to read her right now,” Webster says. “You assigned a big book recently. Something about gravity?”
Elizabeth smiles. “Gravity’s Rainbow. Yes. A lot of the students found the book challenging—mainly its length. But as far as I can tell, Rowan never read a word.”
Webster lets out a sigh.
“I’m sorry,” the teacher says. “I should have said something earlier. There’s really little that can be done at this point. But I’ve been curious. And I thought I’d ask.”
Webster opens his hands and shakes his head. He knows the woman’s motives are pure, that she has Rowan’s best interests at heart, but he feels as though he’s being called on the carpet, too. To not know what’s going on with Rowan at school makes him feel like an idiot. “I’m completely surprised,” he says. “Thanks for telling me. Obviously there is something wrong. You can bet I’ll talk to her about it.” He checks his watch. “I’m late for my shift,” he says.
Elizabeth touches his arm. “I didn’t in any way mean to suggest you’ve been a bad parent. Personally, I think you’ve done a tremendous job with Rowan. She’s one of the few students I’m really fond of. But lately, she seems to be undergoing a personality change.”
Webster shakes her hand, simply because he can’t think of any other way to say good-bye. He has two minutes to make it to Rescue. He wishes he could pull Rowan aside and ask her about the bad grades, but unless there’s an emergency, it’s understood that a parent doesn’t pull a player away from a game.
But failing English and calc? Isn’t that a valid emergency?
He glances in Rowan’s direction, but though he can see her face, she doesn’t look his way. Her lips are pressed together hard.
Webster strokes his rough chin while gazing at a pile of bills he’s been neglecting for weeks. Usually, he practices triage, dividing them into three piles: those that have to be paid immediately, those he could pay at the end of the month, and those he could let go for a few more weeks. Today there will be no triage: all the bills are late. He ponders the tuition bill that will soon come due. He’ll have to take on more shifts at Rescue or mortgage the house. At least UVM’s tuition for in-state students is reasonable.
Since Elizabeth Washington took him aside the day before, Webster completed his tour and was waiting for Rowan when she woke up this morning. In the kitchen, he confronted her with what he knew.
“So?” Rowan asked, trying and failing to brush it aside.
“So?” Webster asked. “So? You might not get to go to college.”
“So?” Rowan repeated.
“That’s it,” Webster, fuming, said. “Give me the keys.”
“Seriously?” Rowa
n asked. She had her backpack over her shoulder. She hadn’t planned on having breakfast.
“You bet,” he said, holding his ground, though he could already feel that platform shift beneath him.
“How will I get to school?” Rowan asked.
“Walk. Lots of kids have to walk.”
She tossed the keys onto the table. They slid in Webster’s direction. “No one walks, Dad,” she said in a tone that suggested she felt sorry for his ignorance.
He watched her leave the house. He did not stand to see her make her way down the driveway.
At the table with the bills, he checks his watch. One thirty.
Tomorrow night is Rowan’s senior dance. He wonders if she’ll be speaking to him by then. The talk this morning didn’t go as he imagined it would. Why does he continue to expect reasonable conversations with a seventeen-year-old whose moodiness is taking over her entire personality? Because he used to have sane conversations with his daughter.
He takes a sip of cold coffee. He could heat up the coffee in the microwave, but he decides to make another pot. He has at least an hour with the paperwork ahead of him anyway.
He wipes a spill of water with the tail of his cotton shirt. He’ll stick it in the laundry basket when he goes upstairs. He has on the beat-up slippers Rowan gave him two Christmases ago. They have fur inside and are too warm for this time of year. He’ll have to find his boat shoes.
He hears a sound. The front doorbell? Only FedEx and UPS ever use the front door.
A package for Rowan, he guesses. He pads down the hallway. So few packages are for him. Because she shops online and is, for the most part, frugal, Webster doesn’t mind the odd delivery or two. He likes the look on Rowan’s face when she catches sight of a package on the kitchen table.
Webster opens the door.
A package he never expected.
“You have some nerve,” he says.
“So do you.”
“I thought I’d never see you again.”
“One good surprise deserves another,” Sheila says.
Webster feels his body gearing up for an emergency.
“I came to talk about Rowan.”