What were his dreams all those years ago? What did he hope for?
A house with a window.
Now his hopes are so much more complicated.
The grasses move. Part of what used to be the owner’s house has caved in, creating an oyster shell of a roof.
Would he have had a sheep or two? Dogs? A vegetable garden worthy of the name? A house he’d built, over time, having done much of the work himself?
Webster gazes in the direction of the high school, but he can’t see it. Below him somewhere is the town he’s lived in all his life. Will he die here, too? Will Rowan live nearby or will she move away with a family, the husband needing to live closer to a city? Webster can’t imagine the future. For the first time since he was a boy, he feels alone.
Somewhere nearby is the place where Sheila and he conceived Rowan.
The what-ifs are dizzying.
Webster doesn’t want to end the year on a sour note. He doesn’t want his time with his daughter to come to such an ugly close. He’s heard of teens who walked out the door without so much as a wave and went their own way, never to be heard from again.
He checks his watch. He has twelve minutes to get to Rescue. He can do it in five.
He decides that when Rowan leaves Hartstone, he will too. Maybe move closer to a city, see what that’s all about. Maybe leave Vermont altogether. He wonders if he could hack being a medic in Manhattan, say, or in the Bronx. Shit, they’d toss him out the door. Emergency medicine is geography-specific. He remembers the “jumper down” call, how odd that was in Vermont. On the other hand, he guesses the medics in the Bronx have never seen a leg mangled by a tractor and baler.
There’s something in the landscape, and he can’t catch it. He wants it. Inside him, there’s a powerful longing to hold on—a feeling both new to him and old.
He cuffs the high grasses.
What are you doing here?” Koenig asks.
“Switched my schedule so I’d have graduation free,” Webster answers, pumping for his coffee. “What are you doing here?”
“They pulled in extra crew. Fireworks on Turnip Hill and the…” Koenig stops, catching himself.
“Senior dance,” Webster finishes for him. “Yeah, I know.”
“Rowan there?”
“She is,” Webster says. “But she’s with a good, responsible kid. More responsible than she is, truth be told.”
“So you’re not going to pace all over like you did last year the night of the junior prom?” Koenig makes a whirligig motion with his finger above his head.
“No,” Webster says, taking a hot sip. What he really wants is an iced tea. “I’m worn out from worrying. Seriously, Koenig, how did you survive Annabelle’s teenage years? What a ride.”
“And Rowan’s a good kid,” Koenig reminds him.
Webster waves his hand back and forth. “We’re not doing so well right now,” he confesses.
“What’s up?” Koenig asks.
“She caught me reading her diary,” Webster says.
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You’ve stepped in it now.”
“Don’t I know it,” Webster says. “She’s not speaking to me.”
“How the hell did you let that happen?” Koenig asks, shaking his head.
“Long story. It fell off a ledge, and I picked it up, and…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Who you riding with tonight?” Webster asks. Koenig now has the lead position on the number one ambulance. Webster has the new rig.
“Dunstan. Transfer from Bennington. Wife moved up here for a teaching job. Teaching jobs are harder to get these days than medic jobs.”
“Really? I didn’t know that. Seems like we’ve all had budget cuts.”
“Yeah, but the town can’t cut too far back on Rescue. The high school budget has been slashed to pieces over the last few years. Finally, they voted to reinstate the reading program. They needed a teacher.”
“Don’t know Dunstan. I’m riding with the probie.”
“The guy with the ears?”
Webster nods. Koenig moves in closer and lowers his voice. “The guy’s obsessed with blood pressures. He cuffs everyone he comes across. He even tried to do me.”
Webster glances over at the probie, who’s sitting in a corner with a manual. He smiles. Maybe it’s time to let the kid off the hook.
“Probie,” Webster says, walking toward him.
The probie stands, and Webster thinks he’s going to salute. “Webster,” he says.
“How you doing on those BPs?”
“Pretty good.”
“OK,” Webster says, rolling his sleeve. “Take mine.”
The probie sets up the cuff. He seems confident. “One forty-two over eighty-six,” he says when he’s finished.
“You sure?” Webster can’t believe the number. “Take it again.”
The probie, nervous now, repeats the procedure. Webster notes how shiny the guy’s shoes are.
“Same,” says the probie.
“Precisely the same?”
“One forty-six over eighty-six.”
“Koenig, come over here,” Webster calls.
Koenig stands and walks to where Webster is. “Boss?”
“Take my blood pressure.”
The probie gives Koenig the cuff. Again, the ritual is repeated. “One forty-two over eighty-eight,” says Koenig. “Little high, don’t you think?”
Webster groans. “Thanks,” he says to Koenig.
“You’re off the hook,” Webster says to the probie. “I’d better make an appointment to see my doctor.”
Webster, shaken, sits in an armchair. He should get back on the treadmill at the workout center in the next room. Cut out the pies and the pasta. He’s always had low blood pressure and because of that hasn’t given it much thought. Age, stress, or lifestyle? he wonders.
He’s asleep in the armchair when the tones come and he misses the beginning of the call. He sits upright and looks for the probie, who’s already by the door.
“What is it?” he asks the guy standing next to him. Maybe it’s the new transfer, Dunstan.
“Two females, seventeen and eighteen, at Gray Quarry. One’s not breathing, suspected drowning. The other’s not conscious, but breathing.”
Webster springs out of his chair. His eyes find Koenig’s.
“I’ll be right behind you,” his old partner says.
“I’m driving,” Webster yells to the probie as he crosses the room. He runs to the rig.
Webster pulls out, siren wailing. The probie, alert, is pale.
Webster takes the rig right up to seventy and blows through the two intersections in Hartstone. “Do as I say, not as I do,” he yells at the probie. A hundred yards behind him, he can see the lights of Koenig’s rig, following.
Webster refuses to form a picture. Instead, he recites acronyms in his head. As good as a prayer in this case.
Webster speeds down 42, cars scurrying onto the shoulders. He knows precisely where the marble quarry is. When he was a kid, he used to swim there. He remembers, early in his career, when he was only a probie, saving a boy who nearly drowned in the dark water.
Two girls in the water at night. They wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.
The rig bounces over the ruts of the road leading into the quarry. Ahead of him, Webster can see light from a wood fire.
He’s out of the rig before the probie even has the door open. A boy who’s been kneeling beside one of the girls stands up.
It’s Tommy.
Webster’s stomach falls to his shoes.
Webster straddles his daughter. Her eyes and mouth are covered in blood. He can see that someone—maybe Tommy—has tried to wipe it away.
“She went up on a dare,” Tommy says. “I begged her not to. She wasn’t breathing when I got her back on the ledge,” Tommy says, “but I checked her airway and did CPR until she coughed. She vomited, too.”
Webster bends his head in close to Rowan’s mouth and counts. Ten respirations a minute. His daughter reeks of alcohol and vomit.
“Ten respirations,” he shouts to the probie. “ETOH. Get the radial pulse and BP. I need the c-collar.”
The probie hands it to him. Webster applies the collar. He whips out his flashlight and checks Rowan’s pupils. Equal and responsive. He yells, “Rowan!” He checks her ears. No cerebral spinal fluid from the ears. He feels a pair of hands on his shoulders.
“I’m treating,” Koenig says.
“It’s Rowan,” Webster says, refusing to move.
“I know it’s Rowan, Webster. Stand up!”
Webster stands and moves to one side. He watches as Koenig kneels beside Rowan. The medic yells for the backboard. For the first time, Webster sees that Rowan is in her bra and underpants.
“For God’s sakes, Koenig, cover her.”
Koenig lays a warming blanket over her. Tommy is crying, his own briefs soaking wet. Webster twists his head to see a pair of medics from yet another rig performing CPR on another girl. Unresponsive. Her skin already going gray, even in the artificial light. A cop next to the medics is asking questions and taking names. Above them, under the full moon, the branches sway. The light plays with the dark water.
“Get this kid a blanket,” Webster yells, pointing at Tommy. “What happened?” he asks the boy.
“Rowan and Kerry were daring each other to climb onto the tree limb there, and another guy was egging them on.” Webster notices that Tommy doesn’t say the name. “Rowan had been drinking, and I was begging her not to go. I was actually holding her back. She shook me off and started climbing. I took off my clothes just in case. And then she fell, and she must have hit her head beneath the water, because I could see right away that something wasn’t right. I went in after her.”
“Who went in after the other girl?”
“The guy who was egging them on.”
“You brought Rowan to the edge. You did the CPR.”
Tommy nods.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Boy Scouts. Years ago.”
“The protocol has changed, but you probably saved her life,” Webster says.
Koenig is doing the sternal rub and getting nothing.
Rowan. Wake up, honey.
“Probie, call it in,” Koenig yells. “We’re going to need an airlift.”
“Seventeen-year-old unresponsive female needs airlift to Burlington,” the probie says into his radio. “Head trauma resulting from fall onto rocky ledge. Suspected fractured dislocated right shoulder. Pupils equal and reactive. ETOH. Respirations ten. BP one ten over sixty-four. Not responsive to pain. And we’ll need an ETA and rendezvous point for the airlift.”
The probie helps Koenig perform the logroll in order to put Rowan onto the backboard. Koenig attaches the orange head blocks at either side of her forehead and chin with Velcro. In the shiny blanket, she looks like a mummy from a strange world.
“We’re taking her to the track at the high school,” the probie says to Koenig. “The flight medics will prepare her for an airlift.”
Webster turns and vomits. He knows what an airlift means.
A cop takes his arm. “You OK?”
“I’m fine,” Webster says, standing and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “I’m riding with her,” he says to Koenig.
“I’m treating,” Koenig reminds him.
“Do another sternal.”
“She’s not responding.”
“Do it anyway.”
Koenig gives it everything he has.
“Was that a moan?” Webster asks.
“I didn’t hear a moan.”
Webster holds Rowan’s hand as the rig speeds to the high school, the building his daughter so recently left. He massages her fingers, then just holds her hand, as if it were a lifeline: she giving the life to him, because without her…
Webster feels Rowan’s hand stiffen just as she begins to seize. Webster has seen seizures dozens of times, but the adrenaline shoots through to his fingertips. Koenig is already at work. Two milligrams of Ativan IV to quell the seizure. Webster’s heart rate increases with Rowan’s shaking. A seizure is never a good sign.
Webster watches as the seizure subsides. The last thing a medic wants to do is to give an alcohol-depressed patient Ativan, but it has to be done. Webster and Koenig don’t say a word. Webster fingers the hair away from his daughter’s face.
He thinks about the procedures that await Rowan before the airlift. The Seven Ps. Prepare: get all the equipment ready, none of which Webster wants to think about. Preoxygenate for five minutes. Premedicate: 1.5 milligrams per kilogram of weight of lidocaine two minutes before intubation. Paralyze: the medics will paralyze Rowan for the duration of the trip to Burlington so that she won’t seize on them. The idea of his daughter being medically paralyzed makes Webster want to scream.
Pass the tube. Proof of placement. Postplacement care.
The fire department sent all of its engines to set up a landing zone. Webster squeezes Rowan’s hand. It’s good to talk to an unconscious patient. According to some, Rowan might be able to hear what’s happening around her even if she can’t respond.
“So, Rowan, honey,” Webster says. “Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re at the high school track so a helicopter can land. The helicopter is going to take you to a very good hospital in Burlington. In fact, it’s the university hospital. Ironic, huh? You’re going to college. I’ll be with you every step of the way. Even though you got a good hit on the noggin, this is just routine. You remember I’ve told you about airlifts before? Nothing to it. Just like answering a call, but on a different vehicle. I’m going to keep holding your hand. You’re tough, Rowan. We both know that. Pretty soon, after they get you to the hospital, it will be time to wake up. This is important, Rowan, so listen up. You’ll have to concentrate when you get there. It might feel hard to do, but you have to do it. And don’t worry if you don’t remember everything I just said, because I’ll be there with you, holding your hand and making sure they do everything right. You’re in good hands, OK? The best.”
Webster watches the helicopter circle and then land. The pilot won’t want Webster on the bird. He moves behind Rowan when he sees the airlift crew running toward the rig with their own stretcher. The nurse and the medic will hear Koenig’s report, switch Rowan to their equipment, and then return to the helicopter.
“Weight?” the flight nurse asks.
“About one twenty-five,” Webster says.
“That medic is the girl’s father,” Koenig explains.
“The patient’s father is a medic?”
“He’s been keeping her calm,” says Koenig. “Talking to her.”
Webster jumps out of the rig as soon as the chopper crew has Rowan on their stretcher. He walks with them, holding Rowan’s hand. He talks to the helicopter medic ahead of him.
“I promised her I’d go with her,” Webster says.
The medic doesn’t reply.
“I’m one eighty. She’s one twenty-five. That’s three hundred five. Under the limit.”
The medic is still unresponsive. Webster wants to yell at him, but he knows that to do that is the fastest way to get himself kicked off the chopper.
The fire engines have booted up their lights, making a fierce perimeter that’s hard to look at. Webster can feel his shoes on the cinders, then on the grass, the wind from the propeller blowing his hair. The scene feels dreamlike and terrifying. He has to break his handhold when they reach the bird.
The pilot radios back to the medic, wanting to know weight and how long it’s going to take to go through the Seven Ps. “Ten to fifteen on the Ps,” the medic says. “The girl is one twenty-five. The dad’s a medic. Can we extend a courtesy ride?”
“Weight?”
“One eighty,” says the medic.
“You’re looking at him,” the pilot says. “Weight?”
“One eighty,” the m
edic repeats without hesitation.
“Give him the protocol.”
“I know what to do,” Webster says before he needs to be told. He climbs into the chopper and sits up front with the pilot. He won’t be able to hold Rowan’s hand, but he’ll be there. Maybe she’ll sense his presence, even through all the medication. He’s heard of unconscious patients who claim to have heard conversations.
The fifteen minutes prep seems like an agony of time to Webster. He wills the chopper to take off. He wants Rowan in the ER as soon as possible.
When he feels the odd angle of the lift, Webster goes into silent medic mode, as if he were a rookie, observing. Head turned, he concentrates on the medic’s hands, the lines, the monitor, the nurse—watching it all unfold as it should. He tries not to look at Rowan’s face, which is far too calm.
He has little sense of time during the ride. He notes the lights of Burlington and can feel the helicopter descending to the roof of the hospital. Another team will meet the chopper, and once again Rowan will be transferred.
Webster remembers his mother’s admonition: You can’t regret anything that leads to your children. Webster wants to add a corollary: You will regret something you did that caused your child harm. If only Webster had forbidden Rowan to go to the dance. If he hadn’t read her diary, she might have lingered at the house, waited for Tommy to knock on the door, and somehow those few minutes might have altered the universe in such a way as to cause her not to drink so much, not to be so willing to take a dare. If he’d tried to get in touch with Sheila sooner. If he hadn’t sent his wife away, depriving Rowan of a normal family life.
Webster feels the jolt as the chopper lands. The ER doc and nurse have the door open at once and are already wheeling Rowan into the hospital, the chopper medic giving his report as he jogs. Webster hops out and runs to catch up. He won’t have a problem with the ER personnel. Any parent would be allowed access to his child.
The ER doctor assesses Rowan. He orders blood tests, an X-ray on the shoulder, a CAT scan of the brain. If that doesn’t show what he wants, he’ll order up an MRI. Webster hopes that Rowan will wake up on her own before the MRI.