Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,15
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