Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,26

level of the man’s cognition. Had the stroke affected only motor skills or had the entirety of the right side of his brain been compromised?

Webster got in the man’s face. “If you can hear me, sir, please blink.”

He watched as the man blinked once.

OK, then.

“We were fine,” the wife said. “And then he just slumped over.”

“Ma’am, you can ride up front. There’s no time to change. Just put some shoes and a coat on.”

Webster and Burrows slid the man into the rig. They helped the wife, in her bathrobe and coat, up into a seat. Webster slammed the back door, got into the driver’s seat. The wife was already crying.

Webster drove as fast as he could. Minutes counted with stroke victims.

Burrows and the wife went with the patient into the ER, Burrows grabbing Webster’s written notes to take with him. While the medic was gone, Webster wrote down all the items that would have to be restocked in the rig. He cleaned up the back, stuffing the medical waste into the appropriate container. He stood by the passenger side, waiting for Burrows. The sun was up strong already. But it couldn’t do much against the late April chill.

A doctor Webster recognized waved as he passed by. Off duty? Going for coffee?

Webster could have used a cup.

Where the hell was Burrows?

Seventy-two and a stroke. Not uncommon. The couple had probably lived in that house for years, their routines established. Alone now since the kids had moved out. The wife had seemed caring. They had each other. Maybe they bickered; maybe they didn’t. He’d looked for pictures of grandchildren but hadn’t seen any.

Burrows finally climbed into the rig.

“Where were you?” Webster asked as he checked his watch. Nearly thirty-five minutes.

“The guy stroked out again. And then a third time with the wife watching.”

“How is he?”

“Bad shape. Real bad. Cognitively, he’s got nothing. I wanted to stay with him. I knew if you got a call, you’d come get me.”

“Poor bastard,” Webster said. “One minute he’s reading the Hartstone Herald and having his Nescafé, and the next he’s a veg.”

“Seen it plenty of times before,” Burrows said.

“You think it gets easier?”

Burrows sat back. “Yeah, I do. But every once in a while, it hits you. That could be me, I think. That could be Karen.”

“I think like that sometimes.”

“You?” Burrows hooted. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

“What are the odds the guy will make it?”

“Zero,” Burrows said.

Webster parked his cruiser in front of the ice-cream shop. He thought of bringing a treat up to Sheila but then decided to ask her first. These days, she was finicky about food. He stood and stretched his back. He’d stayed in service later into Saturday morning than he had imagined he would, Rescue having been shorthanded for four hours. He’d eaten peanut-butter cookies Burrows’s wife had made and had studied his course work for medic certification. Anatomy fascinated him. But all he wanted now was a bed with Sheila in it. His face and vision felt grainy. Sheila should be home. She almost always had weekends off.

With his uniform jacket on, Webster climbed the long outdoor stairs to the apartment. He opened the door and stood still. He felt a surge of adrenaline, as if he’d barked his shin on the edge of a coffee table. A cop sat at the table, Sheila across from him. Webster thought, DUI.

Webster shut the door behind him. Not a DUI. The cop was too casual, leaning back in his chair, his legs crossed, ankle on knee. It took Webster another two seconds to register the insignia on the uniform. Chelsea. Massachusetts.

“You didn’t tell me he was an empt,” the beefy man at the table said, grinning. “Quite a comedown, Squirrel. From a cop to an empt?”

Squirrel.

The cop had the same accent as Sheila did. He was built, 220, outsized shoulders. He did something else besides ride around in a cruiser all day. Football league? Weight lifting? “What’s going on?” Webster asked, hands moving into fists.

“This is the man I told you about,” Sheila mumbled, her face pale, her posture in the chair saying it all. She’d narrowed her shoulders together, as if she were trying to hide her breasts, her entire body. When Webster saw that she was trembling, rage flooded him.

But you couldn’t manhandle a cop who outweighed you by forty pounds, who had a gun in his holster.

“Hey, I got a name, Squirrel.”

“This is Brian Doyle,” Sheila said, not looking at Webster. Webster wanted to add, The guy