Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,3

legs to the waist. He gently slid the pants down to her knees, removed her boots, and took the jeans off. He could see her white bikini underpants, her slim, pale legs. He put a warming blanket over her and tossed her clothes behind him.

“My count,” he repeated. “One… two… three.”

The cops pried up the metal a quarter inch. As they pulled from the shoulders, there was another spill of blood before Burrows could get his pressure bandage on. A spill but not a gush. A laceration but not deep. The slice looked clean. Another inch, she’d have split her intestines open. Webster folded the woman’s feet flat to get her through.

The cops moved away as Webster brought the bundle of clothes around and joined Burrows. He and McGill had gotten her onto the backboard, strapped her on, and put a blanket over her. Burrows administered another sternal rub. Instead of an obscenity, they got only a weak moan.

“Move,” Burrows said, and Webster heard the alarm.

They took the backboard to the rig and slid her onto the stretcher, Burrows climbing in with her. “Step on it,” he said before Webster shut the door.

Webster pushed the Bullet to seventy, the most he dared on 42. Sometimes, he was able to take note of a rising sun on a hayfield or the reflection of the moon on the creek that flirted with the route, but that night his thoughts were at the back of his head, listening hard to Burrows, who was trying to get a response from the woman.

At Mercy, Burrows went with the patient to give a report to the ER. Webster wanted to follow the stretcher with the glossy brown hair falling over the metal edge, but his job was to clean up the Bullet and put all the gear away. Inside the ambulance, he found a dozen stained bandages, indicating more bleeding than Webster had previously reported. Burrows returned with the stretcher before Webster was done. Webster peeled off his gloves and stepped up to the driver’s seat. Normally, as the rookie, Webster would have driven both ways, but, in the interest of time, Burrows had been at the wheel when Webster had pulled into Rescue earlier.

“Fine-looking woman,” Burrows said as they headed back to Rescue, a squad that serviced five towns besides Hartstone.

“Not a local.”

“Blood alcohol point two-four.”

“Jesus.”

“Shame.”

“Shit,” Webster said.

“What?”

“I tossed the keys that were on her belt onto the grass.”

“Find them on your own time.”

“There was a rabbit’s foot.”

Burrows laughed. “Lucky girl.”

After Webster had cleaned the equipment in the basins at Rescue, restocked the Bullet, and hosed off the outside of the rig, he got into his car and drove back to the scene. This time he noticed the quiet road, the .2 moon, the farmhouse just beyond the place where the Caddy had rolled. A tow truck was pulling onto the road. Nye put out a flare he’d lit behind the tow truck. “Why are you back?” the cop asked.

Never a How’s she doing? with the Weasel.

“I tossed her keys onto the grass,” Webster said.

“If it was her car keys, don’t bother looking.”

“No, it was something else.”

“She oughta go to jail. She could have killed someone. Herself even.”

“Then jail wouldn’t do her much good, would it?” Webster said as he began to search the depressed grass where the car had come to rest. As Nye and his partner got into their blue and white Hartstone Police car, Webster thought he heard a faint snigger.

Webster had his flashlight for the search. He began to crawl around the frosty perimeter. Maybe the rabbit’s foot did work, he thought. The woman didn’t kill anyone. She didn’t kill herself. She hadn’t broken her neck. She hadn’t severed an artery. She hadn’t suffered a traumatic amputation.

The image of the shiny brown hair came and went. Webster wanted to find the rabbit’s foot. He pictured himself returning it to the woman named Sheila. In his mind, she still had sparkles on her face.

An owl called out, and Webster could hear in the distance the whine and downshift of a semi. He turned off the flashlight, stayed on his knees, and turned his face away. After he felt the whoosh, he switched his light back on.

It took him twenty-five minutes to find the keys. With them, he stuffed the rabbit’s foot and the coiled belt into his jacket pockets, got back into his cruiser, and let himself shiver until the heat came on. Fuck, it was cold.

Two hours later, Webster, showered and