Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,48

and Webster wants to tell her to knock it off, she’s scaring the children. In the kitchen, the kids are crying.

“On a scale of one to ten,” Webster asks the man, “how bad is the pain?”

The man loses consciousness and lists to one side. Webster and Koenig line up the backboard and the two lift him onto it while checking his carotid pulse.

“What’s his name?” Webster yells.

The wife hesitates long enough that Webster has to turn his head.

“Mr. Dennis!” the kids shout from the doorsill.

Mr. Dennis?

“Dennis!” Webster shouts.

No response.

“Dennis, stay with us!” He checks the monitor. “V-fib,” he says to Koenig. “Any pulse?”

“Can’t find one,” Koenig reports.

“Remove the oxygen.”

Webster checks to see that the pads are in the proper position. He yells, “Is everybody clear?” He scans to make sure no one is touching the patient. He shocks the man.

The wife begins to keen—an eerie sound that rises to the ceiling.

Webster completes a round of CPR, then sets the machine at 100 joules again. He administers another shock. He gives the patient epinephrine and then raises the level to 150 joules. It takes four tries before Koenig reports a pulse. Koenig secures the airway by intubating the patient.

“Let’s load him,” Webster says.

“Where are you taking him?” the wife asks as they head toward the door.

“Mercy,” Webster answers. “We’re doing everything we can for your husband.” He glances at the children, who are white-faced now.

“He’s not my husband,” the woman says in a small voice.

Webster nods. Of course. The way the children yelled Mr. Dennis while the woman hesitated. The way she hasn’t touched or talked to the patient in all the time they’ve been at the house.

Never make assumptions.

“Ma’am, I want you to wait for someone to get here for the kids and then drive yourself to Mercy. Then get someone to drive my car to Rescue. Leave the keys under the seat. You need to calm down a little. We’re doing everything we can for him.”

But boyfriend Dennis is not OK. Again, he falls into V-fib, and this time, in the ambulance, Webster can’t shock him out of it. They wail down the ridge, sparsely populated with expensive vacation homes, the owners thrilled at the prospect of six times more square footage than they have back in Manhattan.

Webster and Koenig approach the ER with lights and sirens turned off. Jogging alongside the stretcher, Webster gives his report, being precise about the order of the procedures, the amount of medication, and the number of shocks. “No pulse since nine forty-seven,” he says.

As good as dead.

He wonders if the girlfriend will come to the hospital and if the man was married. If the woman’s spinning meant more than just distress, meant, This can’t happen here.

After leaving Mercy, just outside the town limits, Koenig and Webster head to Rescue, passing a sign that announces that Hartstone is tobacco-free. Webster and Koenig are silent because no matter how hard they’ve worked, a death is a failure. As they drive south with the Taconic range to the west and the Green Mountains to the east, Webster thinks about the girlfriend. Koenig put her address in the report, and maybe that will be fine with her, but Webster doubts it. Had the woman been unconcerned about anyone finding the boyfriend at her house, she’d have been more forthcoming with information. She’d have gone to her children and would have spoken to Dennis. Webster wonders who the next of kin really is. The true wife might be back in Manhattan or she might have her own six thousand on an adjacent ridge. Webster is a cynic. Too many of his calls unearth infidelities. Other calls are often marital disputes gone spectacularly wrong. He thinks he’s seen pretty much everything one spouse can do to another.

Koenig parks the rig in its spot: facing out, ready to go again. Webster heads for the building while Koenig finishes cleaning out the rig. No blood, Webster notes in passing, which is a blessing.

“What happened to Pinto?” Webster asks when Koening enters the squad room. Koenig walks to the coffee machine and presses the lever six times to get half a cup. Webster checks his watch again. Three hours since his daughter made him breakfast.

“He called in sick,” Koenig says, setting his cup on the Formica counter that runs the length of the room.

“Again?”

“Burnout,” Koenig says. Koenig isn’t a probie, but he has less seniority than Webster.

“After only two years?” Webster asks.

“He’s always been a stressed-out dude.”

Burnout. Webster knows all about