Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,53

rig. He and Koenig report to incident command, and Webster is told to head for the bus. He sees a tractor-trailer on its side, a yellow school bus mounting it like a dog. A crumpled red Mercury, a navy Jeep that looks to have skidded into a tree, a silver Touareg that has accordioned a foreign car, a Hyundai maybe. Webster grabs what he can from the back of the rig and heads for the school bus. He and Koenig are part of a larger team now.

Children are always top priority. He notes the noise as he jogs: the cruisers, ambulances, fire engines, tow trucks, and the screams of the injured or frightened.

Two cops have pried open the front door of the bus. Webster hoists himself up and in. The driver is unconscious but is being rapidly extricated by a medic and a cop. Webster heads down the aisle, bracing himself against the seat backs. Kids are calling out, but Webster is more worried about the ones who aren’t. No seat belts on the local school buses, and some of the bodies have been thrown as far as their backpacks, most toward the rear of the bus, which can’t now be opened because of the Mercury. Cops have broken the emergency exits, crawled up and in, and are handing out children. Some of the kids look like grown men. A rural K-through-twelve. The place will be swarming with parents in fifteen minutes.

Knees bent, searching each bench, Webster finds a blond girl in a purple tank top wedged beneath a seat on his right, her ass so deep in, it’s almost on the floor of the next bench back. Lying on her side, her knees and shoulders are caught by the steel bars that support the seats.

Webster gets down on his hands and knees and lets the shouting and the screaming float away, concentrating on the single case. He fears spinal injury, maybe paralysis. No blood. No movement. He speaks to the girl in a loud voice, trying to rouse her. He checks her airway and listens for breathing. He feels her carotid and finds a weak pulse. She’s alive but in bad shape. He fastens a c-collar around her neck. He checks her pupils. Equal and reactive to light. Probably not a spinal injury.

When he looks up, he sees a boy, maybe thirteen, in a brown zip-up, sitting three benches down with his head in his hands. “Hey, son,” Webster calls. The boy looks up. Dazed, but not in shock, Webster hopes.

“What’s your name?”

“Edward.”

“You OK to move?”

“They told me to stay here.”

“Give me a hand. I’ve got a girl who’s stuck.”

The boy pulls himself upward to get to Webster, who points to the bench he wants the boy to sit in. The kid falls backward, straddling the girl’s butt with his feet.

“You got any injuries?” Webster asks.

The boy shakes his head.

“OK, listen. On my count, I need you to gently push her behind forward so I can get her out and check her. You feel any pain yourself, you stop at once. Am I clear?”

The boy nods. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I don’t know yet. You know her name?”

The boy pulls himself up and over the bench to look down at her face. “Jill,” he says.

“Jill!” Webster yells. No response. He calls again. No response.

Webster opens the belt of the girl’s jeans, making sure the leather is in symmetrical loops so he can pull her forward. “My count and gentle now. One. Two. Three.” With the boy’s help, Webster, arms extended through the bars of the seat ahead of Jill, drags her straight toward him. She’s slight, maybe 105.

“OK, now come around and help me get her onto her back and straighten her out. When I say so, you’re going to gently draw her legs into the aisle. I’m going to get behind her and lift her shoulders forward.”

It’s one of the many decisions a medic has to make. Moving the blond could harm her already hurt body, but not to move her, to wait until an emergency crew can unbolt the bench, could cost her vital minutes.

The boy crawls into position. Then Webster has the girl supine, her feet into the aisle and then some. The boy straightens them.

Webster does the acronyms and looks for lacerations. He performs a neuromotor scan and checks her pupils again. Equal and reactive. Her knee jerks and she shifts her leg.

“Keep calling her name,” Webster instructs Edward.

An older boy in the back is screaming,