Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [41]
She smiled and they continued to look at each other for a few moments. Without preamble, they both burst into laughter. Finney had had similar giddy communal moments throughout his career, yet now that he thought about it, always with men. She was good. She was damn good.
Except for disheveled knee socks and a sturdy pair of brown leather shoes that hadn’t been touched by the ordeal, all the victim’s clothing had been either burned off or melted to her skin. Her chest and torso were blackened and cracked, and other areas of skin were as pale as parchment, blood vessels visible underneath. Her charred face was burned into a grimace—long, crooked teeth exposed. Her hair had burned off, except for a wispy scrap that clung to the nape of her neck. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were gone.
Nothing moved except her eyes, which darted about the group, appraising each of them in turn. She seemed as horrified by the firefighters as they were by her. When her look fell on Finney, he felt as if he were being stared at by a mummy in a museum.
At least she was alive, he thought, as she continued to stare at him.
Sadler glanced at Finney but spoke to the others, as if he had another, private message to be delivered to Finney later. “How far away is that medic unit?”
“Medic Ten’s delayed at the Sixteenth South Bridge with everybody else,” said McKittrick. “There’s an accident on the First South Bridge.”
“Somebody put some O-two on her,” said Diana.
Sadler used his portable radio to ask Medic 10 for an ETA. The reply: another ten minutes.
The driver of Engine 11, a short, stocky firefighter with a plug of tobacco under his lip, a man who’d been in long enough to have an attitude, put together a Laerdahl bag mask, connected oxygen to the mask, placed the mask over the victim’s face, and began squeezing the bag.
She should have been breathing deeply now, with their help, but she continued to gulp like a landlocked fish. Engine 11’s driver peered inside her mouth and down her throat with a flashlight. He tried again. Finney knew what was wrong. So did Sadler. The circumferential burns on her torso had contracted and hardened so that her lungs could not expand. They could pump in all the oxygen they wanted, but if her diaphragm wouldn’t expand, they couldn’t get air into her.
Sadler glanced at the others. “The medics won’t be here in time.”
“What do the medics do when this happens?” McKittrick asked.
Sadler held up his Buck knife.
Six minutes without oxygen and she would be brain dead. There was no telling where she was in the countdown.
“She ain’t gonna make it,” McKittrick said.
Finney could see the victim’s eyes widen and react to the pronouncement. It was clear from the flicker of alarm that she didn’t want to die in that yard any more than any of them did. It was also clear that she hadn’t lost her cognition, not completely.
Sadler offered McKittrick the knife. “Uh-uh. I’m not trained.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Sadler. “I’m no longer certified.”
“You’re a better choice than any of us,” Finney said. As far as he was concerned, Sadler’s refusal to do the deed was an act of cowardice. Until five years earlier Sadler had been a paramedic, but he knew, as did the others, that any time a public servant exceeded his or her area of certification, a personal lawsuit could result. On the other hand, it was obvious that if they continued to do nothing, she was going to die. Sadler stepped back, as if the problem were somebody else’s.
Finney hadn’t been trained in this, but he took the knife and knelt beside her. He didn’t know how clean the blade was, but right now infection was the least of her worries. He carefully pressed the blade into her burned flesh and made a cut in the shape of a seven on her upper right chest, a reverse seven on her left. It was like cutting charred steak. If she felt it, she didn’t respond, didn’t open her eyes, didn’t call out.
Once again Engine 11’s driver placed the Laerdahl bag mask over her face and began squeezing the air bulb. For the first time since they’d removed her from the building