The firefighters from my crew were moving around the car in slow motion, trying to decide if it was likely to slide the rest of the way into the water, knowing we’d be unable to stop it if it did.
You’re supposed to stabilize a car before you begin working on it, so that it doesn’t start moving and injure someone else. Sandbags or wheel chocks work well on the road or on the shoulder, but there’s not much that works well in wet mud. There was nothing to attach the chains or the come-along to, only long, bright green sawgrass on the banks of the river, its roots set deep into the soft, wet mud sponge. No trees on the bank, just a farmer’s fence, the posts coloured a silvered grey that meant they’d either hardened off to an almost astounding toughness or else rotted away at ground level, held up by the taut barbed wire running around the flat river pasture. Still a new firefighter, I felt almost like a bystander—but more than that. It was as if a window was opening; I was realizing that even someone my age wasn’t immune, that wrong turns and loose gravel could happen to anyone at any time. That bad luck had a way of just waiting for people, and that even I might not be safe.
The more experienced firefighters had a way of doing things at a scene as if they were following some kind of whispered instructions only they could hear, their ears on a different frequency than any I could tune into. I’d spent hours memorizing the contents of every compartment on every truck: which heavy door hid the saws, where the chimney-fire gear was kept. But the other firefighters all seemed to know much more than that—not only where things were, but also which ones would be needed, and in what order. Gear came out of the trucks and made its way down to a tarpaulin near the car, heavy equipment being laid out side by side in lines, like huge surgical tools on a dark blue plastic tray.
Down in the mud, the firefighters were moving like astronauts, slowed by the viscous goo around their boots. They were bringing down the big power units and the cutters, were putting the heavy tools on the hood, getting ready to set out everything so that it would be close at hand when they started working. The tools caught in the bright lights, and the woman in the car started screaming.
We put a blanket over people when we start to work; it keeps sharp scraps of metal away from them and catches the sprays of breaking glass when the windows are smashed out. I’ve held blankets in front of scores of victims, but I have a hard time believing I’d be able to stand it if someone did it for me. It’s not so much the claustrophobia as the feeling of having everything that’s going on kept away from you. Dentists keep their instrument trays out of sight for good reason, and firefighters often do too.
The firefighters weren’t that far along yet; the blanket that would cover the victim was out of its plastic sleeve but still on the roof of the car. The cutters with their big bird-beak titanium jaws must have been threatening enough to the woman inside, lying the way they were, tilted to one side on the hood right in front of her.
I didn’t get to see the actual rescue. I didn’t get to take part in it, either. It’s slow work, and they had other plans for me. Chief Wood arrived in his big dark blue Crown Victoria, the firelight circling slowly in the windshield. He grabbed me by one shoulder and turned me away from the wreck, so that all I could see was his outline in the bright glare of the car’s headlights.
“You take her and get in the back of the rescue,” the chief said, gesturing to the front-seat passenger from the car. The firefighter who had brought her up from the car had gotten a blanket from the side bay of the rescue, and she was wearing it wrapped around her shoulders and hanging to her ankles like a long coat. She was standing looking down at the car, and she had her arms across her chest under the blanket, her chin and mouth tucked down into the dark grey folds of cloth.
As it got darker, a night with no moon and out on a road past all street lights, the crash scene was coming into sharp relief. With all the lights shining down, it was like watching the little big top, a one-ring circus that was both awful and hard to take your eyes off, the performers all yellow-clad, reflective tape flashing when it hit the spotlights just right.
I told the chief I hadn’t written the certification exam for first aid yet.
“I don’t want you to do first aid,” he said gruffly. “I don’t want you to do anything. I just want you to talk to her.” He slammed the door of the rescue behind me after I clambered onto the long backbench seat in the truck.
It was a strange place to be sitting, both of us with our backs up against the side doors. Normally it would be packed tight with three firefighters in full gear. Now the space seemed inexplicably large— perhaps because we were pointedly sitting as far away from each other as we could, as if even the chance that our bodies could touch in those circumstances was somehow wrong. The chief had reached in and turned the switch so that the inside of the truck was lit up by the dome light, and so that the windows turned halfway to mirrors against the dark of the night. I could see myself over her shoulder, looking over-large in my yellow jacket, and I could see my face, trying desperately to bend itself around small talk.
“Out for the evening?” I tried. Where do you start? She had already been asked whether she was hurt, had already had another firefighter chat away at her while running a practised eye over everything from the way she moved to whether there was clear fluid in her ears, whether her pupils were the same size and reacting to light.
If I were doing it now, after years of practice, I’d know how to cheat. I’d start by asking her first name and telling her mine, and I’d take off my helmet and the Nomex hood underneath. I’d know enough to leave my hair all distractingly spiky and messed up by static or sweat as the hood came off—anything to knock her out and away from the accident, to make a simple, distracting, human link. The technique is practised and deliberate, like so many other things, even though the idea is to make it seem as spontaneous as possible.
“Will she be all right?” the woman asked, and then I realized that the chief had put me in the rig with her mostly because we were so close in age. She was wearing a dark sweater and her face was startlingly pale with the black glass behind her, red patches high on both her cheeks. Beautiful in the haunting way that young women often are, thin, fine lips and a narrow face that seemed to be drawn all out of vertical planes and lines. Light brown hair, straight on both sides of her face like a frame.
“She’ll be fine,” I said as reassuringly as I could, even though I wasn’t sure.
I was lucky that time—it turned out I was right. You learn eventually to take those questions sideways, so that you don’t actually give anyone anything to hang false hopes on. “They’re just taking their time, being careful,” is an easy answer, because it’s always both true and false. Regardless, they’d be careful—but that didn’t mean anything.
I had trained on all the tools by then, knew their heft and how awkward many of them were to hold for any length of time, and I recognized the thudding, heavy beat of the compressor out there in the dark. I knew they would start by breaking out every single window in the car, and then they’d take the cutters and start on the doorposts. You train by labelling them A, B and C so you never forget which ones to cut first. Then they were going to pull the steering wheel back away from her, and it would make disturbingly loud screeches and moans, the occasional pistol-shot bang as some piece of metal reached its bursting point and failed all at once. Sometimes it happens so sharply that the vehicle shudders with the force and the sound startles everyone.
The firefighters were going to violently destroy what was left of the car, cut it completely apart so that they could ease the half-backboard down between the girl and the seat, and then strap her tight in place before lifting her out. The chief had called for a second pumper, and I didn’t understand why until it rumbled up behind us and I heard the rattle of the come-along chains. They parked the pumper across the road and ran all the chain—and a length of the heavy rescue rope, too—out across the top of the marsh, managing to loop it around one back wheel of the car in the mud.
The rope might not hold the full weight of the car—even a heavy kernmantle rope will stretch and snap