Read Online Burning Down the House by Russell Wangersky - Free Book Online

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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œOut 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.
    â€œWill she be all