Page 46 of Keeping It Professional

I crouched down and shone my own light up the crack. I couldn’t see much, just one dangling shoe. “Can’t we climb up and get him? Pull him out by his feet?”

“No, it’s too tight. An adult won’t fit.”

“We tried a catch pole,” said the other firefighter. “Like you’d use on a dog, but over his ankle. We thought we could pull him out by the leg, but he’s in there too tight. We’ll have to saw through.”

“Sawthrough?” Sophie had come up behind me. “How do you know you won’t saw him too?”

One of the cops peered up the tree. “We’re waiting for an arborist to bring an, uh… X-ray?”

“An arborsonic scanner,” said the second firefighter. “They said it can give us a 3D image, let us see what we’re looking at inside the tree. Then we’ll saw partway through and crack the trunk open, and pull the kid out through the hole in the side.”

Sophie knelt down and reached for my light. She squeezed herself sideways into the tree, till only her shoulder was still sticking out. Her voice sounded hollow as she yelled up the crack.

“Hey, can you hear me? Hey — what’s his name?”

“Joey,” said a haggard man I guessed was his dad. “He was screaming before. Did he run out of air?”

“Hey, Joey?” Sophie wriggled in deeper. “Joey, you hear me?”

I didn’t hear anything, but Joey must’ve replied, because Sophie yelled back to him.

“No! Don’t do that. What we need you to do is, uh… don’t move, okay? Try to breathe slow, and… You hurt anywhere?”

This time I heard something, a low, muffled sob. The cops shushed the onlookers and herded them back. Sophie called up again, and Joey whimpered and cried. After a while, Sophie wriggled back out.

“He says he can’t breathe, but I think he’s just scared. He’s talking all right, no shortness of breath. But when I asked where it’s pinching him, he said his leg. His left leg’s asleep from the hip down.”

I frowned. “That’s a problem. Let me in there.” I nudged Sophie aside and jammed my head in the crack. “Hey, Joey?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you feel your leg at all, or is it asleep all the way?”

He sniffled. “All the way. I can’t feel my toes.”

“Okay. That’s fine. You’re doing great. Did your leg just go to sleep, or has it been a while?”

“I don’t know. It’s dark, and there’s bugs.” He hitched a big breath and let it out in a wail. I pulled my head out.

“Yeah. He can breathe. But that leg’s bad news. We could be looking at crush injuries, compartment syndrome?—”

“Can’t you dig from inside?” Joey’s dad had pushed in. “The wood should be soft in there. Easy to scrape. Can’t you dig it away where it’s squishing his leg?”

I poked my head back in, but I couldn’t see how we would. The tree’s trunk doglegged about ten feet up, right where the kid had wedged himself in. Anything we shoved up there, we’d be probing blind. And if Joey couldn’t feel us, we’d risk hurting him. I got to my feet. “What’s the ETA on that scanner?”

“Forty-five minutes,” said one of the cops.

“That’s no good,” said Sophie. “Not for his leg.”

Joey’s dad muscled in again. “Joey? Hey, Joey? You hear me up there?” Joey didn’t respond, and his dad banged on the tree. “What if he digs his leg out himself? The wood should be rotten. He could scratch himself free.”

Joey wailed louder. Sophie dropped to her knees. She squeezed back in the crack, and I couldn’t hear her at first. Not over Joey’s terrified screams. But whatever she said to him, it must’ve got through, because little by little, his cries tapered off.

“You’re so brave,” she called. “Now, can you move your arms?”

Joey must’ve said no. Sophie tried again.

“How about your hands? Can you wiggle your fingers? Yeah? Yeah, that’s perfect. Now, can you touch where your leg’s gone to sleep? Okay, right there, I want you to scratch. See if the wood’s soft. If it splinters away.”

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