The metallic tang of iron filled my nostrils as I descended the embankment. Not the iron of blood - though I expected plenty of that - but the iron of frozen steel clinging to my gloves. It was February 14, 2018, a date burned into my memory not for the holiday, but for the blizzard that had shut down I-90. I have held my NREMT-P certification since 2002, and in two decades of working the graveyard shift, I have developed a specific intuition for "recovery" versus "rescue." When Dispatch toned us out at 03:12 for a vehicle over the side at Mile Marker 42, my partner, Sarah, and I exchanged a look that said we were about to view a corpse. Mile Marker 42 is a dead zone; the ravine is eighty feet deep, and the ambient temperature was -12°F with a wind chill hitting -35°F. Based on the timestamp of the dropped 911 call, the occupant - a single child - had been exposed for at least four hours. As I hooked my carabiner to the guardrail and began the rappel down to the crushed sedan, I ran the clinical math in my head.
* Mechanism of Injury: High-velocity rollover with significant vertical drop.
* Environmental Factors: Sub-zero exposure, compromised cabin integrity.
* Physiological Expectation: Stage III Hypothermia (core temp < 89.6°F), bradycardia, probable cardiac arrest.
By the time my boots crunched the snow beside the vehicle, my eyelashes had frozen together. The car was a silver Honda Civic, wrapped around an oak tree like tin foil. The windows were blown out, meaning the interior had been exposed to the blizzard for hours. I prepped my mind for the "smell of the job" - gasoline, pine, and death.
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