Four seconds. Maybe five.
I had my phone out by the time I cleared the tree. Dispatch picked up on the second ring.
"Hartsdale Fire, off-duty. We've got a pediatric drowning at the swimming hole, north bank by the dock. Send a rig."
I gave her the rest on the way down. Branches across the face. Roots under my boots, the trail dropping in steps a hiker would never have called a trail. I caught my shin on a downed limb hard enough to break the skin.
I came out of the trees onto the gravel of the bank, and the scene lay itself out the way a fireground does—every figure in its place, the angles already mapped before I registered the picture.
Astrid was on her knees in the wet pebbles. Soaked through. Hair stuck to one side of her face from going under. The boy was on his back in front of her. Five, maybe six. Blue at the lips, hair flat to his forehead. His mother was on her knees a yard off, sobbing, both hands clamped over her mouth.
Astrid had the heel of one palm on his sternum, the other hand on top, elbows locked. Counting under her breath, lips moving on each number.
I dropped to my knees opposite her, the wet pebbles biting through my jeans.
"Astrid."
She didn't look up. "Out at the dock. Cleared his mouth. Gave him two. Started compressions ten seconds ago."
"Switch. I've got compressions. Stay on breaths."
She moved. Didn't argue. Didn't waste a second on it.
I put the heel of my palm on his sternum, the other hand on top, elbows locked. The first compression sank an inch and a half into the chest of a five-year-old, and my brain went somewhere I'd put it a thousand times on shift—the place where you stopped feeling what was under your hands and started counting.
"One. Two. Three. Four. Five."
I counted out loud. She kept his airway open with two fingers under his chin, watching his chest, watching me, watching for the cue. The dispatcher's voice was coming from the phone I'd dropped on a flat rock by my knee on speaker, calm, asking for updates, telling me the rig was rolling.
At fifteen, Astrid leaned in. Sealed her mouth over his. Two breaths. His chest rose twice. She came back up.
Back to me. I counted again.
The mother was praying. The mother was sobbing. The mother started to come over the boy's body, and Astrid put a hand on her shoulder without looking up, and the mother stopped.
I was twenty-three into the second cycle when his foot twitched.
"Easton."
"I see it."
"Keep going."
I kept going.
At twenty-eight, he coughed.
The cough came out of him like a punch. The water came with it—half a lungful onto the pebbles, gray and threaded with grit from the bottom of the lake. I rolled him a quarter turn so the rest could come up. He coughed again on his side. He started to cry, and it was the most beautiful sound I'd heard in twelve years on the job.
I had my hand off his chest before he was finished with the first cry.
"Pulse."
"Strong," Astrid said.
"Color."
"Coming up."
