It took what felt like an eternity for an ambulance to come. I corralled a ragtag team of onlookers: a gray-haired, wiry man who took over communicating with the 911 dispatchers when Craig’s partner could no longer stand to, a woman who identified herself as a physical therapist who queued up behind Mal to go next on compressions. When the sirens finally wailed in our ears, I breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Story sounds like a pulmonary embolism,” I told one of the paramedics, after we finally stabilized him enough to strap him to the gurney. “Leg aching, then suddenly went down. Partner says otherwise asymptomatic. Probably four rounds of compressions before we finally got ROSC. PEA the whole time, so I didn’t shock him.”
The paramedic nodded, jotting down everything on a notepad. His partners had successfully intubated Craig, and I watched them load him into the van, feeling both relief and a cold sense of dread.
“You in the field?” he observed.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m a doctor. Internal medicine.”
“Well, good thing you were here,” he said. “Probably saved him.”
I shrugged. My tulle skirts were stuck to my legs and my knees were raw from scraping against the ground. For months after my graduation, I’d dreaded the inevitable emergency, a flight attendant asking if there were any doctors aboard a plane, a bee-stung child with a rapidly closing throat collapsing at my feet, and now the time had come and the experience had been just as awful as I’d expected.
There was some fanfare after that, the gray-haired man hailing a cab for Craig’s family, a round of applause after the ambulance peeled away. The same people who had stared ghoulishly as we pumped Craig’s chest suddenly rushed forward to thank me, and I gave them the same requisite smiles that I gave followers who recognized me from my social media, feeling my facial muscles slacken as the minutes ticked by.
I was tired.
A gentle hand landed on my lower back.
“I think we need to get going now,” Mal said, cutting off a woman who had just asked for my name.
Mal guided me out of the throng, moving quickly, considering the equipment on his back. I followed, exhausted but grateful. His presence had been a comfort, the way my coresidents had been during codes in the hospital.
We didn’t stop until we were a couple of blocks away in a part of Lincoln Park that didn’t know that I’d just led a resuscitation effort. Then and only then did Mal drop onto a bench.
“Fuck,” he said, dropping his head into his hands. Then: “Is that guy going to be okay?”
I surveyed him. He was appropriately shaken, but surprisingly steady.
“Maybe,” I said again. “But he’s where he needs to be, at least.”
Mal nodded rapidly, not looking at me, then reached out and squeezed my hand. He looked ashen, his face still shining with a layer of sweat.
“And what about you?” he said.
I chuckled. “I should definitely be asking you that,” I said. “This isn’t my first time at the rodeo.”
Mal nodded, understanding. “I guess I knew that objectively.But seeing it?” He inhaled sharply, then flashed me a shy smile. “You wereincredible, Jo. But shit. Is that what you used to do every day?”
“Not every day,” I confessed. I tilted my head. “You did great too.”
Mal shook his head, laughing nervously. Then, arms swinging, he stood.
“Sure. Thanks.Jesus.” He tilted his head back, let out a slow, whistling breath. Then: “There’s a Jeni’s right there. We might have just saved a man’s life. Want to get ice cream?”
Chapter Thirteen
Mal
Three days had passed since the carousel-photoshoot-turned-real-life-emergency, and Mal could not stop thinking about what it felt like to crush a man’s ribs.
“Should I stop?” he’d asked Jo when he felt the first pop: cartilage disengaging from bone, bone digging into lung.
“No,” she’d said, not looking away from the AED the girls had brought, not lifting her two fingers from the fallen man’s neck.
Later, when they were eating their ice cream (his butter pecan, hers strawberry cheesecake, both in dipped waffle cones), he asked her about it, and she’d said, “Sometimes you have to hurt people to help them.”
“That’s hard-core,” Kieran said, impressed. “Are you okay, man? Because that would mess me up a little bit.”
