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The dispatcher said he had an ambulance on its way and McKenzie handed her phone to someone else to talk to the man so she could focus on the patient.
“Mr. Carter?” Ryder shook the man, trying to get a response. “Can you hear me? I need you to open your eyes.”
Nothing.
Ryder rubbed his knuckles across the man’s sternum with good force which should have elicited a grimace.
McKenzie wasn’t surprised when it didn’t since he’d failed to react to the lancet.
She placed her finger over his radial pulse again and couldn’t find it.
“Ryder,” she said firmly to get his attention, not wanting to alarm everyone crowding around them, but becoming alarmed herself. She moved her fingers to his carotid, searching for a beat in case she’d just missed it, but knowing she hadn’t.
Reading her mind, Ryder bent his ear to the man’s chest again.
“Mr. Carter?” he repeated, shaking the man vigorously. Nothing.
He checked Daniel’s airway, then muttered a low curse as he pressed his hands over the man’s chest and began doing compressions.
Thankful she’d sent Callie to retrieve her purse, McKenzie grabbed the mouthguard, ripped off the plastic covering and gave two breaths.
Ryder counted out loud and McKenzie gave the two person CPR recommended two breaths to his every fifteen compressions.
In between breaths, she checked for a carotid pulse, for any sign he’d resumed breathing.
Nothing.
She and Ryder worked together, keeping the rapid lifesaving rhythm going in hopes of reminding Daniel’s body of what it should be doing.
After the fourth set of delivered breaths, her own breath caught.
“There’s a pulse! Faint, but it’s there,” she excitedly told Ryder, relief coursing through her entire being.
“Thank God,” someone in the crowd said, reminding McKenzie that they had an audience surrounding them. As she and Ryder had worked, she’d completely forgotten where they were. Everything had faded away except for her and Ryder and their efforts to save the man’s life.
McKenzie was thankful, too, for the pulse, but knew they were far from out of the woods. Ryder continued to do the compressions, and as McKenzie bent to give her two breaths, the man finally took one on his own. She waited to see if he was going to take another, didn’t like how much time passed and went ahead and delivered two more.
“I hear the ambulance sirens,” someone unnecessarily said as the distant wail couldn’t be missed.
Now, that was something McKenzie was also thankful for. Daniel needed medical attention fast as she was almost positive he’d had a myocardial infarction.
They continued to assist the man’s basic vital functions while they waited on the ambulance to arrive. Time seemed to drag but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two in reality.
As his breathing and pulse were sporadic at best, neither she nor Ryder stopped their cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts.
Just as the emergency sirens came to a halt outside the building, Daniel opened his eyes.
They were blurred, staring up in dazed confusion. McKenzie wasn’t sure they were registering much, if anything, but, oh, how she rejoiced at seeing the flicker of movement quickly followed by his taking a deep gasp of air on his own trailed by another.
“Oh, honey.” His wife could apparently no longer stay back in her nearby chair and knelt next to him, leaning over, tearful as she continued to talk almost incoherently. “Love you...so scared...please don’t...”
McKenzie could make out only part of her words they were so muffled with tears, and she felt moisture pricking at her own eyes. How much the woman loved her husband, how scared she was, poured from her shaking body.
McKenzie dealt with a lot of sad things in pediatric cardiology but hadn’t dealt with an acute heart attack adult patient since residency. It was unlikely that Ryder had either. He seemed to be taking it all in his stride.
McKenzie stayed crouched next to the man, closely monitoring his vitals. Ryder stood to make r
oom for the emergency medical workers to rush to the patient’s side. He began filling them in with who he and McKenzie were and what had happened while the crew completed a quick assessment of their own.
