Part 5 — Learning to Help
St. Luke’s smells like mop water and second chances after dinner. In the basement hall, metal chairs wait in rows and a dozen CPR mannequins stare at the ceiling like they’re listening for rain. Someone has taped notes to the first two torsos: I THINK I’LL MESS UP.
A hospital educator in scrubs—RIVERA stitched above her pocket—checks a cart of AED trainers and taps a metronome app on her phone to 110 beats per minute. “We’re here to be brave and imperfect,” she says. “Brave first.”
Evan stands in the doorway, bandanna tied at his wrist, eyes scanning for exits like habit is a muscle. He sees the signs, reads them twice, then chooses the I THINK I’LL MESS UP mannequin as if he’s honoring a contract.
People trickle in: a grocery cashier still in her apron; two high school seniors in letter jackets; a retired bus driver with careful posture; a young mom rocking a stroller with one foot. Lena arrives with a box of red bandannas and a Sharpie. Griff sets down a cooler of lemonade and his habit of saying yes. Pastor Joe holds a stack of handouts but not a pulpit; tonight, his voice is for logistics.
Rivera starts with names, because names anchor panic. “Say it loud,” she says. “You’ll be shouting later.”
“Naomi,” I say.
“Evan,” he says, and the word shakes once and then stands.
The lesson is a bright ladder with shallow rungs. How to check for response. How to tilt the chin. Where to place the heel of your hand. How deep (two inches) and how fast (the beat you can clap without thinking). How to switch every two minutes because even heroes have finite triceps. How to open the AED, stick the pads, and obey the robot voice like it’s the captain now.
We practice the words that will make strangers do the right thing. “You—call 911.” “You—grab the AED.” “You—hold shade.” That last one makes a few people blink until I add, “Sun steals strength. So does cold. We protect.”
Rivera handles the legal thorn with a soft glove. “Good Samaritan laws exist in our state,” she says. “You do what a reasonable person would do. Reasonable looks like this class. Reasonable looks like trying.”
We break into pairs. I take a high schooler named Avery who laughs when she’s nervous and then keeps going anyway. Evan pairs with the retired bus driver, Mr. Walton, who corrects his posture like he’s fixing a seat belt.
“Hands in the center,” I call. “Lock your elbows. Let the chest fully rise between compressions. You’re a pump, not a jackhammer.”
The room fills with the soft drum of palms on plastic. Breath counts. Exhale. Reset. The metronome ticks like a kind clock.
Evan leans in and starts too fast. “Slow by a hair,” I say, tapping the air above his hands. He adjusts. The bandanna knot at his wrist rides each downward press.
“Two inches?” he asks, voice low.
“Think firm but kind,” Mr. Walton says. “Like telling a teenager to hand over the car keys.”
Avery snorts. “I heard that.”
Rivera circulates like a conductor who knows every instrument. “Beautiful compressions,” she says to the cashier. “Give breaths like you’re fogging a mirror,” she says to the mom with the stroller. To the letter jacket pair: “Switch at two minutes. Say ‘switch’ like you mean it.”
We practice the AED. The box clicks open. The voice lands in that cheerful monotone that takes the quiver out of your hands. “Peel pad. Place pad. Stand clear.” The first time a trainee presses the shock button, they flinch. The second time, they look like they were built to press it.
Griff videotapes hands, not faces, at Rivera’s request. “People learn faster when they see their own hands doing a brave thing,” she says. “We’ll send you the clip.”
Halfway through, the door opens and two teenage kids from the hospital volunteer program slip in and take seats on the floor, cross-legged. They count compressions out loud with the snotty confidence of the very young and the very earnest. It makes the room lighter.
During a break, Lena passes the bandannas. “These aren’t capes,” she says. “They’re reminders. When you’re ready to help, tie one on. We’ll write your first name with the Sharpie so strangers know who to follow.”
The grocery cashier ties hers at the elbow like a promise she can’t misplace. Mr. Walton asks if he can put one on his cane. “It’ll stop traffic,” he says. The letter jacket kids loop theirs around their biceps and take pictures they don’t post, not yet.
Evan turns his bandanna knot and looks at me. “When do you call yourself ready?” he asks.
“You don’t,” I say. “You just stop waiting for perfect. Ready is a verb.”
He nods and takes his mannequin through a full cycle without my voice as a guardrail. When he finishes, there’s sweat at his hairline and something settled in his shoulders that wasn’t there an hour ago.
Rivera dims the lights and plays a short video of a heart squirming in slow motion, then stuttering, then still. She pauses it with the still on the screen. “Cardiac arrest is an electrical storm,” she says. “You are a hand-cranked generator until the box can reboot the grid.”
The room is very quiet.
We run scenarios. A man collapses at the hardware store. A grandmother slides down the pew at church. A kid faints at band practice and you have to decide in three seconds if it’s heat, blood sugar, or something much worse. We talk about heat advisories. We talk about how panic looks like motion and how help looks like focus.
At the end, Rivera lines us up like graduates but without the music. “Say your name and one sentence you’ll remember,” she says.
“Avery,” my partner says. “Judge slower. Help faster.”
“Mr. Walton,” the bus driver says. “Switch every two minutes.”
“Janelle,” the cashier says. “Shade is care.”
“Evan,” he says, last on purpose. He looks at the I THINK I’LL MESS UP mannequin like it’s an altar. “Ready is a verb.”
We clap, not because we finished a class but because we started something that has to continue.
Lena hands Evan a fresh bandanna. “Write something on it,” she says. “Not a motto. A note to yourself.”
He uncaps the Sharpie and writes in block letters along the edge: COUNT, DON’T GUESS. He tucks the corner so the words show.
We stack the mannequins in neat rows and coil the AED cords the way the world deserves. The letter jacket kids fight over who gets to carry the banner tube. Pastor Joe collects sign-up sheets like they are fragile—names that might someday stand over a stranger and give them back a life.
Rivera pulls me aside. “I heard about the fair,” she says. “Teach-in. Brave.”
“Brave would be unnecessary,” I say. “This is the next best thing.”
She squeezes my shoulder. “Bring my spare AED. It’s out of warranty for hospital floors but perfect for a stage.”
We load her spares into Griff’s truck: two trainers, one bright real unit that becomes heavier the longer you look at it. Evan checks the battery light twice, then once more. COUNT, DON’T GUESS stares up from his wrist.
Outside, the air is cooler, but the sidewalks still hold the day. The parking lot lights smear the asphalt in tired yellow. We stand in a small circle the way people do when they’re pretending not to stretch out a good thing.
“Same time tomorrow?” Avery asks, already bouncing.
“Every hour on the hour,” I say. “Fifteen-minute demos, then five minutes of questions. Lemonade table on the left. Bandannas on the right.”
Mr. Walton points his cane at us like a conductor. “And if all else fails,” he says, “we count.”
Evan laughs, and it sounds like a door unlatching. “We count,” he repeats.
We split to cars, keys catching light. I text Cassidy: Class went well. How’s Redbird? She replies: Resting. Rolling eyes on schedule. You should see her try to boss the heart monitor.
I smile into the dark. My daughter texts, Corn dog still on? I write back, Yes. Mustard, not a lake of ketchup.
At the high school lot, pickup line still lives in my muscle memory even at night. I cut through for the shortcut home, thinking of the ops sheet, the banner, the exact words I want the emcee to say with his whole chest.
The night is ordinary in the way that tricks you into thinking it will stay that way. A sprinkler ticks somewhere. A dog barks twice and then remembers he’s not in charge. The world is a decent hum.
I’m almost to the far exit when a shape crumples by the sidewalk—just a shadow unhooking from a lamppost. My foot is on the brake before my brain finishes the picture.
“Mom?” my daughter says from the back seat, voice high and small. We both see it at once: a man in work boots and a paint-splattered T-shirt folding to the ground as if someone turned gravity up without warning.
I pull to the curb. The bandanna at my wrist tightens when my hand on the wheel tightens. The trunk holds a loaner AED. The seat beside me holds the tote with gloves and wipes and a habit of saying the right sentence first.
Behind me, my daughter whispers, “Is he okay?”
I look at the clock. I look at the man. I look at the empty stretch of lot where help will have to be conjured from whoever is nearby.
“Stay buckled,” I tell her. “Call 911.”
I grab the AED and run.
Part 6 — When the Test Comes
The AED case banged my knee as I ran. The man lay on his side near the painted mascot at the curb, a lunch cooler tipped like it had changed its mind. Work boots. Paint-splattered T-shirt. He was about my age, which made my throat tighten in a way I refused to name.
“Sir, can you hear me?” I knelt, rolled him onto his back, and cleared his airway. No response. No breath. No obvious chest rise.
Behind me, my daughter’s voice trembled but did not break. “Nine-one-one? Adult male down. Not breathing. North lot, by the gym steps with the lightning bolt mural.” She listened, then called to me, “They’re on the way. They want to know if we have an AED.”
“We do,” I said, popping the latches. “Tell them CPR’s starting.”
I tilted the man’s chin, checked again for breath, then placed my hands on the center of his chest. “You—blue hoodie,” I called to a kid on a bike at the corner, “hold your phone light here.” He skidded over, palms shaking light over the man’s sternum as if he could pour it inside.
“He needs space,” I said to no one and everyone. The lot was nearly empty, but two teenagers with skateboards dragged a trash can aside to make room for the stretcher we hadn’t yet earned. I counted down inside my ribs and started compressions.
The rhythm I’d taught an hour ago answered like muscle memory from a different life. Down two inches. Let rise. Count out loud to steady my hands. “One, two, three…”
My daughter relayed the count in a whisper to the dispatcher as if words could be a rope.
A car swung wide to the curb and stopped hard. The driver’s door flung open before the engine fully died. Evan. Bandanna at his wrist. He’d taken the same shortcut home.
He knelt opposite me in one motion. “Switch at two,” he said, already watching my shoulders for the moment my strength would lie. He pulled his phone, tapped a metronome, slid it to the asphalt faceup so we had a heartbeat we could borrow.
“Ninety seconds,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
The AED booted with its unbothered beep. I tore the pads, stripped his shirt where I needed space, and placed one pad under the right collarbone and one under the left ribs, fingers deliberate, no wasted motion.
“Stand clear,” the device said. The lot seemed to stop.
“Clear,” I echoed, hands hover-high. “Lights off the chest, please.”
“Shock advised,” the device said.
I pressed the button. The man’s body tightened, a brief arc. The smell of warm plastic rose in the night air.
“Begin CPR,” the device said.
“Switch,” Evan said, and our hands traded roles like dancers who had rehearsed the tornado. His compressions were firm, vertical, kind. COUNT, DON’T GUESS at his wrist caught the bike light each time his hands fell.
“Twenty, twenty-one…” He didn’t rush. He didn’t slow. His jaw locked like he was holding back an apology with every press.
“Mom?” my daughter called, voice steady now. “They want to know if the patient moved.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Tell them we shocked once. CPR ongoing.”
Blue Hoodie swallowed. “I’m gonna go flag the ambulance at the corner,” he said, then startled at his own authority and sprinted.
Two teachers leaving a parents’ meeting jogged up. One had a whistle still around her neck; the other wore a lanyard like armor. “We’ve got water and a first-aid kit,” Lanyard said.
“Shade—no,” I corrected myself; the heat had broken with the sun. “Light. Keep the light steady. And in a minute, one of you take breaths if I cue you.”
“Analyzing,” the AED said. “Do not touch the patient.”
We lifted our hands. The metronome ticked. The world leaned in.
“No shock advised. Begin CPR.”
“Switch,” I said, and took over. Evan slid to the head, tipped the chin, gave two gentle breaths like he’d practiced to a plastic ribcage an hour earlier. His inhale didn’t tremble. Something inside him had decided—then stayed decided.
Feet pounded. Sirens threaded the street. A car stopped short and the driver—custodian’s jacket, school logo—tumbled out, eyes wide. “Lou?” he gasped, and my heart pinched: coworker or friend. He stopped himself two steps away and folded his hands like he’d been taught yesterday. “What do you need?”
“Meet the medics,” I said. “Tell them one shock, compressions ongoing, AED attached.”
He ran.
We rode the rhythm two more cycles. “Switch.” “Switch.” The breaths became smoother, the count a conversation between palms and sternum and night air. I felt myself become mechanics and mercy.
“Analyzing,” the device said, that voice both polite and implacable. We paused.
A flutter under my fingers at the neck. A flicker. The small surge of something stubborn. “I think—” I started.
“Shock advised,” the device overruled.
“Clear,” Evan said calmly, and his hand hovered over the button without hurry. “Clear.”
The jolt was quick. The man’s mouth opened like a fish remembering water. The monitor on the AED showed a ragged line that tried to choose itself. A cough rattled loose. Then another.
“Lou?” the custodian whispered like a prayer with wheels.
The paramedics slid in and took over with that practiced gravity, patching leads, purpose nested inside protocol. “What’ve we got?” one asked, hands already moving.
“Adult male,” Evan said, voice steady. “Witnessed collapse about three minutes before we started. One shock, compressions throughout. Second shock just delivered. Two rescuers. AED’s readouts are here.”
“Nice work,” the medic said, and meant it. “We’ve got him.”
They lifted. The custodian walked alongside until a medic placed a hand on his shoulder the way you tell a person they’ve done enough and should now let go. The siren softened around the corner.
The metronome on the asphalt kept ticking. Evan silenced it with his thumb. He sat back hard on his heels and stared at the line where the phone light met the night.
“He’s breathing,” my daughter said into the phone, tears finally claiming their tax. “They’re taking him to County. My mom and a man helped him. Yes, I can meet the ambulance at the east entrance next time. Okay. Thank you.” She hung up and pressed her palms flat against her thighs like she needed to feel the earth.
“You did perfect,” I said.
“I kept thinking of Ms. Wilson,” she said. “And then I kept counting.”
Evan scrubbed his face with both hands and then let them drop. “Okay,” he said to no one, to us, to the newly quieter dark. “Okay.”
The teachers exhaled in that adrenaline-after way that makes bodies feel too big for their bones. “We’ve been through lockdown drills and tornado drills,” Lanyard said, voice thinly angry at no one in particular. “Nobody ever drilled us for this.”
“We will now,” I said.
The custodian returned, thumb worrying his key ring. “He’s our painter,” he said. “Lou. Quiet guy. Brings his dinner in a cooler and eats on the bleachers so he can watch the sky change after work.” He blinked too fast, then swallowed it back. “Thank you.”
“Thank the bandanna,” Evan said, half-joking, lifting his wrist. “And the nurse who was loud.”
Phones had appeared at the edges, as they do. A woman in a minivan asked if she could post something to the school page to tell parents the lot was cleared and someone had helped. I nodded, but said, “Keep names out of it. Center the steps, not the faces.”
She typed and read back what she’d written: Call 911. Get the AED. Start compressions. Judge slower. Help faster. She added a lightning bolt emoji and hit send.
The lot returned to being a lot. The bike kid rode a shaky circle, then saluted us with his chin and pedaled away. The skateboarders carried the trash can back to its square of oil shadow. The world pretended to be ordinary because that is how it protects itself after a scare.
Evan leaned against my car and looked at the sky without seeing it. “I thought the first person I’d help would be at the fair,” he said softly. “Like a neat movie arc.”
“Redemption doesn’t check your calendar,” I said.
He huffed a laugh. “Rivera would say, ‘Ready is a verb.’”
“And your wrist says, ‘Count, don’t guess,’” I added.
He turned the bandanna so the words were a flag.
My phone buzzed. Two messages stacked. The fair board’s social account: Finale confirmed: Community Safety Hour at 6, fireworks at 8. Free CPR demos on the half hour. AED staged at main stage. Then Cassidy: She wants to send a message if she can’t be there. Can you read it from the stage?
“From Martha,” I said aloud, and the relief that moved through us was a sound you could mistake for wind.
Evan straightened. “She should read it herself,” he said, hopeful to the point of foolishness.
“If the doctor says no,” I said, “we’ll be her voice.” I opened Cassidy’s attachment. The first line hit like a match: If I ever go down again, don’t drag me out of sight. Turn on the lights and teach.
“Can we put that on the banner?” my daughter asked from the back seat, leaning forward now, steadier. “Like, small under the steps?”
“We can try,” I said. “But we’ll say it either way.”
Evan checked the time and winced. “I have to be on the fairgrounds at dawn to mark demo spots,” he said. “You’ll bring the spares from St. Luke’s?”
“Already in Griff’s truck,” I said. “We’ll meet at the main stage with coffee that tastes like decisions.”
He nodded, then looked back toward where the ambulance had been a minute ago. “Do you think he’ll be okay?” he asked, not disguising the kid in the question.
“I think he has a chance,” I said. “Because people did the right thing fast.”
He blew out a breath that steamed a little in the cooling air. “The internet’s going to find this,” he said. “The same people who saw the other video.”
“Then give them better footage,” I said, not unkindly. “Hands that learned. A count that didn’t guess.”
He smiled at that—crooked, human. “See you at dawn, Nurse Who Was Loud.”
“See you at dawn, Student Who Decided.”
We drove home the long way because sometimes your body needs to arrive gradually. My daughter fell asleep between one red light and the next, phone cradled in both hands like she’d been holding a bird.
At our porch, the night smelled like cut grass and whatever comes after fear. I checked the cooler for ice packs, rechecked the AED battery even though we’d just proven it worked, and set my alarm for too early.
Before I slept, I posted one tight paragraph with no hashtags: Tonight, a man in work boots went down by the gym. A kid held a light. Two teachers cleared space. A custodian ran. A bandanna didn’t make a hero, but it reminded a pair of shaky hands what to do. Call 911. Get the AED. Start compressions. Judge slower. Help faster.
The comments began to bead like dew—neighbors, parents, a paramedic who recognized our metronome count. I put the phone face down, because morning would need my eyes.
Just before the alarm took me, my screen lit with one more message from Cassidy: Stent is holding. She’s resting. She says your bandanna looks better on stage than on a wrist. Bring it.
I slept with it tied there anyway, knot over my pulse, until the first thin light made promises across the blinds and the day that wanted changing began to knock.
