I stopped for a woman dying on the roadside and lost my job for being late, but when I came back for my desk, my whole life changed…007
The cartilage of the third rib yielded with that familiar, sickening pop that signals effective depth.
*One-and-two-and-three-and-four…*
One hundred compressions a minute.
The gravel dug through the denim of my trousers into my kneecaps.
Commuter traffic blasted past us at seventy miles per hour, the vacuum of the semi-trucks tugging at my shirt, the smell of burnt rubber and raw mountain dust choking my lungs.
*Thirty compressions.
Two breaths.
*
I pinched her nose, sealed her mouth with mine, and forced two full ventilations into her chest.
Her chest rose—elastic, resistant, fighting the pulmonary edema bubbling in her bronchial tree.
*Fifteen-and-sixteen-and-seventeen…*
On compression forty-eight, a black-and-gold **Colorado State Patrol** cruiser had arrived, its red-and-blue strobes cutting through the morning shadows.
The trooper—a young sergeant whose name tag read *Vance*—had leaped the ditch with an automated external defibrillator in one hand and an oxygen bag in the other.
“I’ve got the pads!”
Vance shouted, slapping the adhesive electrodes across her right clavicle and left rib cage:
*ANALYZING RHYTHM… DO NOT TOUCH THE PATIENT…*
*SHOCK ADVISED… CHARGING…*
*STAND CLEAR.
