Chapter 2 - The Rhythm of Life
The concrete reality of chest compressions is something Hollywood films always manage to sanitize. It is not graceful; it is brutal, mechanical, and exhausting.
"One, two, three, four, five..." Ethan counted aloud, his voice straining, his small frame throwing his entire body weight downward with every push. He could feel the old man’s ribs cracking beneath his palms—a sickening, popping sensation that sent electric shocks of adrenaline up his forearms.
Around them, the circle of spectators had expanded, but instead of helping, they formed a gawking ring of voyeurism. Cell phone lenses pointed like black gun barrels at the scene. Marcus Vance scrambled to his feet, screaming obscenities, red-faced with humiliation and rage as he dialed terminal security.
"Get over to Gate B20 right now!" Marcus roared into his mobile phone. "I've got an insubordinate cleaner violating company property and assaulting management! Drag him out of here!"
Ethan didn't look up. Sweat poured down his temples, stinging his eyes, dripping onto the old man’s gray cheeks. His arms burned, his muscles screaming from lactic acid buildup, but he refused to stop. He remembered Chloe telling him how much she wanted to walk again without pain. He wasn't going to let another human being slip away while cowards watched and managers brayed about policy.
"Thirty!" Ethan gasped, tilting the old man's chin upward, pinching his nose, and sealing his mouth over the stranger's cold lips to deliver two steady rescue breaths.
Rise. Fall. Rise. Fall.
"Come on, stay with me," Ethan whispered fiercely between compressions, pushing down again with rhythmic agony.
Then, faint and distant, the wail of approaching airport emergency sirens cut through the terminal exterior walls, echoing up the access ramps. Blue and red flashing lights began to paint the soaring glass ceiling in strobing, frantic streaks.
Two airport paramedics—wearing bright orange high-visibility jackets and hauling heavy medical gear—sprinted down the moving walkway, led by a seasoned paramedic captain named Sarah Vance.
"Clear the area! Move back!" Captain Vance barked, dropping to her knees beside Ethan with a heavy metal kit.
"I've been doing continuous CPR for four minutes!" Ethan panted, stepping back just enough to give them space, his hands slick with sweat and blood. "He lost his pulse right away! He was cyanotic!"
Captain Vance didn't waste a breath. She slapped the adhesive pads of an automated external defibrillator onto the old man’s bare, frail chest. The machine whined, analyzing the heart rhythm with a high-pitched electronic tone.
“Analyzing rhythm. Do not touch the patient.”
The terminal fell into an eerie, suffocating silence.
“Shock advised. Stand clear.”
"Clear!" Captain Vance shouted, pressing the discharge button.
The old man’s body violently arched off the terrazzo floor as forty joules of electrical current surged through his heart, before dropping back down like a stone. Captain Vance immediately resumed chest compressions, while her partner readied a manual resuscitator bag and oxygen tank.
Before the AED could initiate a second analysis, a deep, rattling gasp echoed from the old man’s throat. His eyelids violently fluttered open, revealing pale, watery blue eyes that rolled wildly before focusing with startling, razor-sharp intensity.
The old man sucked in a massive, ragged lungful of air, coughing violently as color slowly rushed back into his pale cheeks.
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"He's back in sinus rhythm! We have a pulse! Strong and steady!" Captain Vance shouted, relief flooding her weather-beaten face. She looked up at Ethan, her eyes wide with undisguised respect. "Damn it, kid. You kept him oxygenated long enough for the shock to take. If you had hesitated another thirty seconds, he’d be brain-dead."
As the paramedics loaded the patient onto a gurney, Richard Bennett—though weak and struggling for breath—turned his head slightly. Unbeknownst to Marcus Vance, who was marching over with two security guards in tow, Bennett was a man whose mind remained razor-sharp. He noted every single detail: the name tag of the boy who saved him, the vicious words of the supervisor who tried to stop him, and the chilling indifference of the crowd.
