I’m standing beside Jared in the old city office turned fire department meeting room.

It’s gloomy in here.  The fluorescent light blinks its blueish light into the dusty corners.

In one corner is an ancient green steel four drawer filing cabinet left behind when the city moved to their new office.

I see some leftover city paperwork deemed unimportant enough to make the move still sitting on top of it, and there is a pack of those thin, red, plastic give away children’s fire helmets on top of that.

I hear a commotion in the front and turn to see our fire chief enter with a large suitcase under his arm.

I’m suspicious our evening’s activities are housed in that box.

The chief unpacks the contents with lots of bluster and nervous guffaws.

Soon, we have little Anne on the floor and, as per requirements, our CPR class begins.

I do not want to do this.

I’m not squeamish about it. 

It’s a pride thing. 

I don’t want to get down on my knees and fumble around the face of this plastic mannequin. 

I’ve taken CPR classes already.  I don’t have pleasant memories of those classes and this chortling-at-everything-and-every-mistake chief makes it hard for me to summon the courage.

But, like in so many other things, my friend Jared is no shirker and gets right down to work, literally.

We both kneel by Anne and shout in her ear, asking if she is okay.

She most definitely is NOT okay. 

She keeps staring vacantly at the ceiling and there is no auditory response from her partly open lips. 

We tilt her head back and grasp her lower jaw to check her airway for anything that might be blocking it.  It’s hard to see in the minimal light, so we swipe to the back of her mouth with a finger just to make sure.  

Next, I put my ear close to her mouth and listen for breath sounds. 

I don’t hear anything; I catch a faint smell of alcohol that still lingers on her lips from when we cleansed her mouth with an alcohol swab prior to starting.

 Finally, we check for a carotid pulse in her stiff, cold, leathery neck.

There is nothing. 

We don’t know what accident Anne suffered yet; our chief hasn’t told us.  I don’t know if he is holding out on us to trick us (something I find he does every once in a while) but at any rate, we need to start life saving measures immediately.

Jared puts his mouth over Anne’s and gives two breaths; I watch her chest rise and fall with each one.  Our chief calls out the sequence, verbally, but doesn’t deign to show us how, something we will find often in our acquaintance with him. 

I find the ‘v’ at the base of Anne’s sternum, move up a couple of ribs, and begin chest compressions, counting out as I go along, one, and two, and three . . . up to fifteen.

Jared gives two more breaths, and I continue compressions, feeling the spring inside her chest creak and crinkle, then bounce back.

We do four sets of breaths and compressions before our chief calls a halt and we try to acquire some sign of life.  There is none, so we start again, breathing for and pumping Anne’s heart.

After what seems a longer than necessary time on our knees in front of our chief, he calls a halt and tells us Anne doesn’t look like she is going to make it, and loudly guffaws. 

The evening is flickering out and there is no heat in the old city building.  It’s cold out, and Anne chills down before us as we wrap up our first session.

Our chief breaks into a great fanfare, and brings us our pagers.

These innocuous looking gray plastic boxes, about two inches wide, and three inches tall, with a volume spinner wheel on the left and button on the right that is tuned in to Gray Count Sherriff’s Office when depressed, don’t seem to have the power to reef me awake from sound sleep and send me shivering and skittering in an adrenalin high down the roads to future assignments.

But I just don’t know any of that yet. 

For now, I have my status symbol, earned on my knees on a cold, dirty gray carpet.