CPR and Praying

Instead of being on the road driving toward my parents for dinner at 4:50, I was on my knees in one of the rooms of my next-door neighbor’s home. She had ran into my garage seconds after I had parked my car and pulled some items from the back seat.

“One and two and three and four. One and two and…”

I ignored the 911 operator on speaker phone (she was going too slowly). My sweet neighbor was yelling, “We’re fine. She’s a nurse. My neighbor’s a nurse.”

We weren’t fine.

I wanted to cry, not because of stress, but because despite his disheveled appearance, I knew I was doing compressions on someone younger than me, someone who my instincts told me, had given up. Hope is an integral part of my belief system, and sensing its absence blanketed me with grief for the stranger lying below me. There was also the small pop felt under my hand on the fifth compression and I knew I had cracked rib. Guilt, major guilt. Irrational. But it was there anyway.

I also felt alone. You’re never alone in the hospital. You never go through this alone. There is a whole team. Sometimes so many, the extras that can’t find any way to help are sent back to their normal duties.

After a couple of minutes, he took in a singular garbled breath, and in the background, the sounds of sirens could be heard entering the neighborhood. I stopped CPR, and with my fingers under his jawbone, lifted his chin. He took in two more rumbling gasps of air. His lips flapped when he exhaled.

Now at his head, I noticed with more care the deep gash across his left brow, the blood on the carpet, and a foot away, a syringe with a bent needle. It confirmed my suspicion that demons were winning the fight for this guy’s life. Now, with some fear for my own safety as it relates to contaminated needles and wanting to avoid getting any blood on my person, I continued doing chest compressions. I felt a thread pulse, but it was incredibly slow. With compressions, I could get blood flow to his brain and vital organs.

Heavy footsteps signaled the arrival of help. I kept my guy’s chin thrust upward, watched his chest go up and down, and remained in a scrunched-up position between the door frame. A long-legged paramedic stepped over me and threaded an IV into his hand. After the mom explained her son’s history, they administered Narcan – reversing the sedative effect on his heart, oxygenated him, and assisted him to a stretcher for his visit to the nearby hospital.

His mom thanked me profusely and in the same sentence, told me she’d also had a bad day at work. His dad also thanked me and finished by saying “I’m so embarrassed.”

Speechless at the oddness of their comments, I worked to reorient myself to all that had happened. You never feel more human than when you're kneeling over someone who's not breathing, someone who's coming close to checking out, for good. There was both a rush of adrenaline that I'd been successful in my role, but also some visceral shakiness in my gut. CPR is not a skill you want to have a lot of practice doing.

Maybe the two are in a little shock. Maybe they're weary. Maybe I'm not the first person to kneel over their son.

I told them everyone has struggles and hugged them both.

I arrived at Mom and Dad’s by 5:12.