CHAPTER ONE
Nick
DROWNING WAS QUIET. That was drilled into my head from day one of certification class, and even though it was hard to believe, I was prepared for that. Every time I sat on the sunbaked cement across from the lifeguard chair, breathing in the smell of chlorine, coconutty sunscreen, the occasional drift of cut grass from the new landscaper, I reminded myself: Head up, Nick. Some of the kids in my cert class said they listened to podcasts while on duty, one earbud snaked into their ear, but not me. I rotated my position on schedule, keeping my shoulders squared to the pool.
The red rescue tube with its crisp white letters—I always traced the D in GUARD—balanced on my bathing suit shorts like a foam safety bar on an amusement park ride. I’d scanned the pool as I’d been trained: Up the trio of long lanes, the barriers bobbing obediently. Mr. Francis, the biology teacher at my high school, working his way up and down, as he did every morning at ten o’clock. A traditional individual medley. Butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle. Each of the sixteen laps ended with an easy flip turn before he returned to his coffee and sudoku puzzle.
In the water, Mr. Francis didn’t cry out. He didn’t shout, Nick, help me. He didn’t crash during a flip turn or get caught in the lane line. Instead, what caught my eye was the most minute motion—or, really, the absence of motion—of the only other person at the pool that morning, a girl sunbathing beside the lifeguard chair.
I’d only spotted her around our complex once or twice before. Here, she shielded herself with a sun hat—one of those mom-looking ones, worn by girls in the 1950s—propped over her face, instead of on her head. Black and white, with geometric hexagons, the hat looked like someone had taken a soccer ball, sliced it clean in half, and dropped it on an oversized Frisbee. From my vantage point on the dock, all I could see was the hat and her long, tanned legs, which I determinedly did not stare at even though they were what my grandma would’ve called a great pair of gams, because I was not in the business of objectifying people. Her bare feet bobbed in rhythm to music I couldn’t hear.
People say these things happen in the blink of an eye or a split second, and I guess clichés are what they are because they’re true. In no time at all, Mr. Francis wound down lap eight—backstroke; Mrs. O’Malley’s Chevy Lumina pulled up to the unloading spot, full of pool gear; and the girl’s foot, tapping to what seemed to be an up-tempo tune, abruptly stopped.
Something in the air felt wrong. Off. A gnawing sense of dread poured into me, like the way Mom dribbles icing on cinnamon rolls. Immediate and encompassing, creaking into places it didn’t belong. In this roughly three-second span, it dawned on me that all I heard was the wind. Not the churning swirl of water generated by Mr. Francis’s smooth, zippy breaststroke.
My focus snapped to the pool. Mr. Francis lay floating, when only seconds before he’d been swimming. Something that looked like strawberry juice—blood, of course it was blood—marred the water on the left side of his head.
I scrabbled to my feet, the red rescue tube clutched in my numb fingers. My heart pounded everywhere but in my chest: my ears, the sweaty backs of my knees, my stomach. I prepared to dive in, my brain screaming do it Nicholas go get Mr. Francis will he need CPR is this a heart attack no, no, there’s blood, I need to do CPR it’s thirty compressions per minute followed by a breath what’s the song what’s the song to keep in beat they sang it on The Office it’s the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Aliiiiive” …
But my feet wouldn’t move. I glanced at them, sunscreen glowing white on my white toes. They were glued to the hot, pebbly cement, fiery coals beneath my skin. My knees jerked forward in preparation for my dive, but … nothing. It was as if the soles of my feet had grown roots, shooting through the cement and burrowing deep in the ground below.
Again. I willed myself to move.
Once more.
Move Nick move move move
All of this, only fractions of seconds, another blink or wink of time. But long enough for the girl with the no-longer-tapping foot to tear the hat from her face and launch herself from the lounge chair into the pool in three athletic and graceful strides. Midrun, she locked eyes with me.
“Why are you just standing there? Come on!” she shouted. “Do something!”
As if her words released me from a harness, I lunged into the water with an ugly, painful slap. Punishment for not moving. Underwater, my brain cleared even further. I gritted my teeth together. Why hadn’t I moved?
When I surfaced, the girl was within feet of Mr. Francis, who still floated very much the wrong way. “Support his neck and flip him over!” I called, mentally scrambling through my first aid training.
The girl dove forward but stayed at the surface of the water, skimming along like a Bright Acres Condo Complex mermaid.
I propelled toward them with the fastest freestyle of my life, furious with myself—why hadn’t my body behaved?—and as scared as I’ve ever been.
If Mr. Francis died … I gagged. Couldn’t complete the sentence.
If he did, though, could I forgive myself for pausing? How much does a second count?
Lifeguard Certification 101: Every second counts.
The girl reached Mr. Francis, snared his neck in her palm, and turned him over. “He’s not breathing.”
My stomach boiled with panic. Mr. Francis. I was supposed to have him for my elective next year. I grunted. The rescue tube slowed my stroke.
Finally, finally, finally, I reached Mr. Francis and the girl, who’d gently steered him toward the edge of the pool. “Can you switch to his legs?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Francis,” I said. His jaw was slack, his cheeks drained of their ruddiness. “Mr. Francis, it’s me, Nick. Can you hear me?” Nothing. I exhaled. “Okay, let’s transfer. Give me his neck on three.”
Absurdly, when I counted to three, I heard Mom’s voice. She used to head up the lottery for the French immersion program at her school, which my parents wanted me to take until they realized my dyslexia meant academics were already a stressor in my native language.
Un, deux, trois.
On three, I slipped my hand beneath the girl’s palm, replacing her grip on the nape of my teacher’s neck. His hair was wet and bristly against my fingertips, and all I could think was how raw and wrong this felt to invade his space.
“It’s not his spine,” she said, moving to secure Mr. Francis’s legs.
“I don’t know that yet.” I coughed, water catching in my throat. “Okay. On three again, let’s get him up to the deck.”
Together, we heaved Mr. Francis out of the pool. I cradled his neck as I’d been taught in cert class, ensuring it stayed in alignment with his vertebrae. Mr. Francis’s skin was gray-toned and cool to the touch. Beneath his nose was a watercolor of pink.
“I’m calling 911.” The hat girl stood.
“Use the phone attached to the pool house wall.” I clamped my pointer and middle fingers together and pressed them to the artery that ran beneath Mr. Francis’s jawline. “It’s a landline, so it’s linked to this address.”
Fear sat on my vocal cords. I forgot how to breathe. My vision pixelated, righted itself. I stared at the droplets of water in his iron-colored hair, a tiny whimper escaping my mouth.
The girl returned. Sidled beside Mr. Francis. I moved opposite her, kneeling at his chest. “He doesn’t have a pulse.”
Her dark brown eyes scrutinized me. “He needs CPR.”
A kind of nervous energy, lush and feathered, filled me. I recognized it in the space of one blink.
Doubt.
I’d paid attention—real attention, this is serious attention—to this step in training. Another kid in the class had pretended to dance with the CPR mannequin, flaming a surge of irritation in me.
At the condo pool, lives were in my hands. Human lives. I’d bargained that if I paid attention to training, I’d never need to put it to use.
But now I did. And this crackling hum of dread was as recognizable to me as my own face, only magnified. It was as if I was asked to read aloud while naked and juggling. I cleared my throat. “I know.”
“Have you done CPR before?” the girl asked.
I shook my head. “Do you know it?”
Her mouth worked back and forth. “Yes.”
I tilted Mr. Francis’s head and fitted my mouth over his lips, blowing two quick, nonexpert breaths in, thankfully remembering not to blow too hard and burst his lungs. “Okay,” I muttered, my brain cycling through the steps. Stayin’ alive. “Chest compressions.”
“Wait.” The girl’s voice was louder than it had been before. Tighter. She held up a palm. “I’ll do those. You do the breaths.”
My relief was a wriggling chocolate lab puppy, so strong I could pick it up and cradle it. “You sure?”
She rose on her knees and placed her hands on his chest. In a steady rhythm, the girl hiked her body weight down. With each pump, Mr. Francis’s body jerked beneath her. “C’mon,” she muttered. Thirty compressions later, she sat back.
I leaned over and blew two rescue breaths in his mouth. “Why isn’t it working?”
“It—” she began, her hands already back on his chest, when Mr. Francis’s face tightened.
Instinctively, I turned his head. And there it was, beneath my thumbs: a pulse. The bass drum of blood, slow, but gaining momentum. A hummingbird in his neck. Water geysered from his mouth, splashing across my thighs and soaking the cement. His eyes opened, and he coughed. Once, twice. Another cough, another heave of water-vomit. Followed by breath. Steady breath.
Breathing.
“Mr. Francis! It’s Nick. Can you hear me?”
Cough. “That was…,” he said, wheezing. “Unpleasant.” He closed his eyes.
My limbs rattled with adrenaline after-shakes, my face burning with the weight of the last several minutes, the heaviness of what could have been. A dead teacher. The hesitation, the exertion, the pool’s almost moment—almost going from outdated but well-maintained condo pool to scene of a death I was trained to prevent.
I lifted my gaze to the girl. “We did it. You did it.”
Her eyes—such a rich brown, the color of topsoil, especially situated against the aqua of the pool—locked onto mine.
The girl tilted her head. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, even though we both knew what she meant: my pause. The moment I should have moved but didn’t. My shoulders slumped. A breeze gusted over all three of us, but only the girl and I shivered. “I don’t know. I also don’t know how to thank you.”
She glanced down at the puddle of water formerly inside Mr. Francis. Her face contorted. “I—I have to go.”
I cocked my head, hearing the wee-oo, wee-oo whoop of sirens. “Go? Where?”
“Home.”
“Wait.” I shook Mr. Francis, whose eyelids fluttered open and closed. His breath was still even. “Why?”
The girl was already back at her lounge chair. She shoved her feet into a pair of flip-flops and hitched her bag over her shoulder, jogged to the gate, and stumbled. “I just do,” she said, righting herself.
“But…” I looked at Mr. Francis, then at her. “What’s your name?”
Across the lot, an ambulance banged over the speed bumps. The girl put her hand on the metal post and turned to look our way. “December.”
“Wait. I’m Nick. Please—wait, okay?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, gripping the edge of her bag. She took off, her hair streaming behind her.
I stayed put, puzzled. When someone sneezes, you bless them. When your ear itches, you scratch it. When your kid sister trips, you help her up.
When someone performs a life-saving measure, they stick around.
Don’t they?
Copyright © 2023 by Joan F. Smith
