Calypso's Mast

Chapter 30 - The Gates of Heaven

Banning bent over Pitcher and using his fingers, cleaned the remains of the vomit from her mouth then he rolled her over, onto her back. He checked to see if she was breathing. She wasn't.

He felt for the bottom of her ribcage and the top of her sternum and put the heel of his palm on the lower half of the sternum and began cardiac compressions.

"One, two, three, four...." He began counting. His Police first-aid training kicked in and he went through the mental checklist. Her airway was clear. He'd confirmed she wasn't breathing and she had no carotid pulse. What was next? One hundred compressions per minute.

" ... eleven, twelve, thirteen..." this was going to be tiring. Think. He had to get her heart started again. His mind wandered back to his training days and his first aid instructor. There was something he said.

"Class, listen up," he said as he paced up and down in front of them. "You will, in the course of your duty, be required to perform CPR on somebody. Rest assured. But you will be doing CPR until the cows come home and their heart won't start unless the ambulance comes along or you have one of these."

He held up a box.

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is a defibrillator. It administers an electric shock which causes the heart to convulse and start beating on its own. You all need to keep one of these in your vehicle. Without it, you will not be able to restart their heart."

He had no vehicle and he had no defibrillator. There was no hospital, no ambulance. It was just him and she was dying. He kept pumping.

"...twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five..."

What to do? He had to find a way to restart her heart. Defibrillators use electricity. He had nothing like that. They had the bare minimum. He needed a battery. Then he thought, what about a torch? He had a torch in his bag. The batteries didn't have enough power to shock a person. That was the only electricity that he had. It was looking hopeless. His eyes became watery and he had trouble seeing.

"... forty-five, forty-six, forty seven... Oh! Come on , Sonya. I need a miracle... fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three..."

As he pumped he felt more and more helpless and hopeless. The first minute passed and then the second, followed by the third. As each minute passed, he felt the strength draining from his body. He had nothing to get her going.

He steeled himself. This girl that he cared about would get the best from him. He would pump until complete exhaustion if he had to. He gritted his teeth and kept going.

The minutes started to run into each other. Each time he reached the one hundred mark, he would start over again. She still had colour in her skin so he knew that what he was doing was effective. Every three sets, he would stop for a few seconds and check for a pulse, hoping against hope that there would be one. Each time he was disappointed.

It grew dark and he kept going. His shoulders and back ached but he pushed that aside. His mind started to become numb and the muscles in his arms started to tremble.

"Come on, Sonya. Come on. Start for me. You have to start for me. I can't do this much longer."

He couldn't see through the tears but he kept pumping.

"We were just starting to get somewhere – you and me. I could see myself spending the rest of my life with you. And now you're going to go without me... fifteen, sixteen, seventeen..." His breathing was laboured and he could see that the compressions were becoming less effective because of the fatigue."

"Damnit, Sonya," he cried in frustration. "Start, will you? Start."

For the umpteenth time, he reached the one hundred mark and this time he couldn't start again. His arms refused to cooperate. He leaned back with his head in his hands, tears streaming down his face, watching the life slowly ebb from her in the flickering light from the fire. He looked up.