Damsel[ed]: Some Rescue Required (#2 of the Damsel[ed] series)

Chapter Thirty-Four: Some Rescue Required

Jaylin.

Let me set the record straight before some wild ideas kick around in your heads about medical procedures and death. 

Administering CPR, even the mouth-to-mouth parts, is about as romantic as cutting open a cat to give it meatball surgery. You sling the person on the ground, hum 'Stayin Alive' in the back of your head to time the compressions right (100-120 a minute), plop one hand over the other and press two inches deep in the middle of the chest, about deep enough that if you snap a rib or two, you're doing it right.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you bring someone back from the dead.

The girl kneels beside me. "Should I call 911?"

"No." I bring my fingers to the side of Heaven's neck. It's a little cold. Pulseless. I start up another cycle of compressions. "Stayin' alive, stayin' alive, ah ah ah..." I even start to sing it under my breath, my head a little fuzzy and my brow stinging with sweat.

"Are you going to give rescue breaths?"

"No!" Another round. My arms ache. Five cycles of compressions and I'm supposed to shock Heaven. Except I don't have an AED. Or electricity powers. I mean, sometimes I can conduct electricity, if I have the right chemicals, that is. A battery might do the trick. But sometimes still the whole process backfires and I destroy the thing, and besides, there isn't enough time for me to go back to the van and take the battery. And I don't trust the little superhero enough to get it for me, either. The thing might blow, and then I'll be responsible for her death, and that's not something I need added to my record. I don't even like her enough to try my hand at killing her.

"You should probably give her rescue breaths."

"I won't kiss her." My arms really cramp up now, throbbing like all the muscles there bunched up and folded in on themselves. I bite the inside of my cheek, focusing on her blank face, the dust and blood collected on her lashes.

"She's dead. She won't mind." The girl chews her cookie, loud crunches that sound in my ear and make me shudder. "You know, I have a theory that Prince What's-His-Face gave Snow White CPR, and, like, everyone just thought it was a kiss."

I shoot the girl a look. She grins, her mask all a glitter despite the darkness creeping into the sky. 

We're in the scraggly parts of the forest now, on our knees in a little clearing of roots and dust clumps, surrounded on all sides by trees so tall they stretch up and into eternity. Winds blow by, goosebumps rippling on my exposed skin, blood dribbling. My head spins, my thoughts scattered, spun this way and that like they've been blown about. Heaven isn't breathing. My knee hurts. I'm hungry. Is there a Howler's nearby? Oh, man, that car crash sucked.

I can give you the sports highlights of the crash, the cliff-notes, though I'm seeing double and my memories are all jumbled up like someone hit 'scramble' on my brain. Where the edges blur, I can hear myself yelling at the superhero, and then the rest plays out like a scene from a movie I saw years ago and has faded into shaky, distant images.

Something like a horse or a cow clopped into the road and Heaven swerved so hard the tires lost traction and the car fishtailed. When she pumped the brakes she drove us into a ditch. Which wasn't a terrible move on her part, steering the van into a ditch, I mean. The roads here are curvy and veer sharply, lined with thick groves of sycamore trees. I was going forty-five, which doesn't sound so bad until you think of that in the context of slamming into a solid tree trunk head-on.

But, yeah, the van did a stop, drop, and roll when it hit the ditch. The airbags exploded out and to put that in perspective, that's like a Hefty bag filled with bricks popping out of the steering wheel.