Once they’d gone around the class Jan said that if she were a vegetable she’d be an avocado because she took a while to soften up (‘An avocado is a fruit,’ sighed the fruit expert behind Clementine), and she was there today because ‘first aid was her passion’, which made Clementine feel teary. How wonderful it was that there were people in the world like Jan with a ‘passion’ for helping strangers.
Then they got down to business, and Clementine and Sam both diligently took notes as Jan took them through the ‘basic life support’ procedure, interspersed with stories from Jan’s own first aid experience, like the time she’d run a course and found herself in the middle of a real-life scenario when one of the participants collapsed in class. ‘Did you use it as a demonstration?’ asked someone. ‘No, I had to clear the room,’ said Jan. ‘People started dropping like flies. Down they went like dominoes: bang, bang, bang.’ She said this with relish, to indicate the weakness of the general population. ‘That’s why you’ve got to give everyone a job – go and call the ambulance, get me some ice – or send them away, because otherwise people go into shock. It’s a traumatic event. You can suffer from post-traumatic stress. We’ll talk about that later.’
Clementine glanced over at Sam to see if he was remembering their own ‘traumatic event’ but his face was impassive. He wrote something down in his notepad.
Jan got Dale the muscly personal trainer to lie on the floor and then picked two attractive young girls (carrot and cauliflower) to have a go at putting Dale into the recovery position, which they did, and because they were three attractive young people it was kind of enjoyable to watch, and when they rolled Dale over you could see his underwear riding up under his shorts and Jan said, ‘Nice to see you’re wearing Calvin Klein today.’
It was all good fun. It was interesting and informative, and Sam asked intelligent questions and made the occasional well-timed joke. That’s why it was so unexpected when it happened.
Clementine had to breathe hard when Jan demonstrated CPR on a bright blue plastic dummy of a head and torso. The rocking motion of Jan’s hands, pushing so forcefully and rapidly, brought it all back: the hard pavers beneath her knees, Ruby’s waxen cheeks and blue lips, the fairy lights winking in her peripheral vision. But she breathed through it, and when she looked at Sam he seemed fine.
Then Jan asked everyone to get into pairs and she gave each pair one blue dummy and two disposable resuscitation face shields. (Jan always had a spare disposable face shield on her key ring: that’s how prepared she was to offer her services.) They had to find a free spot on the floor where they could lay the dummy out flat.
Jan wandered around the room checking on everyone’s progress.
‘Do you want to go first?’ said Clementine to Sam. They were both on their knees on either side of the dummy.
‘Sure,’ said Sam, and he seemed fine as he methodically worked his way through the acronym Jan had just taught them: ‘DRS ABCD’, standing for Danger, Response, Send for help, Airway, Breathing, CPR and Defibrillator.
He cleared the airway, he looked, listened and felt for breathing, he commenced CPR, his locked hands pressing rhythmically on the dummy’s chest, and as he did, his eyes met Clementine’s and she saw a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face.
‘Sam? Are you all right?’ said Clementine.
He shook his head, a tiny ‘no’, but he didn’t stop doing CPR compressions. His face was dead white. His eyes were bloodshot.
She didn’t know what to do. ‘Are you … having chest pains?’ At least they were in the right place. Jan seemed just as competent as any doctor or paramedic, and certainly more passionate.