Chapter 2: Jessie

After seeing her best friend, Tom, fall into respiratory failure, she must act quick in order to save his life.

Chapter 2: Jessie

My heart sank as his eyes closed.  His beet red, sweaty face had turned into a pale and bluish tinted one.  “Tom?!” I yell as I vigorously rub his chest in hopes I’d get any sort of response from it.  His body just moved and shifted with every rub I did.  I’ve got to act fast, the body can’t operate that long without oxygen being circulated through it.

“Hey, is everything okay?” This middle aged woman walked up to us in somewhat of an alarmed tone and look on her face.  Once she saw the unconscious young man that laid next to me, her face went from a little bit alarmed to completely beside herself.  “Oh my god, what happened?!”  She put her hands over her mouth which kind of muffled the scared outcry.

“No, his respiratory muscles aren’t working anymore,” I say in a very jittery voice.  “He’s not breathing right now.”  I try and stay as calm as I can as I start mouth to mouth.  There’s minimal resistance, kind of feels like blowing up a balloon, but it doesn’t stay inflated.  With every breath I blow in, it quickly blows back out.  I’ve never seen anything like this from him, this is terrifying.  Seeing your best friend lying next to you, with the huge possibility that their heart could just give out on you…. And you can lose them…. We’ve been running before, and the only thing that happened was he needed to sit for awhile until he could get up and get to the car so we could drive home.

This woman bends down on his left side, and starts sobbing as she whispers The Lords Prayer while reaching for his hand to hold.  I knew that stuff like this is possible with this disease, but it never really hit me, until now, that it was a very serious and life threatening thing.  You know it is, but it doesn’t quite hit you until your friend is going through it in front of you.  It’s hit me like a ton of bricks into my torso, making me both hyperventilate and become extremely nauseated out of fear.    I can thankfully control my breathing through panic attacks.  I have to push all those feels aside.  I need to focus on getting the air in and out.  I can’t think about what could happen, what I’m feeling, what this lady’s doing across from me, I can’t think about anything else

It was only a couple minutes after I had hung up with 911 that I heard the sirens coming for us, and an overwhelming sense of relief came with it knowing that he can get professional help when I can only give a lungful of carbon dioxide.  “Hey buddy, you hear that?  You’re okay, they’re almost here for you,” I say as I blow in more air.  “You’re going to be okay, you hear me in there?”  His body went kind of stiff, I can’t describe the feeling.  The skin was stiff, the body wasn’t.

I quickly put my ear to his chest and listen very carefully… He doesn’t have a heart beat anymore!  He hit cardiac arrest, no no no no…. “Tom?!  You are not quitting on me!”  I put my hand on his chest and start pumping.

“Oh my god, did his heart stop??” She said sobbing even harder.

“I’m not hearing anything in there.  D****t Tom, come back to me buddy,” I cry out in anger and frustration.  This is my best friend, and my brother.  We’ve been through everything together.  We went through most of our schooling together, and when life got really hard, it only made our bond stronger.  Now our bond is unbreakable.  I keep thinking that as I give two deep breaths.  “Don’t you dare quit on me, you’re stronger than that!” I yell at him while I’m pushing into his chest.  The longer he doesn’t breathe, the longer his heart is beat-less, the more hope I lose that I’ll get my brother back.

At this point a biker passes by us and stops ten feet past the two mile marker.  “Holy s**t, what happened to him?!” He said extremely shocked.  He came closer to us and saw that I was aggressively going at cpr.  “Oh no… is he?” He said getting his water bottle off of his bike, and popping off the lid to the green and orange gatorade bottle.

“Yes,” I say almost completely out of breath.  He takes the bottle and pours a tad bit into his hand.  He then proceeds to pour a little of it out of his hand and onto Toms forehead.  I’m assuming that he’s doing it to cool him off so he wouldn’t be so hot later once he came back, if he was going to come back.

The sirens are gradually getting louder and louder which is giving me more and more motivation to keep going.  I can feel myself starting to get light headed, I’m still not used to this much physical effort and my lungs definitely aren’t up to par.  “D****t Tom!”  I start sobbing, my face just a liquid combination of sweat and tears.  “Please come back to me,” I say as I take in another deep breath and blow into his lungs.  His face had turned into a pale-ish gray color, the blue around the lips complimenting the color.

The sirens stop which means that they’re extremely close to us, and I hear an engine motor that’s so loud it’s almost deafening.  The firetruck came first, and as soon as they pulled up, I heard another siren starting up.  That must be the ambulance itself that’s on the way.  I could only stare at his lifeless body, I touched his cheek and it felt slightly cold since his blood isn’t really pumping anymore and he’s losing heat from that.  He’s been gone for three minutes by now….  He’s a tough guy, he won’t go down without a fight, I just have to keep remembering that.

I see five guys, obviously hot and muscular like majority of firefighters, running after us, thankfully we were very close to the 2 mile marker so we were easy to find.  One is carrying a yellow and tool box looking thing in their right hand.  Another was carrying a black looking tool box.  I knew they yellow was an artificial defibrillator and the black looking tool box had the basic emt equipment like things that start IVs, emergency medication, and things that help with breathing.

The man that was on the bike walks away to give the firefighters some space to work on him.  The woman backs up as well, standing by the man.  I was pushed away by the firefighters that had come to his aid.  Both of the man and the woman joined hands and started praying for him.  “Would you like to pray with us?” The young man said extending his left hand out towards me.

“I don’t believe in the existence of God,” I replied putting my hands crisscrossed on my chest.  Throughout my life, and all I’ve been through, God isn’t real.  The Bible contradicts itself, and the Christians are hypocrites.  I believe in the Pagan religion.  Both the man and the woman had a look of distress on their face hearing that news.  Wanting to argue, they restrained themselves knowing that arguing won’t help the situation at all.  Instead they closed their eyes and continued praying out loud.

I look down at Tom, and away from the two praying people.  “Tom, can you hear me buddy?”  One firefighter said checking his eyes for reflexes and to see his pupils reactions.  Another started to take scissors and cut off his shirt to expose his chest.  Another is taking the defibrillator, turning it on, and placing white patches on his chest and stomach.  One on the right side of his, the other on the left side of his stomach.  The machine gets turned on, and there’s a digital wheel that’s spinning, which I’m assuming is the machine getting turned on.  “Yeah, no reflexes, and the pupils are set and dilated.  What’s the reading on his heart?”

Within seconds, the machine is booted up and says in a pre-programmed female voice, “no pulse detected, shock advised”.  Hearing the machine verify that he is legitimately dead makes my stomach turn, it feels like a brick got dropped in my stomach and is weighing my stomach as well.

“...though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me…” I hear the two whisper underneath the machine saying, “clear, clear, clear” followed by his body getting shocked and going stiff for a second.  I’m a little more hopeful now that he’s getting legitimate electrical impulses that will stimulate his heart way better than me pumping his chest.  I see one of the five firefighters reaching into the black tool box and pulling out a face mask that had a blue sphere attached to it.  He put it on Tom’s face and started squeezing the blue sphere, with Tom’s chest rising with every squeeze, and quickly deflating when the man would relax his grip.

“No pulse detected, shock advised,” hearing it a second time made me fear even more that he wasn’t coming back to me.  The firefighter by the defibrillator pushed a red button by the monitor which I’m assuming is the “shock button” and letting the machine know to go ahead and give him another shock of electricity into his heart.  I hear the two bystanders starting to sob while saying the same prayer over and over again.

I look away from Tom and behind me to notice two more bystanders watching.  One in tears and the other looking completely shocked to see a now dead man on the pathway.  As much as I want to yell at them to go away because Tom wouldn’t want people staring at him while he’s in a vulnerable state such as this.  He’s been through a lot in his life medically, the last thing he wants is to be the center of attention with a group of people.

The noise soon fades away, all of it.  I’m soon left with just an image of one man pumping air into my friend, and a machine attempting to bring him back to life.  The events unfolding before my eyes seemed to slow down, almost in a dramatic way.  Seeing my friend jolt every 20 seconds it seems like.  Whether it is or not, I don’t know, just no sense of time….

I look at my watch, he’s been lying there lifeless for a little over 15 minutes by now.  He’s probably not coming back… I can’t think, I’m just left with this overwhelming sadness as I see his body getting shocked again and again.  The longer his heart is stopped, the less likely it is that his heart will start up again and hold some sort of a rhythm.  I can’t even cry, but the now ten people surrounding all of us can.  Three of them came together and were about 15 feet away from us.  Five of the newer crowd had joined in with the original two in prayer, all joining hands.  “Clear, clear, clear,” the machine said followed by another shock admitted into his body.

In the corner of my eye, I see a police battalion car pull up next to the fire truck and ambulance.  “Pulse detected, shock not advised,” the machine cried out.  Oh my god, he’s back.  There’s a flood of relief and happiness that starts pouring out of me, knocking me on my knees.  The seven of those in prayer started praising the Lord calling this a miracle.  Two EMTs rush back to the ambulance and to get a stretcher, another two start to put a tube down his throat to help his breathing out, and one was starting an IV in his right arm.  It’s hard to see that many people working all at once on my friend, it’s extremely frightening.  After the tube had been inserted, one of the two EMTs that helped insert it put a stethoscope on his chest checking to make sure they had gotten the tube into his lungs and not his stomach.  A very easy and potentially deadly mistake to make.  His color started to turn back to a pale white with the still blue tinted lips.  He’ll be okay, he’s got this from here.  He’s a real fighter, been to hell and back, and has come out stronger every single time.

Within 20 seconds, they had an IV started and hooked up clear fluids to it to help get him hydrated again.  The stretcher had made it to Tom and they didn’t waste any time getting him on it.  They rushed him towards the ambulance, through a small entrance through the trees and by a small parking lot.  I run with the stretcher and hop in the back after they load him in there and get the brakes on it set on the cot.  I reach into his pocket to get his phone which has his medical information on it.  I hand it to the medic.  As I look over at Tom, he still looks lifeless, but he’s got better color to him.  The blue from his lips have mostly disappeared, and he’s starting to turn back to a somewhat normal color.  I take a deep breath, and sit back in the cushioned chair that is attached to the wall.  I listen to the siren that’s blasting on the outside of the ambulance and await the arrival of the emergency room.

Author's Note

Majority of the medical events that take place are accurate and researched. This is from Jessie's point of view, positive critiques welcomed