Bitter Business

was fear.
    “Call nine-one-one,” I commanded Dagny, who by then was already on the line with the police dispatcher.
    I checked Cecilia’s wrist for a pulse and found none. Pushing aside her long hair, I searched frantically for the carotid artery. I found the spot but there was no pulse.
    I took hold of her shoulders. She was surprisingly heavy, and as I turned her over onto her back, her head lolled sickeningly to one side. I bent my face over hers but felt no whisper of breath. Her skin was pink and felt warm against my hand. But there was something about her eyes, open yet unfocused, that chilled me.
    Trying not to think, I checked her mouth for foreign objects. Then I pinched her nose closed with one hand, placed my lips over hers, and exhaled. I moved both my hands over her breastbone, wondering desperately if I was even close to the right spot, and began the series of compressions I’d learned in CPR.
    When they brought in the Red Cross to teach classes in cardiopulmonary resuscitation at Callahan Ross, everyone joked that it was a clear case of self-interest. The older partners just wanted to make sure that when they had their big heart attacks everyone would know exactly what to do. I swear that when I signed up for the course I never dreamed that I’d ever use what I’d learned.
    “One and two and three and four and five,” I counted out loud. “Go to the front of the building and wait for the paramedics,” I ordered Dagny. She hesitated. Then, nodding tensely, she disappeared out the door as I began the next set of compressions.
    I do not know how long it took. At some point, like a distance runner in “the zone,” the world just went away. I was aware of nothing, not the passing of time or the accumulating ranks of Superior Plating employees who began crowding into the doorway. Five compressions and a breath, five compressions and a breath, that was what my world had narrowed down to—my face pressed against the face of a woman I’d barely met. Now I felt the thin fabric of her blouse under my hands, felt the resilient softness of her skin, smelled the lush flowers of her perfume....
    I did not hear the paramedics come. At some point strong hands grasped my shoulders and pulled me away.
    A man’s voice spoke, but at first I didn’t register the meaning of his words. Gradually the adrenaline released me from its grip and I saw the room as if for the first time.
    On the floor in front of Dagny’s desk a half-dozen blue-uniformed emergency medical technicians swarmed around the still-motionless body of her secretary. One of the paramedics, a woman who wore her glossy hair in a French braid that made me suddenly think of horses, began asking me questions: What was her name? When did I find her? How was she lying? Did I move her? How long did it take me before I started CPR? Did I know whether she had any history of heart disease? Diabetes? Drag use?
    As I stammered out my replies another paramedic, a black man with a bald head, slid some sort of tube down the unconscious woman’s throat. Another EMT took a thick needle and started an IV drip.
    “Pupils dilated and unresponsive,” said one voice. “Blood pressure is zero.”
    “Defib?” demanded another.
    “We’re so close to the hospital, let’s just keep her ventilated and get her in,” replied the black paramedic, who seemed to be in charge.
    The woman with the French braid turned to me. “You can ride with her in the ambulance. Let’s see if somebody can find her purse.”
    I sputtered an incoherent protest, but no one paid any attention. They were already bent over the stretcher. I looked around the room desperately for Dagny, but she "as nowhere to be seen. As we were walking out the door someone shoved Cecilia’s battered black shoulder bag into my hands.
     
    * * *
     
    The siren wailed and throbbed above us as we navigated the narrow city streets. I wondered which hospital was nearest and decided it was probably Michael Reese. Cecilia, still unconscious, lay strapped to the stretcher while the black paramedic kept up his ministrations— shining a penlight into her eyes, taking her blood pressure, checking the IV line.
    I sat on a narrow bench, crouching thigh to thigh with a second paramedic, one I hadn’t noticed back in Dagny’s office. He was good-looking in a beefy sort of way, with a lantern jaw and what I knew instinctively must be a quick eye for the ladies.
    “Nice work in there,” he