Chapter 2: The First Breath After The Clatter
The man in the black suit dropped his hands from my arms as if my skin had suddenly turned to hot iron, stumbling back half a step with a sharp intake of breath. I didn't wait for his permission or his apology; I whirled back around, dropping to my knees beside the elderly woman's chair before her head could loll backward. The heavy crystal chandelier above continued its steady, warm glow, indifferent to the silent panic gripping the surrounding tables where guests had begun to turn and stare in our direction. My fingers moved with practiced, desperate precision, tilting her chin upward and clearing the sudden blockage in her airway while her fingernails clawed weakly at my wrists.
"Call for an ambulance," I muttered loudly enough for the nearest waiters frozen in the aisles to hear, though nobody moved until the man in the black suit snapped his fingers toward the head steward with a guttural roar.
"Do it now!" he shouted, his voice cracking slightly under the weight of his terror.
I kept my eyes fixed on the woman's graying face, ignoring the gathering crowd, ignoring the murmur of whispers rippling across the polished floorboards. Every instinct honed from years of emergency room triage before I took this fallback banquet job screamed that we were operating on borrowed time. Her eyes rolled upward, whites showing, and for one agonizing second her pulse beneath my fingertips fluttered like a dying moth. I pressed harder against her sternum, delivering the sharp, measured thrusts required to force her lungs to react against the spasm.
The man hovered directly behind my shoulder, his large frame blocking out the warm ambient light, his breathing heavy and erratic. I could feel his gaze burning into the back of my neck, a mixture of helpless guilt and lingering suspicion that I was just another panicked employee making things worse.
"She's turning blue," he whispered, the hardness entirely drained from his voice, replaced by a raw, fracturing plea. "Just fix her. Please."
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"Shut up and let me work," I snapped back without looking up, my voice dropping an octave to maintain my own internal focus.
With one final, wrenching motion, the obstruction cleared. A violent, rattling gasp broke from the elderly woman's throat, spraying saliva and sudden life back into her lungs as her eyes snapped open with a terrified clarity. She lurched forward, coughing violently, her hands grasping wildly at my white shirt while her chest finally heaved with a deep, shuddering intake of oxygen. The sound of air rushing back into her body echoed loudly against the quieted acoustics of the banquet hall.
