Lauren didn’t want to move him in this condition, but knew she had to. She took off the hoodie she was wearing and removed her outer layer, a long-sleeved merino wool pullover, then arranged it beside him. Straining to do so, she rolled his body over onto the material’s luxe, sensing the limp lifelessness of him, careful that his wounds not meet with the damp sediment underneath.
As her breathing became rapid, Lauren went about assessing him as best she knew how. She tensed and gritted her teeth, clenched and unclenched her fists, in an all-out struggle with herself to will away panic, quell the shaking in her hands, and retrieve some modicum of calm. Neo had been unresponsive up to this point. His eyelids were closed, and he appeared either comatose or, worse yet, deceased, but Lauren wasn’t about to give up on him. She lifted each of his eyelids gently with an index finger, finding his pupils dilated at the outset, but as daylight crept in, they began to constrict, a sign of a working brain.
“Neo? Neo! Can you hear me?” she called, unable to detect her own voice beyond an undulating hum. The blast must have damaged her hearing somehow. Averse to further ponder any of her own injuries, she persisted without respite, moving in close to press her cheek to his nose and open lips. Neo’s breathing was indiscernible. Leaning back, she pried open his mouth and peered inside for obstructions and, after finding none, tried verifying his breathing once more. “No! Dammit, Neo! Don’t do this! Don’t you die! Not now, not like this!”
Lauren’s voice was indeed muffled to her, and all she could hear was an incessant ringing in her ears. The throbbing pain in her head became intolerable as she shouted for help, hoping that someone, somewhere was close enough to hear, even though she knew there was no time for delay. Lauren had never been certified in CPR but had attended classes before and recalled the steps. Neo wasn’t breathing, and under the circumstances, it was the only method offering a chance of getting him back.
Mindful of his burns, Lauren wrestled what remained of Neo’s uniform blouse from his body. She rolled it into a cylinder and placed it beneath his neck to elevate his head and open his airway. She then loosened his belt and straddled his legs, readying to perform chest compressions as best she knew how while recollecting the count: rate of one hundred per minute in sets of thirty, two inches deep; and the kisses of life, two rescue breaths after every set.
Lauren went to work, pushing hard and fast with her body weight, one hand atop the other into the center of Neo’s chest. Several compressions in, she cringed at feeling Neo’s rib cage give way beneath her palms. She tried her best to stay focused, calling into mind hearing before that in order to be effective, compressions had to go deep, and that occasionally meant fracturing one or more of a patient’s ribs. She didn’t wish to hurt Neo, but this was all Lauren could do to save his life, and after he’d acted so selflessly to save hers, she was going to stop at nothing to get him breathing again.
When Lauren’s compression count hit thirty, she repositioned in a location suitable to deliver rescue breaths. A hand to his forehead and the other gripping his chin, she opened his mouth and placed her lips to his, exhaling into his lungs as Neo’s chest rose and swelled in response. She pulled away to inhale another breath and repeated the motion, then resumed her former spot and rebegan compressions.
Lauren completed three full rounds of CPR before pausing to look the young man over for signs of life. She got up close and personal with him, placing her cheek centimeters away from Neo’s mouth and nose, then tried again ten or so seconds after, using the most sensitive section of skin on her neck, just below her ear.
Overwrought and anxious, Lauren recoiled backward at feeling a wisp of air escape his lips. “Neo! Thank God! Wake up! It’s Lauren! Come back to me, buddy.” She nudged his cheeks lightly, reached for his hand, pulled it close, and squeezed it with her own. “Stick with me, okay? Hold on to my voice.”
Lauren studied the landscape; they couldn’t stay in this ravine any longer. Situated within Trout Run’s floodplain, they were enclosed and concealed by its silty valley walls, six to ten feet below the adjacent ground level. No one could see them here, and it was doubtful anyone even knew where they were. If searching for them, Lauren couldn’t hear their calls in her current state. She had to find a way out of here and get Neo the help he needed, but she wasn’t about to leave him behind.
Lauren shifted behind him and placed both arms beneath his. She then lifted with everything she had, barely able to hoist the young man’s body upward along with hers. Using a fierce jerking motion, she ducked under an armpit and boosted Neo’s body upward and into her arms. Exerting herself now under his full weight, she took wobbly steps to the edge of the bank, then began the arduous climb to the top, feeling her boots battle for traction on the slick, moss-covered shale and water-worn stones.
Battling muscle fatigue and waning energy for the duration of the ascent, Lauren crested the ravine, with Neo barely hanging from her arms. She slogged a mere twenty steps before collapsing to her knees, using what remaining energy she held in reserve to keep Neo from crashing to the ground under gravity’s full influence. She panted desperately for air while aligning him straight and arranging his arms alongside him; then she wilted, falling backward to her elbows, yielding to exhaustion.
Lauren peered
