Rolling Thunder

3

We’re almost to the stranded train.

A forest of wooden trestles and trusses rises around us: a maze of slashing horizontal, vertical, and diagonal pine lines.

“Ceepak!” It’s Skippy. “Help!”

“Who’s in cardiac arrest?” Ceepak asks as he crests the hill. I’m twenty paces behind him.

“My wife!” shouts Mr. O’Malley from the first car. “Help her!”

He struggles to right Mrs. O’Malley, who has slumped forward. Her long hair is dangling over the front panel of the coaster, blocking out half the Rolling Thunder lightning-bolt logo. Mrs. O’Malley’s plump body is locked in place by the roller coaster safety bar.

Behind Mr. O’Malley, I see Skippy and his older brother, Kevin. In the second car, sister Mary and Sean-the youngest son. The fourth O’Malley boy, Peter, isn’t in any of the cars. Skippy told me once that Peter is gay. His father and mother don’t approve. Hell, they don’t even invite him to roller coaster openings.

Behind Sean and Mary, I see my D.J. buddy Cliff Skeete, who sticks out like a sore thumb because, one, he’s wearing big honking headphones and holding a microphone, and two, he’s the only black dude on this ride. Next to Cliff is our mayor, Hugh Sinclair. Behind them: all sorts of big shots I didn’t go to high school with.

“Quick!” Mr. O’Malley cries. “Help her. Do something!”

“I need to access her chest!” says Ceepak, hopping off the walkboard, landing on the track.

“Do it!” says Mr. O’Malley.

Ceepak braces his feet on the tie beam in front of the stalled coaster car.

“Help me lean her back,” he says to Mr. O’Malley.

Mr. O’Malley, who is a big man with a ruddy face, grabs hold of his wife’s shoulders and, with Ceepak’s help, heaves her up into a seated position.

Now Ceepak props the mustard-yellow AED box in her lap. Lifts a wrist to check her pulse.

“She’s not breathing!” screams Mr. O’Malley.

“No pulse,” adds Ceepak, matter-of-factly. He tears open her blouse and slaps the two adhesive pads where they’re supposed to go: negative pad on the right upper chest; positive electrode on the left, just below the pectoral muscle.

The AED will automatically determine Mrs. O’Malley’s heart rhythm, and if she’s in ventricular fibrillation-which means that even though there isn’t a pulse, the heart is still receiving signals from the brain but they’re so chaotic the muscle can’t figure out how to bang out a steady beat-it’ll shock the heart in an attempt to restore its rhythm to normal.

You work with Ceepak, you learn this stuff.

He switches on the machine.

“Clear!” he shouts.

Mr. O’Malley lets go of his wife’s shoulders.

Ceepak pushes the “Analyze” button.

Waits.

If she’s in v-fib, it’ll tell him to shock her.

I glance over his shoulder, read the LED display.

No Shock.

That means Mrs. O’Malley not only has no pulse, she is not in a “shockable” v-fib rhythm.

“Initiating CPR,” says Ceepak.

“You should step out of the car, Mr. O’Malley,” I say, extending my hand. “We need to put your wife in a supine position.”

He climbs out.

Ceepak finds the roller coaster’s safety bar release and slams it open with his foot. All the bars in all the cars pop up. Now he can maneuver Mrs. O’Malley across the two seats so he can more easily administer CPR.

“Time me, Danny!”

“On it.”

After one minute of CPR, he’ll use the AED to reanalyze Mrs. O’Malley’s cardiac status.

While he thumps on her chest, I glance at my watch and wonder why nobody in the roller coaster car started doing CPR while they waited for us to charge up the hill. Skippy should have known how to do it. We learned it when we were part-time cops. Well, we were supposed to. Maybe Skippy thought he could skate by without doing his homework.

“One minute!” I shout.

Ceepak goes to the AED machine. “No shock indicated. Time me!”

He pumps his fists on Mrs. O’Malley’s chest again. She’s a large woman. Very fleshy.

It’s so eerily quiet up here on the wooden train track. Just the wet, flabby sound of Ceepak’s fists pumping down on Mrs. O’Malley’s chest. Nobody’s talking. Hell, they’re barely breathing. There’s nothing up here but the wind whistling through the squared-off beams. They surround us like crosses on Calvary.

And then Cliff Skeete starts yammering into his microphone.

“This is the Skeeter with a live WAVY news update. Officers John Ceepak and Danny Boyle, two of Sea Haven’s finest, are currently on the scene administering CPR to Mrs. O’Malley.”

“Danny?” This from Ceepak who doesn’t even look up from his chest compressions.

“Cliff?” I slice my hand across my neck, give my buddy the cut sign.

“And now back to more sizzling sounds of the Jersey shore. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. ‘I Don’t Want To Go Home.’”

I do. But I’m busy staring at my wrist, timing Ceepak’s CPR. “One minute!”

Ceepak goes back to the yellow box. “Reanalyzing cardiac status.”

He doesn’t bother to report what the LED on the AED unit says.

He simply swings back to Mrs. O’Malley’s chest, starts thumping it again. Off in the distance, I can hear the approaching whoop-whoop of a siren. The rescue squad ambulance. The whoop-whoop is shattered by the blast of an air horn. The fire department.

All the first responders are racing to the scene.

But it’s too late.

Mrs. O’Malley’s brain isn’t sending signals of any kind to her heart any more. It isn’t beating.

We ran up here as fast as we could.

But it took us too long to reach her.

Ceepak keeps pounding on Mrs. O’Malley’s chest.

“Dammit,” he mutters.

He has to keep administering CPR until the paramedics or a doctor shows up. Those are the rules.

But I can tell we’re not winning any life-saving merit badges today.