*CRACK.
The cartilage of the third rib yielded with that familiar, sickening pop that signals effective depth.
*One-and-two-and-three-and-four…*
One hundred compressions a minute.
The gravel dug through the denim of my trousers into my kneecaps.
Commuter traffic blasted past us at seventy miles per hour, the vacuum of the semi-trucks tugging at my shirt, the smell of burnt rubber and raw mountain dust choking my lungs.
*Thirty compressions.
Two breaths.
*
I pinched her nose, sealed her mouth with mine, and forced two full ventilations into her chest.
Her chest rose—elastic, resistant, fighting the pulmonary edema bubbling in her bronchial tree.
*Fifteen-and-sixteen-and-seventeen…*
On compression forty-eight, a black-and-gold **Colorado State Patrol** cruiser had arrived, its red-and-blue strobes cutting through the morning shadows.
The trooper—a young sergeant whose name tag read *Vance*—had leaped the ditch with an automated external defibrillator in one hand and an oxygen bag in the other.
