Overall, Janice felt that working at Spearfish Lake Outfitters was at least a little more interesting than Cody’s job at the police station. Part of it came from the fact that she was actually doing something; she was rarely without some chore or other, and while the store wasn’t exceptionally busy there was usually someone to talk to. Sometimes those people were pretty interesting.

Mornings were often slow around the place, and sometimes Candice left her in charge of the store while she ran an errand or two. There were always odds and ends that Candice needed to do, and with Janice was around she was able to do them without having to close the store.

Janice felt a little tired and achy on this Wednesday morning. As was usually the case, she and Cody had headed over to the dojo in the back of Spearfish Lake Appliance and Furniture yesterday evening. Back when they started doing that right after break, she hadn’t been in very good shape. A lot of what went on just consisted of sitting around, watching and listening, with Gil or Randy or Blake sometimes showing her some of the basics that wouldn’t stress her injuries. But as she’d healed, they’d had her doing more and more. She still wasn’t real good at what they were teaching her and would never be as good in a thousand years as some of the guys. But it was good to know that she had some skills that might make things go better if something bad were to happen. The workout the night before had been tougher than normal, and she was paying the price for it this morning.

Not surprisingly, Cody was more advanced than she was; she was still a little tentative about some of the things the guys had been teaching her. Cody wasn’t a natural at it, but he’d picked up all the basic police moves pretty well, and the guys were adding on some other stuff that could be useful. It wasn’t just karate or judo or any particular form or school – it was how to handle yourself in a fight and make the other guy wish he hadn’t started it. Some of the stuff that the guys had shown Cody and her was pretty scary. She hoped she’d never be in a situation where it had to be used.

But that wasn’t what she was thinking about this morning. Back on Monday afternoon when Cody had first told her about the conversation with Susan McMahon about Southern Michigan University, she’d picked up that Cody seemed pretty interested in it, and of course that made her interested, as well. They’d spent the afternoon looking over the school’s web site, and both of them had been impressed. The school seemed to be in a relatively small town – bigger than Spearfish Lake, of course, but there was nothing wrong with that – and it seemed like it had everything Cody was looking for. As far as Janice was concerned, the nursing program was small but seemed to offer what she wanted, too.

In her months of thinking about being a nurse, one of the things that had come up was that nurses never seemed to have much trouble finding a job, and a good paying one at that. That seemed to mean that she wouldn’t be tied to one location; if Cody needed to move somewhere for a different job, then it would be no problem for her to go with him. The more she’d thought about it, the more she thought that she would probably like being a nurse, and she suspected she might be pretty good at it. What’s more, it seemed to her that Cody liked the idea of her doing it, although he hadn’t exactly come right out and said it. That got a little irritating at times, although she suspected he was going along with what Carole Hunt had told him, which was to not push her and let her make her own decisions.

As far as she could tell, Cody was interested in going to Southern Michigan, and it was tempting to hop in the truck and drive down there to check the place out, even though it was a drive of several hundred miles. But Candice had pointed out that it might be hard to find out for sure it was what they wanted with school not in session, and that seemed like good advice to both of them. So that meant that they would have to wait for fall to go down for a look.

The main thing Janice was worried about was whether she would be able to get in at all. She was pretty sure that Cody could go to college where he wanted, within reason, but she might not be able to. Her grades in high school hadn’t exactly been stellar in her freshman and sophomore years, and were even worse the first part of her junior year. But with Cody’s constant pressure and coaching she’d pulled them up a lot last year and had just missed all A’s in the final marking period, so she felt pretty good about that.

All in all, going to Southern Michigan seemed like a very good prospect if everything worked out, but it would be a while before she knew whether it would.

Janice knew she was dithering, wasting time when she should be doing something. It was a very nice day outside, and there were some outdoor things that needed to be done.

There was a fair amount of activity on the beach side of the store, which was the first building between the street and the lake at the south end of the beach. There was a porch on the back of the building, and people were forever tracking sand onto it. Sometimes it needed to be swept several times a day. Janice headed for the back door of the shop, grabbing a broom along the way and leaving the door open so she could hear in case someone should come in the front or call on the phone.

It was nice out there, about as nice as a summer day could be. Before she started in with the broom, Janice took a look around the beach, which wasn’t very busy, not surprising for late on a Wednesday morning; it was a lot busier on the weekends. A short distance up the beach there was a group of women talking with each other, and on the edge of the water there was a small boy, perhaps three years old, playing in the sand with a bucket. There were some kids playing out in the water a ways, waist deep on the bigger kids. She knew they wouldn’t be there long, since the lake was still pretty cold. There were no lifeguards, of course; there were never any there, even on the busiest weekends, but there were “No Lifeguard – Swim At Your Own Risk” signs all over the place.

She and Cody occasionally messed around out by the lake up on the other end of the beach, close to the house. While they’d been wading, the thought of getting all the way into the water wearing what even she thought was a pretty tiny bikini was bracing, to say the least. Janice was like most Spearfish Lake kids in that she didn’t swim, since there was no indoor pool and the lake never warmed up much. Back when Cody was younger and living in Decatur he’d had some pool classes, so he could swim a little, even though he said he hadn’t done it much since he’d moved to Spearfish Lake. But he’d promised to give her some beginner’s lessons in how to dog paddle, maybe later in the summer when the water was warmer.

It was still going to be another couple hours before she was off for the day, after Candice had come back and she and John had gone to lunch. After she went home, Janice thought, it’d be fun to head down to the beach with Cody and lie out in the sun a bit. She’d built up a pretty good tan over the course of the last few weeks, better than she’d had anytime in her life before. Besides, it was fun to be out there with Cody with the cloth of her bikini all scrunched together just to bare a little more skin and tweak him a little. She gave herself an inward smile; she knew that wearing the bikini like that was turning him on big time! Sooner or later he might get the message . . .

Something didn’t feel right. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but somehow, deep in her gut, she knew there was trouble around. She swept a few more strokes with the broom as the feeling built in her, until finally she had to stop and look around.

At first glance, nothing seemed out of place. The women were still gabbing with each other, spread out on their blankets up the beach a bit; the kids were still out playing waist deep in the water, tossing a ball around, yelling, splashing and screaming. But where the little boy had been a couple minutes before, the sand bucket lay on its side at the water’s edge all alone.

With her heart sinking fast, Janice looked out into the water toward where the kids were playing. What had happened to the little boy? Then, she saw a flash of skin in the small waves partway out to the playing kids, and instantly knew what had happened. The boy had gotten bored playing in the sand by himself and wanted to play with the other kids . . .

The broom went flying as Janice leaped off porch, giving a yell of “Hey!” toward the women, who probably weren’t paying attention except to each other. It wouldn’t matter; she was already closer to the boy than the women were anyway. She raced across the soft sand as quickly as she could, then ran along the edge of the water where the damp sand gave better footing until she was about opposite where the boy was floating, then turned and headed into the water toward him.

The boy actually wasn’t very far out – it was high on her thighs, with the waves touching her shorts as she splashed toward where she’d last seen the boy. He was still floating but barely so; maybe she would be in time. The water was deep enough that it was slowing her down by the time she reached him. She grabbed the kid – he was surprisingly light – and scooped him out of the water.

Right now, all the time and practice spent with the CPR training doll in the First Responder Class she’d taken with Cody back in the late winter seemed to come back to her as if Mr. Clark was standing by her side. The boy seemed unresponsive, and she couldn’t detect any signs of breathing. Standing right there in the water, she held him with one hand as she opened his mouth with the other; it appeared he had a clear airway. Here in the lake wasn’t the place to be doing all-out CPR, but given the circumstances she used her free hand to pinch the child’s nostrils together, put her mouth over his and gave him a small breath that hopefully would help get him some air as she carried him toward shore.

Years before, when John had been talking to Joe McGuinness about possibly joining the business, Joe had said that one of the advantages of the job was the office with the big windows overlooking the beach, which he swore was filled with bikinis all summer. John had often thought that Joe had oversold that point just a little, for often the beach wasn’t very crowded, and it wasn’t today. Still, on a nice summer morning like this John often looked up from his computer screen to gaze out the picture window, “to rest his eyes” he said if someone were to ask him about it.

He’d been studying a particularly dull balance sheet when Janice’s yell of “Hey!” right outside the back window got his attention. He looked up from the computer, to see her racing across the beach, and realized instantly that something had to be very wrong. It took him a moment to get out from behind his desk and out his own back door, but he was at the edge of the porch when he saw Janice pick the boy up out of the water. “Oh, Christ,” he thought as he started across the beach toward her.

“John!” he heard her yell, “call 911! NOW!” It was a flat order that he’d never heard out of Janice before, in a voice that put him in mind of Candice yelling at a lazy dog in a team. What’s more, he knew instantly that she was right. He turned in his tracks and raced back toward the phone in his office.

Janice saw John heading back toward his office, so realized that he must have gotten the message. She continued heading back toward shore, giving the boy a rescue breath every five seconds just like Mr. Clark had taught her. As the water got shallower she could move more quickly; in only a few more seconds she had the boy up on shore. She laid him out flat on his back on the sand where she could work on him more effectively. Once again, she checked his airway; from what she could tell it was clear although it seemed likely that the child had aspirated some water, although perhaps not much since he’d still been barely floating. She bent over him again, pinching his nose closed as she gave him two more rescue breaths, while she felt for his carotid artery.

After several seconds, she couldn’t detect any sign of a heartbeat. She didn’t know how much time had passed since the kid had gone under water – it couldn’t be long, but right now every second counted. She put two fingers of her left hand on his chest at the sternum, put the heel of her right hand on top of the fingers of her left hand, then pressed down as hard as she dared, five times, a second or so apart, counting off the chest compressions in a muttered voice. She then broke off the compressions to give him another rescue breath, then repeated the cycle again. Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard the fire siren sounding, telling her that help was on the way, but she knew that it could still be several minutes before someone got there to help.

Another cycle, another and another. Win or lose, the child’s life lay under her hands, just like her life had been in Cody’s hands a few months before. He hadn’t let her down then, and she couldn’t let this kid down . . .

As soon as John made the call, he raced back out onto the beach. It was hard to run in the sand in his office shoes, but he made it over to where he could see Janice performing CPR on the child. “Can I help?” he asked.

“You know CPR?” she asked as she broke off from another cycle of chest compressions to start another rescue breath.

“No,” he replied, ashamed of himself. As close as he worked to the beach, he ought to have foreseen that something like this would happen sooner or later.

“Can’t teach you now,” she said after she finished giving the child a rescue breath and got set for another series of chest compressions. As he watched, he could see the child convulse a little, with his belly heaving. He watched as Janice rolled the boy onto his side so he could vomit up a bit of lake water. “Good,” she commented, feeling at his throat a little, for what John couldn’t say. “I think he’s trying to breathe a little, no heartbeat yet.” He watched as Janice used her finger to try to clear out his mouth, then rolled the kid on his back to again begin the cycle of rescue breaths and chest compressions.

It wasn’t until about now that someone in the group of gossiping mothers realized that something was seriously wrong, and for one of them to realize that her little boy was the one in trouble. She came rushing up to John, Janice and the boy, screaming “Larry! What happened? Are you all right?” She made a dive for the boy, trying to brush Janice to the side

Fortunately John was on the ball and grabbed her before she could do it. “Hey!” he said firmly. “Do you know CPR?”

“All I know that that’s my boy! Let me get to him. He needs me!”

“Look,” John replied, getting a firmer grip on her. “If you don’t know CPR, stay out of her way. I don’t know it either, but I do know she does, and right at this moment she’s the only hope your boy has. The ambulance should be here in a minute, just let her do what she knows how to do.”

Things were pretty frantic for a minute or two, but Janice tried to push distractions to the side, just concentrating on the cycle of chest compressions and rescue breathing, trying to get a pulse from his carotid artery somewhere along the way. Finally – it seemed like forever to her – she began to feel a faint movement under her finger. “Great, I’m getting a little heartbeat,” she said. “Not much, very weak, but it’s there!”

“You’re sure you’re not feeling yours?” John asked as he tried to control the frantic mother.

“No, it’s not mine,” Janice said. “I’m going to discontinue chest compressions and see if it keeps up, but I’d better keep up the rescue breathing.” She bent back over the boy and continued to try to force air from her lungs into his every few seconds as she continued to monitor his faint heartbeat.

Finally – Janice had no idea of how long, it could have been hours for all she knew – she heard a familiar voice at her side. “Janice, what have we got here?” she heard Mr. Clark say.

“Near drowning,” she said in a rush. “No pulse when I got him up on shore, but it’s started a little. I can’t tell if he’s breathing on his own or what.”

“Continue rescue breathing,” Randy said as he reached down and opened an orange case he carried – one of the ambulance service’s new automatic emergency defibrillators. He quickly ran leads to the boy’s chest and then studied the screen for a moment. “Definitely got heartbeat,” he said. “Weak, but no point in a defib. Mike,” he said to another ambulance guy, “break out the O2. Janice, as soon as Mike’s ready he can relieve you.”

Even before the other EMT was ready with the oxygen, Randy had a stethoscope up to the boy’s chest. “He’s definitely breathing a little,” Randy announced. “Mike, let’s get that O2 going, stat.”

In a few more seconds Janice felt the other EMT pushing her a little to the side, oxygen mask in his hand. “OK, kid, I’ll take it from here,” he said. “You done good, real good.”

Up until that instant Janice thought she could have continued CPR on the kid all afternoon if she had to, no matter how tired she was, but at the instant she was relieved of the responsibility all the energy just drained out of her. About all she could do was collapse backward onto her fanny, and she was a little surprised that she didn’t fall flat on her back on the sand.

“My baby!” the woman shrieked, now increasingly frantic as John still held her back, now with the grudging support of some of her friends. “Is my baby going to be all right?”

“He’s still alive,” she heard Randy say. “There’s a good chance he’s going to make it, but as soon as we get him stabilized a little more we’re going to want to transport him down to Camden General. Janice, what happened anyway?”

“I found him floating face down . . . ” she said breathlessly, trying to pull herself together. “Must have been over his head . . . I brought him back in . . . no pulse, no heartbeat, so I started CPR . . . had John call 911.”

“Mike was right, you did damn well,” Randy said, still monitoring the boy’s breathing and heart rate. “I couldn’t have done any better without the life support gear. You must have been listening when I taught you.”

“Thank you,” she puffed. She had never been this tired in her life. Ever. But that exhaustion was mixed with pride – she’d done what she had to do when no one else could do it, and she’d done it well enough to save the boy’s life. Cody would be proud of her!

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