So this is not an exaggeration and this really happened, we just saved a little girl's life today, me, and Jeremy, and the man who's name I don't even know who works at the hotel and did CPR.
Jeremy and I were by the pool, on our luxurious resort vacation, observing the cocktail hour with a side of fried cheese and there was a little girl playing in the pool on her own bobbing up and down. And Jeremy was wondering, almost idly but not really was she in distress, was she coming up for air enough? She wasn't screaming or flailing or struggling or anything. I looked, confirmed for myself that she came up and took a breath and went back down and said she was fine and leaned back. But Jeremy wasn't sure. She hasn't come up for a while he said. So I looked, and she was underwater, but kids play that game where they sit on the bottom right. Oh well I thought, I can take a little stroll around the pool, be sure, not look too stupid. So I strolled around not quick and she was kinda crouch standing under the water, little bubbles coming up from her nose but not moving a lot, so I thought, I can like splash wave at her under the water get her attention then when she's startled just wave like a dorky person who likes kids only she didn't startle she didn't move at all and so then I touched her arm and she still didn't move and that's when I picked her up and she was totally limp. So I'm like hey, hey ineffectually to no one in particular and there's two Asian guys over on the edge of the pool who I vaguely gesture this kid towards thinking maybe she's one of theirs and sure enough one gets up and picks her up out of my arms and is like patting her and she's like sputuming a bit so that seems ok right but it's not like she's moving or super obviously breathing so her dad is like shaking and patting her trying to get her to respond and I'm saying loudish but not super effectual things like is she breathing? Doctor or somebody? And the hotel staff twig somewhere in here and someone says they've called somebody and one of the hotel staff starts CPR. Which of course you would right? And he does CPR for what feels like quite a long time but how long really, minutes and not til in here does my body and mind really start to wake up to that maybe things are really not ok and it's sick and scary and after what feels like a long time she cries which is the happiest wailing child I've ever heard and Jeremy and I back off to where we were sitting and they've got her in the recovery position only then they have to start CPR again and after what feels like a super long time of back and forth between crying and chafing and recovery position and CPR and sitting up for a minute Ems arrives but it's probably really only like 15 minutes. And they take her to the hospital on a stretcher and then her father I'm pretty sure literally faints and all the hotel staff kinda go back to their jobs and J and I sit there in our corners. And here we are. I would dearly like a skywritten bulletin entitled she made a full recovery. We told Ems we thought she was underwater truly for less than a minute so that should be good but it would be nice to be sure really sure.
We are all prisoners of who we are, we just have to hope that who we are is enough when it comes to it. Jeremy is a nervous, thoughtful person. And a born and bred Australian, for whom sun smartness and water safety are second nature. He had an instinct, that gut voice you are not supposed to ignore that she was under more that she was up, more than was right, even though she wasn't screaming or struggling or any of the TV drowning signs at all, I'm serious man not even splashing a lot. He felt the wrongness, and he stuck with it even when I dismissed it, kept looking, kept being uncomfortable. But he lacked the decisiveness, the wilfulness to leap in guns blazing.
I am an eternal optimist. Jeremy pointed this girl out to me, and I looked and saw her come up, take a breath go back down and I said she's fine she's playing. I would have leaned back gotten out my book and this little girl could have died before my eyes before I even twigged that something might be wrong. I could have watched her die in real time and thought nothing of it. But I am, and this is the saving grace, a socially awkward massive dork used to embarrassing myself. I am just a little bit less afraid of being a dumbass, bothering a kid who's playing in the pool, making a fool of myself. And I trust Jeremy more than myself so if he's bothered, I think it's worth checking. And I had a career as a teacher so there's that instinct that if someone is supposed to investigate something or do something about something it's probably me. And all this got me to the point where I had an unconscious seven year old in my arms.
And then there was the hero who actually performed the CPR, right away as soon as he got to her. I mean I know CPR, I've had the training for school, as much training as you get to be a hotel receptionist but you know that's tick off enough people at this institution are CPR certified CPR, not actually really save a real human life CPR. I mean I handed the kid over to her father who did not know CPR and was slapping her back etc, and she like choked and vomit/ mucus came up and my brain was still excruciatingly slowly having thoughts like is she breathing, do we need a doctor, surely she's gonna cough up any minute now and then her dad's all like don't scare me like that this is everybody's pool story my dad dove in to get me one time when he started administering and it would have taken me more precious seconds or minutes to get to that point and it wasn't until a while of him administering it, vomit and sputum down the back of his shirt, two breaths into her while his colleague chafed her hands that my body and my brain started to register that maybe something was really wrong and get sick and scared.
Yes and then long secondminutes later she cried and then on and off and then EMS and they were administering oxygen and getting her to respond I think and she should be ok I think.
And then her poor dad who was right there reading a book but had no idea it's every parent's nightmare right, five minutes of inattention and then they're just dead. He also seemed almost ok like he took time out to thank me until she got taken away to hospital and then he like fainted dead away.
Ok but here's the thing it's definitely the thing you want to do to think of all the things you should have done right away and better. And it felt like an awful lot of miracle dominoes had to fall one after another and it should have taken less, any one of us should have saved her. But the fact is all of us did.
And this is what it feels like to be a hero, to save a life. Dumb and socially awkward and not scary enough when you should be doing something and too scary after there's nothing else to do. But we did it. We did enough. We saved her life. She's not dead right now. Thank Christ and God help us all by the grace of each other we saved her.
