An Eighty Percent Solution - By Thomas Gondolfi Page 0,1

moment to the next where his next meal and entertainment would come from. He wondered how an unwinnable, pointless war against the entire system could even be considered sane.

The romance of the GAM still attracted him like the Merry Men of Robin Hood fame, but the thought of leaving his reasonably comfortable life to kill people made him absently shudder.

Engulfed in the paradox between his heart and head, he didn’t notice when the eyes of the woman seated next to him went wild and she spasmodically clutched her package to her chest. Oblivious to Tony, she gasped, eyes rolling back into her head. He glanced in frustration when someone bumped into his legs, only to find the woman collapsed on the floor, leaning against him.

Until just that moment, the ancient-looking grandmother with a streak of gold down the center of her curly hair had been just another insignificant cog in life to him—just another obstacle to negotiate and placate in his day-to-day life. She jerked spasmodically in place against his legs, unable to even fall over decently in the tightly packed lift-bus. Later, Tony remembered with shame that his first act was to push her away. She collapsed bonelessly to the rubberized floorboard. The only sound came from her head landing with a dull thud.

“Leave her alone!” shouted a man wearing the yellow vinyl tights of a bodyguard.

“Please step back from the victim,” the automated TriMet emergency voice finally offered in a smooth, pacifying voice designed to calm any panicky witnesses.

The year his parents sent him to live with his grandparents in Queensland all came back in a rush. Tony remembered Granther hobbling around on his peg-leg. He also remembered, with some throbbing memories in the seat of his pants, how Granther’s rattan cane forced him to learn. The war taught Granther many things, all of which he felt the need to cram into his grandson in the space of that single year.

Tony’s thoughts returned to the old woman on the floor. Kneeling next to her, Tony tried to remove a badly misbalanced box she still managed to clutch to her chest. It took two tries and a jerk to free it so he could place it on the seat. With an ear to her chest, he muttered to himself, “No heartbeat.”

He remembered the stings Granther delivered whenever Tony dared to err. “Lay the victim down. Make sure he/she is on a hard surface,” Tony mumbled, mimicking Granther’s thick Aussie accent. As he talked, he followed the instructions like an obsessive-compulsive, or one of Pavlov’s dogs.

“For your safety and hers, please move away from the victim,” ordered the lift-bus’s pleasant voice. “We have been diverted to Seattle General. The Metro Police will meet us upon arrival in six minutes and twelve seconds.”

“First, tilt the victim…” Tony’s back flinched, awaiting a cane too many years and kilometers away. “No, no, first I have to make sure the airway’s clear!”

He obeyed his grandfather’s teachings automatically, without thinking. A mottled orange goop dribbled down the side of the old woman’s face. “Don’t be surprised by the taste of vomit,” came Granther’s drill-sergeant voice. “It’s common for heart attack victims to regurgitate.”

Tony tilted her pale face to one side and used his fingers to scoop out a clump of stinking goo the consistency of cottage cheese. With a strong flip of his wrist he sent the mess spraying across the small open floor area, adding to Sargasso Sea of discarded gum, ink stains, news capsules, and cigarette butts—and simultaneously decorating a number of shoes, trousers, and hose.

“Now tilt back the head and blow in her mouth,” Granther’s disembodied voice ordered in Tony’s mind. He took the precaution of wiping off her mouth with his sleeve before bending over and placing his lips on hers.

A wet slime sprayed up through her nose across his cheek. The taste of sour milk and stale cookies filled his mouth. “Oh, yeah, pinch nose.” This time he succeeded in expanding her chest with his breath.

“THINK!” Tony shouted out. The packed TriMet commuters managed to back away slightly, giving him a few more centimeters of room. “Is it two breaths and thirty chest compressions or the other way around?” Everyone looked dumbfounded. “QUICK!” he barked, looking directly into the dyed green-and-yellow face of an Oregon University student.

“Please stop, citizen. Your activities may be legally actionable.”

Tony didn’t hear a word, totally focused on his own question. The racing in his chest gave him the answer. More beats to his heart than