An Eighty Percent Solution - By Thomas Gondolfi Page 0,2

the number of times he breathed.

“Lace your fingers together and push hard on the chest directly between the nipples.” The sharp multiple reports of the woman’s ribs dislocating carried through the bus, while everyone watched in morbid curiosity. A man in the front row fell over in a faint, caught and held nearly upright by the press of the other bystanders.

“Stop that! You’re killing her!” one passenger insisted.

This time the lift-bus came to Tony’s defense. “Negative,” came the pleasant voice, still trying to instill calm. “There is no murder taking place.”

“The first compression will almost certainly crack the victim’s ribs. Don’t despair, because repairing broken ribs is much easier than restarting a heart which has been stopped too long.”

One large man looked menacingly down at Tony. “Leave her,” he insisted. “The doctors will take care of her—if she has medical, that is.”

Tony paid no attention, slowing his compressions. “After thirty full compressions, each about every half second or so, you need to give two breaths of air, assuming your victim isn’t breathing,” Granther said through him. Tony’s ear moved right next to the woman’s face. He still heard nothing.

“Continue your thirty chest compressions followed by two breaths until help arrives or the victim’s heart starts. This should be checked every compression set.”

Tony continued his physical lifesaving. Many wouldn’t even look. Others stared with the same sort of fascination as if watching someone put their head in the mouth of a lion.

“Yes, I know,” he mumbled jerkily during one chest compression session. “Everyone says don’t get involved. Stay at arm’s reach. It’s not my problem. But I can’t sit here while someone dies.”

Time lost its cohesion for Tony. He muscles burned and his own chest ached with the unusual labors. Thirty. Two. Thirty. Two. Thirty. The repetition kept him going. Whether one minute passed or sixty, Tony’s heart leapt when he detected a pulse—faint, but definitely there. At last, the woman began to breathe on her own.

Tony all but collapsed against the seat, still straddling the old woman’s torso. Spots danced before his eyes and his ears rang. He coughed heavily between desperate drags of air as the bus gently settled down on a landing pad. A pair of red-suited medicos waited along with a Metro cop, completely sealed in his blue suit of armor showing no face to the world.

The trio slowly filed on as soon as the doors opened. The Metro, in a rare instance of friendliness, helpfully directed civilians toward a waiting replacement bus.

“Hurry,” Tony urged, barely having enough air for a few desperate words. “Has pulse,” he gasped with his last possible breath. The medicos, not bothered by Tony’s pleas, casually lifted the woman’s wrist and scanned her DNA from her epithelial cells.

“She’s got full medical. Get the life capsule in here on the double!” Haste replaced the formerly lax efforts. A high-tech gurney floated in.

“Out of the way, civilian,” one of the medicos all but yelled at Tony.

Still winded, Tony didn’t respond, instead crawling a few feet out of the way. The doctors lifted her quickly into the golden coffin-like device and closed the lid. The life capsule would sustain any spark of life left in her.

“I did it! I saved her!” he gasped breathlessly, as his chest gradually felt less and less like he’d spacewalked without a suit. “It feels good! Did you see what I just did?”

“Sir, are you a relative?” the policeman asked, snapping him back to reality like the first yank of a bungee jump.

“Huh? No, sir. She was just another passenger. She was sitting there and then her face went white and—”

While the policeman’s fully armored face contained no clues, Tony still detected a sense of disappointment or resentment. “I’m going to have to ask for your ident,” came his voice, colder than before.

“Certainly, officer,” Tony said, offering his own wrist for a DNA sample. The officer scanned it with a device built into his left index finger. “First time I’ve ever had a policeman scan my ident. Is that a fourteen-seventy-five Merrick Scanner?”

The policeman ignored the question. “You aren’t a trained medic.”

“No, sir.” While Tony paid his police protection money promptly every month, he saw no reason to antagonize this officer. Who knows who might’ve paid them more? And paid or not, police could and would arrest you for anything they might feel like. “But my grandfather was a paramedic in the Australian Civil War. He taught me—”

“Then why were you attending to her? You could be in a great