chapter seventy-nine
The first aid course was held at the local high school which their girls would presumably one day attend, although the thought of a time when they were old enough to go to high school felt like science fiction. Their teacher was a large, cheerful, mildly condescending woman called Jan, who reminded Clementine of an insufferable flautist she used to see each year at music camp.
Jan began the day by going around the room and asking everyone to say their name and reason for being there and, ‘as a fun little icebreaker exercise!’, to answer the question: ‘If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?’
They started with a muscly young personal trainer called Dale, who was there because he needed first aid training for his ‘PT licence’, and who would be a baby kale if given the choice because it was a powerhouse vegetable – at this point he flexed an impressive bicep – and he had a baby-face. ‘Excellent answer!’ said Jan, looking momentarily overcome by Dale’s bicep, which made Clementine feel fondly towards her.
Next was a squat middle-aged woman who was there because there had been a fatal accident at the office where she worked. A tradesman got electrocuted and the woman had never felt so useless or helpless in her life and she didn’t want to ever feel that way again, even though she didn’t believe it would have made a difference to the poor tradesman. ‘If I was a vegetable I’d be a potato,’ said the woman, ‘obviously,’ and she indicated her body, and everyone laughed loudly and then stopped abruptly in case they weren’t meant to laugh.
Sam was next, and he spoke up confidently and clearly, sitting casually back in his chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. He said that he and his wife – he indicated Clementine – were doing the course because they had small children. Clementine looked at him. She would have told the truth. She would have said that their daughter had nearly drowned. She was always ready to share the story, but even when they were with Ruby at the hospital Sam had avoided telling people why they were there, as if it were a deeply shameful secret. ‘I’d be an onion,’ said Sam. ‘Because I’m very complex. I have layers.’ That got a good laugh too, and Clementine realised that Sam did this sort of thing all the time – training workshops, team-building days – this was his jokey, blokey corporate persona. He probably always chose the onion.
When it was her turn she didn’t bother saying why she was there as Sam had covered it. She said that she’d be a tomato, because it went so well with onion, and Sam smiled, but warily, as if she were a stranger trying to come on to him, and she was reminded of the humiliation of waking up that morning and talking to him when he wasn’t there.
‘Aww,’ said everyone, except for the person behind Clementine who said, ‘A tomato is a fruit.’
‘It’s a vegetable today,’ said Jan crisply, and Clementine decided she was nothing like the flautist.
Once they’d gone around the class Jan said that if she were a vegetable she’d be an avocado because she took a while to soften up (‘An avocado is a fruit,’ sighed the fruit expert behind Clementine), and she was there today because ‘first aid was her passion’, which made Clementine feel teary. How wonderful it was that there were people in the world like Jan with a ‘passion’ for helping strangers.
Then they got down to business, and Clementine and Sam both diligently took notes as Jan took them through the ‘basic life support’ procedure, interspersed with stories from Jan’s own first aid experience, like the time she’d run a course and found herself in the middle of a real-life scenario when one of the participants collapsed in class. ‘Did you use it as a demonstration?’ asked someone. ‘No, I had to clear the room,’ said Jan. ‘People started dropping like flies. Down they went like dominoes: bang, bang, bang.’ She said this with relish, to indicate the weakness of the general population. ‘That’s why you’ve got to give everyone a job – go and call the ambulance, get me some ice – or send them away, because otherwise people go into shock. It’s a traumatic event. You can suffer from post-traumatic stress. We’ll talk about that later.’
Clementine glanced over at Sam to see if he was remembering their own ‘traumatic event’ but his face was impassive. He wrote something down in his notepad.
Jan got Dale the muscly personal trainer to lie on the floor and then picked two attractive young girls (carrot and cauliflower) to have a go at putting Dale into the recovery position, which they did, and because they were three attractive young people it was kind of enjoyable to watch, and when they rolled Dale over you could see his underwear riding up under his shorts and Jan said, ‘Nice to see you’re wearing Calvin Klein today.’
It was all good fun. It was interesting and informative, and Sam asked intelligent questions and made the occasional well-timed joke. That’s why it was so unexpected when it happened.
Clementine had to breathe hard when Jan demonstrated CPR on a bright blue plastic dummy of a head and torso. The rocking motion of Jan’s hands, pushing so forcefully and rapidly, brought it all back: the hard pavers beneath her knees, Ruby’s waxen cheeks and blue lips, the fairy lights winking in her peripheral vision. But she breathed through it, and when she looked at Sam he seemed fine.
Then Jan asked everyone to get into pairs and she gave each pair one blue dummy and two disposable resuscitation face shields. (Jan always had a spare disposable face shield on her key ring: that’s how prepared she was to offer her services.) They had to find a free spot on the floor where they could lay the dummy out flat.
Jan wandered around the room checking on everyone’s progress.
‘Do you want to go first?’ said Clementine to Sam. They were both on their knees on either side of the dummy.
‘Sure,’ said Sam, and he seemed fine as he methodically worked his way through the acronym Jan had just taught them: ‘DRS ABCD’, standing for Danger, Response, Send for help, Airway, Breathing, CPR and Defibrillator.
He cleared the airway, he looked, listened and felt for breathing, he commenced CPR, his locked hands pressing rhythmically on the dummy’s chest, and as he did, his eyes met Clementine’s and she saw a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face.
‘Sam? Are you all right?’ said Clementine.
He shook his head, a tiny ‘no’, but he didn’t stop doing CPR compressions. His face was dead white. His eyes were bloodshot.
She didn’t know what to do. ‘Are you … having chest pains?’ At least they were in the right place. Jan seemed just as competent as any doctor or paramedic, and certainly more passionate.
He shook his head again.
He bent his head, pinched the dummy’s nostrils and gave it two breaths. The dummy’s chest rose to show that he’d done it correctly. He lifted his head and recommenced compressions and Clementine saw, with a kick-in-the-stomach sense of shock, that tears were sliding down his face and dripping onto the dummy. She’d never seen her husband cry, properly cry, not on their wedding day, not when the children were born, not when Ruby was not breathing, not when she woke up the next day. And she’d never questioned it because she’d never seen her father cry either, and her older brothers weren’t criers, they were door slammers and wall hitters during their angry-young-man years. Her mother got teary at times but Clementine was the family’s only true crier, she was always in floods of tears over something. Maybe all those staunch, stoic men around her had resulted in her internalising that ancient cliché: boys don’t cry, because it was absolutely astonishing to Clementine that Sam could cry like that, that his body was even capable of doing that, of producing that many tears. As she watched his tears drip onto the dummy, she felt something break inside her and a great welling of sympathy rise within her chest, and the terrible thought occurred to her that perhaps she’d always unconsciously believed that because Sam didn’t cry, he therefore didn’t feel, or he felt less, not as profoundly and deeply as she did. Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him; as if a ‘man’ were a product or a service and she’d finally chosen the right brand to get the right response. Was it possible she’d never seen or truly loved him the way he deserved to be seen and loved? As a person? An ordinary, flawed, feeling person?
‘Oh, Sam.’
He stood up so fast from his kneeling position that he nearly toppled backwards. He averted his face, rubbing his cheek hard with the heel of one hand, as if something had stung him. He turned and left the room.