AN EIGHT-BY-TEN BLACK-AND-WHITE glossy is circulating through the class. The instructor had handed it to the first student, saying he likes to call it "Count the Bodies." 

     About a dozen of us are sitting in one of the empty bays at Bedford Rescue Squad, taking a first-aid class from a short, balding, apparently calloused pillar of the rescue squad community. 

     The picture was snapped shortly after a multiple-car crash. Part and parcel of the gruesome photograph -- sometimes hidden, sometimes not -- are pieces of what originally constituted thirteen healthy bodies. 

     The instructor thinks the shock value will impress upon the group the need to take what he has to say more seriously.

     It's our night to be on duty -- Al Loughman, Paul Salzager, and myself. I'm sixteen. Al and Paul are old enough to be my father. Al is, in fact, the father of my on-again, off-again girlfriend, Alice. I've worked with these guys at both Bedford and Emmett Rescue Squads for the past two years. I hold each of them in high regard.

     People think it must be exciting working at a rescue squad -- 

     what with sirens blaring, 

       lights flashing, 

         running red lights and stop signs, 

           constantly dealing with life-and-death situations. 

     Truth be told, most of the time we just sit around watching TV or read, or -- in my case -- do homework. Four years of two twelve-hour nights a week and I can think of less than a dozen runs that I would describe as actually dealing with life-and-death.

     So it is this evening. 

     I had already completed my homework. Sitting in on a first-aid class seemed more interesting than watching whatever was on ABC, CBS or NBC on the little hand-me-down black-and-white television in the squad's living room -- that is, right up until the repurposed fire-alarm bell, wired into the phone ringer, blasts throughout the building.

     Paul gets it on the second ring, scribbles something down on the pad by the phone, rips off the top sheet, and hastens back into the garage where the rest of us are waiting.

     "A lady's not breathing," he says. "Where's 226 Beech Avenue?"

     "That's just four blocks west of the main highway," someone volunteers.

     Al is already in the driver's seat. I slide in the middle. Paul gets in and closes the door. The instructor has resumed his lecture by the time we turn left onto the main drag. We have the right of way all the way, so Al floors it. By my estimate, we're on site in less than a minute. That's well within the four-minute window of opportunity -- the point at which lack of oxygen to the brain can cause permanent brain damage or death.

     A frantic teenager meets us as we pile out. "It's my grandma! She was watching television when she grabbed her chest and just quit breathing. She's in here."

     She opens the front door, which opens right into the living room. On the couch a somewhat obese lady with white hair sprawls against the back of the couch -- eyes open, mouth gaping, torso tilting to the left. The four of us form a half circle around her.

     Al, looks at Paul, raising an eyebrow -- as if to ask, What do you think?

     I look from one to the other, waiting for someone to take the lead.

    Paul tilts his head ever so slightly, pursing his lips with the unspoken reply: I'm open. What'd you have in mind?

     The girl is anxiously looking from Al to Paul and back again.

     This goes on for more than a minute.

     As the newest and youngest member of the team, I think -- out of respect -- I need to just be ready to do whatever either of them asks. It's just that no one is suggesting anything!

     Time is running out.

     The egg timer in my head has us at less than a minute before we hit the four-minute mark. And that's if no time elapsed between the lady's attack and us getting in the rig.

     No one is saying or doing anything!

     Without intervention, this lady is as a goner.

     A switch flips on in my brain. They aren't going to do anything!

     I make the conscious decision to override protocol.

     "Al, get the Ambu bag.

     "Paul, bring the backboard.

     "Miss, could you help me lay your grandma flat on the couch?"

     In a matter of seconds, Al is back with the mask and hand pump that allows air to be forced through her nose and mouth into her lungs. Paul and I roll her on her side while Al slides the backboard under her. CPR requires a hard surface under a victim's back to effectively compress the heart.

     White foam has started slowly coming out of her nose. Not a good sign. 

     Al and Paul had the foresight to bring the stretcher in on the same bag-and-board trip. We stop CPR long enough to move her and the board onto the stretcher and wheel her out to the rig.

     The nearest hospital is eight miles. 

     I do five chest compressions, then pause while Paul inflates her lungs twice. We repeat this rhythm all the way to the ER while Al dodges cars that wait too long to pull over. On several occasions these swerves occur just as I'm putting sixty pounds of pressure on Grandma's sternum. Twice I hear a cracking sound when the base of my palm slips off the center of her chest.

     When we get to the ER, she's immediately shifted, sheet and all, to one of their tables. Our job is finished. We silently pull fresh linens from the hospital's storeroom and remake the gurney in anticipation of our next run. Before we finish, one of the ER doctors comes out.

     "Who did CPR on this patient?"

     "I did chest compressions. Paul ran the Ambu bag," I say.

     "Good job. Unfortunately it was too late. She was probably dead before you even got there.

     "Oh, by the way," he says, "you cracked two ribs.

     "She didn't feel a thing."

     No one says a word on the way back to base. I'm sure we're all thinking though -- I know I am. It's then that I determine never again to let Emily Dickens, political correctness, or chain of command interfere with what I know to be the right thing to do -- even if it's not life or death.