Larkspur by Sheila Simonson Read Free Book Online Page B

certification to coach at Monte J.C. They had wanted me to teach a hygiene class, too, but I
had to draw the line somewhere.
    Jay nodded. He didn't say anything else. Llewellyn's light quick breathing shook the
mounded blankets. I wondered if our words had registered with him and hoped not.
    Bill made his way back to us and gave the same report Janey had made. He sounded
aggrieved. Lydia was helping Janey and Angharad cope with Denise, he said. "Is it a heart
attack?"
    "Probably." Jay spoke quietly.
    Bill shuffled his feet in the grass. "Domingo wants to know should he make
something."
    "Not for Llewellyn. Tell him to brew up coffee for the rest of you."
    "Okay." Bill wandered off.
    Llewellyn's breathing had quickened, and Jay was frowning at his watch, trying to time
the heartbeat. Suddenly the old man's body jerked. His back arched, and his face contorted
horribly, eyes rolling back in his head.
    "Back off!" Jay shouted.
    I scrambled out of the way, but the convulsions didn't last long. All too quickly
Llewellyn lay still on the crumpled blanket, and Jay was feeling his throat for a carotid pulse.
"Cardiac arrest."
    "Want me to do the chest?"
    "Breathe for him." Jay straightened the still form, clearing the old man's tongue and
wiping his face clean.
    I knelt, removed the pillow, and slid my left hand under his neck to tilt his head back. I
put the heel of my right hand on his forehead and reached down to pinch his nostrils shut. Then I
took a lungful of air and puffed four sharp breaths into his mouth. His chest rose. I could taste
bile.
    Jay was kneeling opposite me and down a bit. He had found the breastbone and
measured up from it with his thumb the requisite inch and a half. He pressed straight down with
the heel of his hand--not too hard--and relaxed and pressed again, once every second. He was
counting so I could hear the time--one thousand and one, one thousand and two... Every five
seconds I breathed for Dai Llewellyn. Every second Jay pressed his chest. We found our rhythm
almost at once.
    I was vaguely aware of D'Angelo and Ted Peltz running up with questions. Miguel was
sobbing. After fifteen minutes Jay tried for a pulse again. No dice. We kept rhythm. Eventually
we changed over, still keeping time. It was like a bizarre, squatting dance--or a strange poetic
meter. Boom, boom, boom, boom, puff. Llewellyn didn't like meter.
    Bill Huff and Janey came down, and Jay told Bill to phone again, that we had an
infarction. Bill ran off.
    Sometime in the afterglow one of the others had the wit to turn on all the yard lights.
They didn't quite reach the flat area by the boat dock, and D'Angelo and Janey eventually moved
four of the cars down, shining their headlights so the landing spot was lit. Jay and I kept to our
rhythm. It was all-absorbing, and it went on and on.
    Finally we heard the wail of an ambulance siren in the distance. We kept our rhythm
even as the emergency vehicle jounced down onto the lawn and the doors were thrown open.
    Then the pros took over with their fibrillators and oxygen tanks and injections. Dai
Llewellyn, still not breathing on his own, still without an independent heartbeat, was bundled
onto the gurney and into the ambulance. The life-flight helicopter was dealing with a massive
chain-reaction accident on I-5.
    Jay had called for Miguel as soon as the paramedics relieved us. Now the kid came
running with a paper sack. Jay took it from him, peered into it, and handed the sack to an
attendant.
    "He was drinking wine, Campari, when the attack started. Some of the
     symptoms--prolonged nausea, tingling, hands feeling peculiar--made me think he might have ingested a
poison. I saved the glass. Better check it out. I'm Dodge, county C.I.D. It may be a police
matter."
    The two men spoke quietly, and I don't think anyone else heard them, though the others
were standing on the veranda, watching. They had seen Miguel run up with the sack.
    Poison. Surely not. Food poisoning, maybe, except nobody else