Page 3 of The Lost Book of First Loves

She eased back on her heels. Someone—maybe Jason?—reached a hand down to help her up and she rose, her arms, shoulders and spine on fire from the exertion.

She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the drama unfolding on the floor, Juniper so pale and still while a half dozen paramedics worked around her. One continued CPR while another applied an oxygen mask attached to a bag to cover her nose and mouth. A third opened a machine and pulled out adhesive stickers that she attached to June’s now-bare chest.

“Okay, Mike,” the woman said in an authoritative voice. “Stop compressions. Everyone stand clear.”

A mechanical voice spoke from the box, announcing that a shock was being delivered, then seconds later said,Shock delivered. Provide chest compressions and rescue breaths.

They all seemed to bustle around her again. “Anything?” the paramedic performing chest compressions asked.

“Not yet.”

They went through the shock process a second time. This time, even Ali from her vantage point could see something was different.

“I’ve got a pulse,” one of them called out.

A pulse. June might survive this. Alison nearly collapsed back to the floor in relief. Fortunately, Jason was there and to her surprise he wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders while the paramedics continued working on June.

“Yes. She’s got a pulse,” the woman paramedic said. “It’s thready but there. Keep going with the bag valve mask.”

She didn’t regain consciousness, but Ali could see her chest rising and falling on her own now. They worked on her until two more paramedics came in with a gurney.

“Where are you taking her?” she asked one of the paramedics.

He gave her the name of a hospital, but she hadn’t been in Seattle long enough to know where that was.

“Does she have family we should contact?”

She stared blankly at him, not at all sure how to answer that. Jason quickly stepped in.

“No. She doesn’t have any family,” he answered. “She has a couple of good friends. She is close with Adam Greene, the president of the company, but he’s in Hong Kong this week. I can notify him.”

“Will she be okay?” The words rushed out of Ali.

The paramedic shrugged. “The doctors can figure that out better than we can. You did what you could. Good work. If not for you, we would be taking her to the morgue, not the emergency room.”

After they left, a pall descended on the office. The floor was littered with medical debris. Empty canister wrappings, a discarded oxygen mask. The air smelled of alcohol wipes, sharp and distinctive.

In the strange silence, Ali felt as if she had somehow miraculously survived a tsunami and was wading her way back to dry land.

“Wow. You saved her life.” Jason looked shocked.

Margaret Thuy, Juniper’s other assistant, who must have come in while Alison was performing CPR, gave her an admiring look. “You had nerves of steel. I would have been terrified. How did you learn how to do CPR?”

“My dad died of a heart attack six months ago. I... couldn’t help him. I took a class so I would never find myself in that position again.”

She was shaking, she suddenly realized. Her arms trembled and her shoulders jerked with fine, small shudders. She was nauseated, as well. But then, she had not eaten much that morning.

June had been in the middle of firing her. Well, since she was an unpaid intern, she had been in the middle of telling Ali that her services were no longer needed.

I am sure you will agree that these past three weeks have been something of a disaster, from start to finish.

Ali had seen the disappointment in the other woman’s expression, a kind of pained resignation.

She couldn’t say she didn’t deserve to be canned. She had made a lousy executive intern, especially in a fast-paced tech innovation company like Move Inc. Juniper left her as nervous as a bag of cats, as her grandmother would say, and she had been completely out of her comfort zone.

That didn’t matter now. The woman who was the entire reason she had come to Seattle was in the process of being transported to a hospital and now Alison didn’t know what to do.

She couldn’t simply... walk away. June would need help over the next few days or weeks. Or maybe months. Ali couldn’t abandon her.

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