Page 6 of A Rose of Steel
A new voice chimed in. “Here, I’ve got a chair for Miss Hackett.”
“Sit down, Jorianne,” her father instructed.
“I don’t have a chair,” she bawled. “No one’s gotten me a chair!”
“There’s plenty of them around,” he said. “Where’s your momma?”
“I’ve got a chair for her, Mr. Alvarez.” That was Marilee, I knew her tone.
“Doc.” Mr. Alvarez’s boots clacked as he walked onto the platform. “The dispatcher said an ambulance is on the way.”
“Romaine!” I heard my name. “Make way for her. She’s a doctor.” The sea of congregants parted, I blinked and looking up on the platform of the gazebo, I saw my Auntie Zanne beckoning for me. “C’mon, Romaine. Come up here.”
And that’s when I sawhim.
My ears hadn’t deceived me.
Nor had my heart.
Chapter Three
Alexander Hale. The man I had prayed to come from Chicago and rescue me from my exile to Roble was bent over the limp and unconscious Groom Bumper administering CPR.
I hadn’t seen him in nearly four months. My knees buckled and I wondered if the paramedics would be able to tend to two bodies. I was sure I was going down at any moment.
“C’mon,” Auntie Zanne said and marched down the two steps and over to me. She grabbed my arm and started pulling me. Looking back at me, she said, “What is wrong with you?” I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. “And where didhecome from? Your Chief-of-Staff.”
I shrugged, shaking my head.
“Hi Romaine,” Alex said, a half grin on his face as we arrived up the gazebo steps. Breathing hard, he pumped steady, even compressions, not missing a beat even when saying my name.
I threw up a floppy hand but couldn’t form a response. My mouth had gone dry. Butterflies were doing the jitterbug in my stomach.
MyDr. Halehadcome to the rescue, albeit for the groom. But he was there. In the flesh. He stopped pumping, leaned over Bumper and in one swift movement, tilted the head back and lifted his chin. Holding Bumper’s nose between his fingers he pushed through two rescue breaths.
“Your Chief-of-Staff needs help,” Auntie said to me. She’d said when she first met him that I never called him by his name. That I always referred to him by his title. Her saying it now was a way of showing me her dislike of him. I wasn’t going to give in to her digs.
And, I knew better than to jump in during someone giving CPR unless asked. Doing that, disrupting counting or rhythm, could cause a critical mistake, but I stood ready if he did need me.
Alex leaned in and listened for breathing, there must not have been a response because he started his compressions again. “One and…” He looked at us. “Not me,” he said panting, his words in the same cadence as his count. “I don’t need help. Not right now.” He looked at me. “Count.”
“And seven and eight and nine and…” I had mentally been counting with him, standing over the two of them, I picked up where he’d left off.
“Romaine can take over for me if the paramedics take a while to get here,” Alex said to Auntie Zanne. “If I get tired. How far away are they?”
“I’m not sure. Probably about fifteen minutes. No longer than that,” she said. “Especially when they hear it’s at my place.”
Alex smirked at the comment. “I can go that long,” he reassured her with a nod.
“Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine,” I said a little louder, letting him know how close he was to switching up.
“Thirty,” he called back and leaned in for another set of rescue breaths.
I looked around. “We need to get these people out of the way,” I said, now drawn into the emergency, I shook off my anxiousness. I was an M.E., I didn’t do rescue, by the time people got to me there was no hope of that, but I could handle myself in an emergency situation.
“Alex can take care of him,” I said to Auntie Zanne, emphasizing me using his name and not his title. I looked at him as he counted. “If he needs me, I’ll come back. Right now we need to get these people out of the way. The paramedics will need a clear path.”
“Okay,” Auntie Zanne said. “I’ll get the Roble Belles to help me. Probably best for everyone to just go on home, don’t you think? There won’t be a wedding today.”
