Dear G:
Okay, you asked, so now I will tell you what things looked like from where I was, if you will agree to tell me what it was like from your end, okay? I know you said you heard every word that was shouted into your ear (sorry!), but what about waking up in a hospital bed? Did you know you were being airlifted out of the ravine while it was happening, or did someone have to tell you after?
But here it is. The picnic was at Sherwoods, I am almost certain. Sea Life Park may have been involved before that, but I wasn’t involved. Or perhaps Sea Life Park was a separate event. I do know that I rode with Steve out to the beach. I had only recently become reinvolved with Saimin, having just returned from college in Hilo, and you were among the huge wave of newer (younger!) members I was just getting to know.
Somebody was given a nice HIC jacket for agreeing to eat an olive. I don’t remember that person’s name, but I’ll bet you know what I’m talking about. It was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. Tears were leaking out of her closed eyes as she forced herself to chew that black olive.
We agreed to stop at the Toilet Bowl on our way home. I’d actually never been down to it, so it was kind of neat. I wandered off toward the ocean a bit, and when I came back toward the bowl itself, I saw you lying on the black lava, on your back, straight out as if being fitted for a coffin. You weren’t sprawled; you weren’t awkward in any way. It looked as if you’d decided to lie down for a little nap, right there just a few feet from the Toilet Bowl.
In Saturday’s brief recollection of this at the winery, Steve mentioned somebody helping move you from the edge of the bowl. He asked if it was me, but no. In fact, I’m not sure I agree that this is what happened, because by the time I went over to you, Steve was not standing right there, and why would he have wandered away? Two of the other girls were standing a few feet away, looking at you, looking concerned. I asked what happened, and they said they didn’t know. I asked if you were breathing, and one of them said, “I think so.”
I said, “YOU THINK SO?” I could see that they were frightened, too frightened to do anything. I had had several years’ worth of first aid training (Boy Scouts rule), so there was never a question about what SHOULD be done; the question instead was, well, I’m not sure. Why did I hesitate? Why was I annoyed that your friends hadn’t done anything, except that I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be the one to have to do anything. I mean, once I committed to doing something, I was going to have to do it right, and I’d just met you hours before!
But it was clear that nobody was doing anything, so I got down on my knees, right alongside you as I was taught. I put my ear close to your mouth so I could listen for breathing, or feel your breath on my cheek, and I kept my eye on your torso, looking for the telltale movements of a person who was BREATHING. At first, it didn’t think you were breathing and I got scared. Your chest and stomach were NOT moving, and although I’d practiced artificial respiration for years, this was going to be the first time I’d actually have to do it. I was scared as heck.
Then, I heard it. A very, very, very, very faint moan. It was short, and there is no way anyone would have heard it if his or her ear had not been right next to your mouth. And I felt a small, small, small puff of breath. I tilted your head back, awkwardly, knowing I was supposed to open your airway but for some reason not remembering exactly how to do it.
You were breathing, but it wasn’t much of a breath. It was like you were in hibernation or something. And it’s taking me several minutes to explain all this, but it was just seconds. The time between my asking the girls if you were breathing and your moaning oh-so-faintly in my ear was probably less than a minute. Two minutes, tops. I said your name a few times, in your ear. “G—–. G—–. Can you hear me? Okay, I’m going to call emergency. You’ll be okay.”
I asked if anyone had a phone. This was 1996 and it would be a good eight years before I had my own cellular phone, and I had never made a call on one, as far as I can remember. But yes, one of your friends had a phone. I dialed 911 and asked how to make the phone connect. The girl had to point to the button for me.
“Hello. I’m with some friends at the Toilet Bowl, and there is a girl here who is unconscious.”
“Are you at the actual Toilet Bowl, around the corner from Hanauma Bay, or nearby?”
“I am actually right at the edge of the Toilet Bowl.”
I’m sure we exchanged a few other unpleasantries, but now that I was in action, I was pretty calm. Yes, my heart was pounding and I think I was still scared to death, but making calls to 911 was something I knew how to do. I actually practice it, when I’m all by myself sometimes. I imagine certain situations, such as car accidents or heart-attacks, and I practice calling 911, actually saying aloud what I would need to say. My scoutmaster told us that the 911 call could be the most important part of first aid, you see, since so much could be determined by how quickly someone could come, and how easily they could find you. He told us stories of how people sometimes called 911 and said into the phone, “Hurry! Someone just had a heart attack!” and then hung up without giving any more information. So as nerdy as it sounds, I do practice making 911 calls. I’m also one of those people who calls when the neighbors are having a loud fight. I know domestic squabbles are none of my business, but once I can hear them, they become my business and I don’t want anyone getting hurt.
Anyway, so I called emergency. By now, Steve had joined us, and the two girls and Steve and I were standing together, just waiting. A minute later, one of the Hanauma Bay lifeguards came running around the point, and he got down on his knees right where I’d been, and he checked for breathing just as I’d done. Then he placed a hand beneath your neck and lifted gently up, while pushing gently back on your forehead with the other hand.
That’s how you do it. I will never forget it now.
“G—–! G—–!” he said, loudly into your ear. “Can you hear me?” You did not respond. He repeated himself a few times. You told me later, when I saw you online, that you heard every word, and all you could think was, “Please stop yelling in my ear.”
The lifeguard got on his radio and asked for an ambulance. He told us that an ambulance was coming. He asked if you’d fallen. None of us knew. I don’t think any of us saw it.
Once an ambulance was on its way, I told Steve, “We should call her parents.” The girl whose phone it was knew your home number, so I called.
“Hello. You don’t know me, but my name is Mitchell, and I’m a friend of G—–’s. She’s been injured somehow, and is unconscious but breathing. We are at the Toilet Bowl, near Hanauma Bay, and an ambulance is coming.”
“Okay.” I think it was your mom. She seemed pretty calm, ‘though it was clear she was concerned.
“An ambulance is on its way, but I don’t know where they’re taking her. I’ll call you back as soon as I find out.”
The person thanked me.
It took longer to get you out of there than I expected. They called a helicopter and lowered a stretcher. Some guys put you on the stretcher, strapped you down, and lifted you out of there and lowered you into the parking lot, where an ambulance was waiting.
Now you were in someone’s care, but the sight of you being lifted out of there, a helicopter hovering right over us, was the freakiest part. Somehow, the helicopter made it much more serious than it already was.
Your parents called back before we knew where you were going, so I said I’d have to call back. We found out a few minutes later that it was Queen’s Hospital. I called your parents back, and I think they were on the road to town already. Did they live on the Leeward side? I sorta remember someone saying they lived far away, like Wahiawa.
We all got in cars and went to the hospital. Your friends were all on the phone, calling all your other Saimin friends. Pretty soon, the waiting room was packed. Some of the girls were crying. At this point, I began to feel a little weird. It was now sometime in the evening, and I was exhausted, and I was waiting in the waiting room for what? I didn’t know. I didn’t even really know you, and I didn’t know most of the people waiting with us in the waiting room. I just wanted to go, but I also needed to stay.
Eventually, someone came down and said you were conscious and okay.
We left.
I got right on Saimin and tried to stay on all night until you came on. I had to see if you were okay. You did get on. I don’t remember if it was the next day or late, late that night (I think it was late the next night), and I pmed you and said I’d been worried, and you thanked me. It was a little awkward. That was when you told me you’d heard every word we’d said to you.
Steve saw me online and pmed me his thanks for my part in helping you. He was sincerely, humbly grateful that I was there. The next time we had an event, he said he really wanted me there “in case.” I was flattered, but I thought he was being just a little silly. I mean, out of hundred of Saimin events spanning almost a decade, how many times did emergency need to be called?
I think that was the only time we ever discussed it, until this past Saturday night.
But I want you to know that I was deeply affected by this experience. First, the sight of you lying there, unconscious, has never left me. You looked so quiet and so peaceful, which is what people say about dead people. And I don’t mean to make this a morbid thing, but there was the possibility that you might have died, or that your breathing might have stopped and someone was going to have to do something.
And then there was the moment of hesitation. The moment where I looked around, hoping someone else would see if you were breathing, or someone else would kneel down next to you and see if you were okay. I was ashamed of that moment, ashamed that I had not just taken action.
I thought about this a lot over the next few weeks. I didn’t decide just then and there that I would be the guy who takes action from then on. I guess it came to me gradually, but I did realize that when something happens, a lot of times it seems that everyone is waiting around for someone to do SOMETHING. Once I made the move that day, once I knelt down, everyone else was ready to do something. This person handed me a phone. That person gave me advice. I felt the support of those people and it made me better able to do whatever I was doing.
Steve knows his stuff, too. He was not grateful that I happened to know some first aid (first aid that was unnecessary this time), because he knows first aid too. He was grateful that someone calmly did something. Someone called emergency. Someone spoke to the lifeguard. Someone called your parents. This time, someone was me.
I have always felt connected to you in a way I don’t think you can appreciate. You were the person who made me the guy who does something. I have rushed to the aid of girls crashing mopeds, of co-workers falling down, and of cars rolling backwards with nobody behind the wheel! I know I told you about that car, but I didn’t say that I was about fifty yards away from the car when I first saw it rolling slowly backwards. Other people (mostly students, but also a couple of parents) saw the car too, but I was the one who ran after it and stopped it less than a foot from the building it was about to roll into.
So yes. I believe that I have told some students about you at least once a year in my twelve years of teaching. It just comes up somehow. Something someone says will remind me of the fact that most of the time, people are waiting for someone else to do something. I picture you lying there, quiet and peaceful. Then I tell the story. I doubt it has changed anyone’s life but my own, but if it has changed only my own, it’s at least done that.
Thank you for being okay. If you hadn’t been okay, I’d still have learned something, but maybe it would be a lot less pleasant!
Sincerely,
M
