“Nine-one-one, what's the emergency?”

“Yes, we need help at 401 N Beverly Road, West Hollywood. A friend of ours got sick, he said his left arm hurt, then pressed his hand to his chest and fell to the ground!”

“We'll send an ambulance right away,” and saying this, the operator immediately transmitted the call data to the Emergency Room of the L.A Hospital, which was the closest one to the area.

A few seconds later Dawney Miller, recently turned twenty-eight, found herself in the ambulance alongside Bette, her colleague and best friend, and as always she began to go over everything she had learned during her three years at the GASMFA, the professional EMT and nurse school.
This was not the first time she intervened in a case of suspected heart attack, but that did not mean she should take the emergency lightly. Sadly, in her five years working in the Emergency Room at L.A Hospital, she had had at least ten cases in which, despite people calling them promptly, they had had to report a death from cardiac arrest to some friend, family member or, even worse, a crying partner.

An icy chill ran down her spine as she thought back to a similar incident, though different in many ways, in which she was the one who had found herself on the ground. She had been lucky, however: shortly after she had been dumped carelessly in front of the door of the Emergency Room at L.A Hospital, Mark, who was now speed-driving the ambulance in which she and Bette were in, had found her and rescued her just in time and just before a severe alcohol intoxication sent her prematurely to the Creator. Once she had recovered from the bad adventure, she had decided to cut back on her old life - being a groupie in a famous rock band was starting to become too dangerous - and enroll in a school to become an emergency responder. Getting back behind a school desk had been a challenge for her, who had dropped out of high school to follow the Razor Edge and their charismatic guitarist, Cole Young, and had never been much of a student, but she had gritted her teeth and, after the first week, had found that she liked EMT school. She had graduated with honors, which was even stranger, and three years later, after working her way up through the ranks in some small hospitals, she had tried her hand at everything and sent her application to the Emergency Room at L.A Hospital.

She had been accepted. And at that moment, when she had received the fateful yes and had been hired, she had felt that she had also paid off the debt she owed to that ER.

“We're here,” Mark said, stopping the ambulance.
She wasted no time: as Bette opened the vehicle doors, she quickly grabbed the defibrillator and everything needed to counteract cardiac arrests and heart attacks, then she jumped down from the ambulance.

She paid no attention to the luxurious neoclassical-style mansion, nor to the swimming pool illuminated by lights that changed color every second, nor to the gardens that surrounded it. Nor did she pay any attention to the six gorillas who, at first, tried to bar her way, but as soon as they saw her uniform, her purse and, most importantly, the defibrillator, they led the way for her and Bette into the villa's salon, which was lit by hundreds of crystal pendant lights and glittered with gold and fine white Carrara marble.

“Get everyone away!” Bette ordered to the bodyguards, and as soon as the six men were able to clear the area, they approached the man lying on the ground and knelt beside him.

After checking that, indeed, there was no heartbeat, Dawney hurriedly unfastened his pants to pull out the flaps of his shirt. Meanwhile, Bette unfastened the buttons of the elegant suit, and as soon as the man's chest was in view, Dawney immediately proceeded with CPR.

One, two, three...Stayin alive, stayin alive.

The well-known Bee Gees hit began to run through her head, setting the pace for her hands. During the first lesson in which they had covered heart attacks, their professor, Celine, had revealed to them the secret to doing proper heart massage:

“Just sing in your head the song Stayin alive by the Bee Gees and follow the beat.”

She had almost laughed about it the first time, but then, when she had found herself on the “real battlefield” and giving heart massages to both adults and children, she had realized that it worked.

One, two, three...Stayin alive, stayin alive.

“One minute and twenty seconds,” said Bette, looking at her watch. “I'll relieve you shortly.”
Dawney, even though she felt her arms beginning to ache, continued to practice CPR, never stopping.

And, in the meantime, she began to pray.

“Oh Lord, please don't let it be too late.”

One minute and thirty seconds...one minute and forty seconds...one minute and fifty seconds...

“Ouch, you hurt me!” Shouted a voice suddenly.

She stopped abruptly. Beneath her palms, the man's heart had started beating again.
She turned to look at him to ask how he was feeling now, as she usually did, but she did not have time to say a word, because the man preceded her:

“Dawney?!” He exclaimed, stunned. Then he raised his head slightly to look down. “Why are my pants unbuttoned?”