THIRTY-FOUR

Washington, D.C.

JEFF AYERS YANKED the wheel left, passing by yet another vehicle whose operator was either elderly, listening to loud music, or a moron. That the ambulance’s flashing red lights hadn’t caught the driver’s attention was one thing, but the blaring siren and honking horn he had at his disposal usually sent most drivers to the side of the road.

Not so with this joker.

The ambulance cut to the left of the black SUV. Ayers gunned the vehicle and cut back into the right-hand lane. The suddenness of his appearance must have shocked the SUV’s driver. The brakes locked and the vehicle spun twice. It stopped when its back end struck and decimated a small sports car.

Glancing in his side mirror, Ayers saw the driver get out of the SUV, fist shaking in the early evening air. The man would live. The woman lying on the sidewalk two blocks up with no pulse, she was another story.

The sun had yet to fully descend behind the Capitol building and he’d already been called out to three deaths. The first two were found by strangers. Long since dead. Reviving them had not been an option, and the cause of death had been a mystery. Aside from the wounds caused by falling to the ground, neither showed any signs of injury. And both had been young.

The current call had come in just minutes ago. A woman, gray haired and varicose veined, had fallen down in front of a drug store. Three people called 911. Ayers had just been leaving the morgue, where he’d dropped off the body of a previous victim, and, determined to not lose another race with Death, hit the sirens and the gas.

A blur of small shops and parked cars filled the windows. His eyes scanned everything for movement . . . and for a crowd. There was always a crowd.

The shops cleared and a parking lot opened up on the right. He saw the CVS sign, and a small group of people gathered below, looking down. It was a smaller group than usual. Then he remembered the victim was old. The aged always drew smaller numbers of onlookers.

“Get ready,” Ayers called out to his partner, David Montgomery, who sat in the back of the ambulance. They had been a team for five years and had saved, and lost, a lot of lives during that time. He turned into the parking lot, applied the brakes gently, and came to a stop ten feet from the group.

No sooner had the ambulance been put in park than the back doors and driver’s door burst open. Ayers, being the closest to the action, arrived first. “Move aside,” he shouted.

Several stunned and wide-eyed people stepped slowly aside, as though in a dream. He recognized the look. They had seen a person die. Perhaps they’d stood in line with her, waiting as she slowly counted out exact change. Or helped her find the right shade of lipstick. Or filled her prescription. And now she was dead and they saw their own mortality, and weakness, reflected in the final event of this woman’s life. It was a feeling that Ayers had long ago abandoned, because unlike these people, he could bring the dead back.

When there was time.

He fell to his knees and checked the old woman for a pulse. She had none.

“Paddles!” he yelled to Montgomery, who was rolling a stretcher toward him.

Abandoning the stretcher, Montgomery dove inside the ambulance. He reappeared with a portable defibrillator.

Ayers tore open the woman’s light blue blouse, sending buttons flying into the circle of onlookers. With unflinching fingers he unhooked her front-clipped bra and exposed her flaccid chest. He reached up without looking and closed his hands around the two handles he knew would be waiting.

“Charging,” Montgomery said.

Ayers held the paddles above the woman’s chest, listening to the group around him.

“Can they really bring her back?”

“No way.”

“It’s been too long.”

“What happened to her, anyway?”

“Charged!” Montgomery’s voice, louder than the rest, acted like a trigger for Ayers.

“Clear!” he shouted, then placed the paddles against the woman’s skin, one to the left and above her heart, the other to the right and below. The shock came fast and hit hard. The old woman’s body arched and lifted off the ground. Then she was back down and still.

With no heart monitor attached to the woman yet, Ayers had to hand the paddles back to Montgomery and check the woman’s pulse.

The faint rise and fall of the woman’s heart tickled his fingertips.

Someone in the crowd saw his smile and shouted, “He did it!”

A light cheer and scattered clapping sounded around him and woke the woman.

She opened her eyes. “What happened?”

Ayers closed her blouse for her. “We’re not sure, ma’am, but we’re going to take you to the hospital now and find out.”