Kicking off her shoes, Ellie went into the pool to Harold Donaldson.
“Mr. Donaldson?” She touched his arm.
He jumped, seeming to come out of the trance he’d been in. He glanced around, his eyes landing on where Ty was working on William.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he began, his voice trembling.
Despite her differences with the man, her heart squeezed with compassion. She put her arm around him. “Come on. Let’s get you out of the pool.”
Ty counted compressions in his head, gave a breath at the appropriate times and prayed. In his mind, he prayed and prayed and prayed.
But nothing happened.
No lub-dub of William’s heart.
No gasp of breath or sputtering or cough.
Nothing.
He couldn’t let this happen. Couldn’t not revive William.
Couldn’t ever forget the pallid color on his father’s face, the pain in his father’s eyes as he’d taken William out of his shaking arms.
Never had Ty seen a weak link in his father’s armor. Never had he seen the man not know exactly what to do.
His father was a man of action, a decisive man who never questioned, just did.
Ty gave another breath.
Nothing.
The longer he couldn’t revive William the less likely he was to be able to.
How long had the boy been in the pool? How long had his father just been holding his lifeless body?
From the corner of his eye he saw his mother go to his father, wrap her arms around him and start talking to him. He saw Ellie reassure herself that nothing more was wrong with his father than fear, then she moved to him, knelt next to where he desperately tried to save William.
“Let me help.” She didn’t wait for him to answer, just bent and gave William a breath, counted his compressions out loud and repeated the breath.
And a miracle happened.
Nothing could convince Ty that anything short of a miracle had happened.
Because William coughed.
Weakly at first, then stronger as his lungs cleared the water.
“Oh, Ty, he’s alive.”
At Ellie’s exclamation, Ty’s mother cried out and his father sank to his knees.
“Harold!” His wife sank down next to him.
“Check him,” he ordered Ellie, not willing to leave William’s side but afraid the stress of what had happened might be affecting his father’s heart.
William’s eyes opened, he coughed more. Deep, rattling coughs that shook his tiny frame.
Ty turned him, beat on his back, trying to assist in clearing the fluid.