[fic] fading away (gen, 0.7k)
HC BINGO || CPR/Rescue Breathing (0.6k)
They learn that her name is Anna. Her brother, Castiel, has been performing CPR on her for seven minutes when they take over and he looks tired. Anna had tried to pull a girl out of the water when she herself had gotten difficulty keeping her head up. The girl was fine. Anna wasn’t. warnings: CPR, drowning,
archiveofourown
Dean’s headache is still around by the time he pulls the passenger door of the ambulance shut. Benny only grants him one look before shaking his head and giving him the ‘I told you so’. Benny had gone out with them, reminded Dean they had the morning shift and left around eleven. As he also should have. Going out, but mostly staying out, last night had been a bit of a mistake, but nothing he couldn’t deal with.
So maybe he’d dealt with it by throwing his clock across the room and pain meds for breakfast, but he was dealing with it. He was dressed and out of the dark, at work. Good job, Dean Winchester, if you asked him.
“I bet you feel real clever staying out.”
“Oh shut up,” he grumbles. He’d already gotten shit from Jo this morning, asking him if he was still alive and on a scale of 1 to ‘a migraine would hurt less’ how bad the hangover was. He didn’t want to get into that with the guy he’d have to spend hours in an ambulance with.
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They’re coming back from a minor incident-they didn’t have to go into hospital after all-when they get a call in for a drowning. A woman, early twenties, been performing CPR for about three minutes now. They’re only two or three minutes away, just coming back from another call. Despite that, they get the green light to turn on the sirens.
Drownings are tricky. There’s so much that goes into it, it’s a mad rush. You can get them breathing again and stable (as stable as they’ll ever be right after), only to hear later that they’ve passed away due to secondary drowning or because they were just in the water for too long. Dean’s praying that it’s not the case this time.
They learn that her name is Anna. Her brother, Castiel, has been performing CPR on her for seven minutes when they take over and he looks tired. Anna had tried to pull a girl out of the water when she herself had gotten difficulty keeping her head up. The girl was fine. Anna wasn’t.
She was trying, they can say that. According to the brother, he’s felt a pulse before, but faint and he’d lost it each time. One, two, three, four, five. Dean works on the chest compressions while Benny takes out the AED machine. This is the part Dean hates, seeing the bodies react to the shock. Seeing them convulse completely out of control but knowing it might not do a damned thing for them.
The machine cools down, gets ready for the next charge while Dean checks her. They have a pulse.
“I’ve got a pulse.” It’s almost like a weight falls off his shoulders, even if she’s not at all in the safe yet. Dean remembers his first patient that hadn’t quite gotten to that point. It’d been a seventy-year-old man, with a known heart condition. He refused to take his meds for it, the wife told them afterwards. He thought they wouldn’t help him anyway. The centre had called them up to let them know. Even though they’d suspected, it had still been a blow.
They can focus on wrapping her up, drying her off now, focus on her breathing. Properly ask her brother more questions. He looks shaken, pale as a sheet. Dean notes how he pointedly refuses to look at her until they bundle her up in all the blankets they have in the back and she’s covered again. By the time they load her into the back, her breathing is steady and her heart back to beating stronger again.
“You did good,” Dean tells Castiel, clasping a hand on the guy's shoulder. “If you hadn’t known CPR, he would be gone.” The brother rides in the front with Benny while Dean sits in the back, keeps an eye on Ana. Even with sirens, it’ll take them five to ten minutes to reach the hospital. He just prays she’ll stay stable that long.