Leah
A wet pop.
The crowd sucked in a collective breath. Phones were already out, recording. Whispers turned to murmurs.
I stayed kneeling, fingers pressed to the boy’s neck. Pulse—thready but there. Breathing shallow, but steady now that the tension pneumothorax had been decompressed. He’d wake up soon, disoriented and sore, but alive.
I looked up at Ella, calm as glass.
“He’s not dead,” I said. “The needle released the pressure on his lung. He seized, went into respiratory arrest. Without decompression he would have coded in under two minutes. You want to keep screaming, or do you want to call an ambulance so they can get him oxygen and monitor his heart?”
Ella’s mouth opened and closed like a landed fish.
Master Lindo finally found his voice, hoarse. “You… you saved him?”
“I bou
