Absorbed

Chapter Twenty-Four

H e’s stable, but unconscious,” Bob told Stacey when she picked up her home phone Sunday morning. “He’s broken some vertebrae in his neck, and the ICU doctors aren’t sure yet if he’s paralyzed, or how extensive the damage might be.”

“Can we see him?” Stacey asked, wondering whether visitors were allowed on Sunday morning.

“He’s only allowed to have family visiting as long as he’s in the ICU.”

Stacey wondered whether Jessie’s dad was there. Or his little brother. She knew his mom wouldn’t be, and probably had no idea about his accident. Did he have any other family? Or was Jessie all alone?

Bob cleared his throat. “We’ve decided to keep the pool closed through at least the end of the week. The city wants each of us to come in tomorrow for interviews. They’re investigating the drowning. And Jessie’s accident.”

Stacey shivered. She pulled her knees up under her on the couch. “What do they need to know?”

Bob’s voice was uneasy. “They mostly want to make sure everything was done the way it should be. If…any of it could have been avoided.”

Her stomach jumped to her throat. “What happens if they decide it was someone’s fault?”

“You don’t need to worry about that, Stacey. You weren’t in charge, and you did everything you could to help with both rescues,” Bob said. There was something in his tone, though, that made Stacey afraid he wasn’t confident all of them would come out of this unscathed.

If they decide my being irresponsible led to Jessie’s accident, will I have to report it on every future job application? Will I have to include that in college applications? Stacey felt sharp pain behind her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

Stacey’s mom was seated across from her on the couch and mouthed “What’s up?” Stacey eyed her nervously, then shooed her off.

“What time do I need to be there?” Stacey asked, chewing on her thumbnail.

“I’m meeting with them at ten. Melissa is at noon. Your interview is at two, then Mark at four. I think they’ll schedule the others later this week, since they weren’t working when…” Bob’s voice trailed off. “The recreation director asked me to have you write down as many details as you can remember. Do it today, while everything is still clear in your mind, and bring it with you. You need to know that your official statement will be a matter of public record. That means journalists, lawyers—anyone interested—has access to it.”

Stacey clamped her lips shut until the call ended, then dropped the phone and ran to the bathroom. She threw up the toast and orange juice she’d managed to choke down for breakfast.

“Honey,” her mom called from the doorway. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“No,” Stacey coughed out. “I’m okay.” She changed her pad, flushed the toilet, then washed her hands and splashed water on her face.

The drowned man’s purple face and vacant eyes stared back at her every time she closed her eyes. The gashes on Jessie’s forehead and nose. All the blood. All night long those visions haunted her. Now she had to write it down, relive it all again, and tell it in detail to some investigator the next day.

Her mom and Murphy were waiting when she returned to the couch. Stacey curled into the fetal position, her body around Murphy’s. She rested her head on her mom’s knee.

“What did Bob say?” her mom asked.

“Jessie’s still unconscious, probably paralyzed,” Stacey said, looking up into her mom’s eyes. “I have to give a statement about everything that happened yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, Bug. I can understand how hard that will be. But I’m not surprised.” Her mom ran her fingers through Stacey’s hair. “They need to cover their bases in case there’s a lawsuit.”

“I was supposed to be in the tower when the man drowned. What if they say it was all my fault?”

“No one will say that, Stacey. It could have happened to anyone at any time.”

“But…he…Jessie was distracted. We both were.” Tears rimmed Stacey’s eyes. “What if that’s why…?”

Her mom gripped Stacey’s shoulder. “Jessie’s accident was not your fault! And the city doesn’t need to know about any of what was going on between the two of you,” she said firmly, then loosened her grip. “It’s none of their damn business. Just tell them you had diarrhea or something, and that’s why you offered to go to the pharmacy. Why you were in the bathroom. And why Jessie covered for you.”

Stacey nodded, then curled her head into Murphy’s ribs.

Her mom’s hand rested between Stacey’s shoulder blades and her voice softened. “Are you still bleeding?”

Stacey nodded. Her tears dampened Murphy’s fur beneath her cheek.

“Okay. That’s good. We’ll take another test again in a few days, but I’m sure this means the stress of everything yesterday ended it…naturally.”

Stacey nodded again, then pushed herself upright, tucking her feet under Murphy’s paws. “Mom, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I’m so thankful that I’ve had you to lean on the last few weeks. Truly. But, are you…” Stacey hesitated. “…ashamed of me?”

“God, no! Stacey, why would you think that?” She gripped Stacey's hand.

“Because I’m not the daughter you thought I was. It would make more sense if you were ashamed.” Stacey shrugged. “I’ve screwed up so much lately.”

“I’m not at all ashamed of you, Bug. You made a few mistakes, that’s true. But you’re a good person. I’m proud of how you’re handling things.” Her mom inhaled and exhaled audibly. She picked up her coffee mug and stared into it.“Honestly, I could have done a better job preparing you for all of this. If there’s anyone I am ashamed of, it’s me.”

Stacey’s eyes welled up. “You’re a really great mom. I’m so sorry I made you feel that way.”

Her mom sipped from her mug.

Murphy shifted her weight between them and rested her head on Stacey’s feet.

Stacey noticed the wildflowers on the coffee table in one of the pottery vases she’d made in art lab. “Why hasn’t Greg been around?” she asked.

Her mom followed her gaze to the flowers. “I told him I needed to take a break for a while.”

“Because of me? Greg’s a really nice guy. I don’t want you to do that.”

“I just feel like this is all so much for both you and me to think about. Even before Jessie’s accident. I’m drained. I don’t have anything to offer anyone else right now.”

“What if Greg just wants to help you through it? To be there for you? He said he has two daughters, too. He knows what this is like.”

“I mean…” Her mom’s eyebrows knit together. “I guess that is basically what he told me. But, Stacey, are you telling me you want Greg around?”

“Yeah. I like him,” Stacey said. “He makes you happy. At least one of us deserves to be happy right now.”

“Are you sure?”

Stacey managed a half-smile. “Call him, Mom. Maybe he can make us dinner tonight.”

“Is that a jab at my cooking?” Her mom play-slapped Stacey’s knee.

“There’s no comparison. It’s not a personal attack, it’s just a fact.”

At two p.m. Monday, Stacey sat at the same conference table where Bob and the recreation director had interviewed her for the job two months before.

A woman about her mom’s age, with thick, chocolatey brown hair knotted atop her head, sat across from her, a yellow legal pad and several pens on the table in front of her. She’d hung her gray suit jacket over the back of her chair, and the white sleeveless blouse she wore had damp yellow stains under the arms.

“I’m Sylvia Lopez, legal counsel for the City of Mesa Valley.”

The fluorescent lights buzzed above them despite the bright glare from the picture window behind the lawyer.

Stacey wasn’t sure if she was supposed to speak. “Nice to meet you?” she said, the words lifting into an unintended question.

“Just to cover a few formalities: every member of the Seventh Street Community Pool will be interviewed. All of the statements will be a matter of public record. While we expect some small discrepancies in each recounting of the events of July 20th, if there is a significant difference in any testimonies we will need to clarify with further inquiries. Do you understand?”

Stacey nodded, biting her upper lip and staring at the lined yellow pad. She pulled the folded sheet of notebook paper from her back pocket.

“As you are the only minor involved in this investigation, I must inform you that your participation in our line of questioning is considered voluntary. Do you agree that you are here of your own volition and not being forced to respond under any duress?”

“Um…okay…I guess so,” Stacey said.

“I need a simple yes or no answer, please, Ms. Chapman,” the lawyer said, with an exasperated sigh. “Are you participating in this investigation of your own free will?”

“Yes,” Stacey said, her pulse quickening.

“May I also have your permission to record our conversation?”

Stacey nodded.

Ms. Lopez eyed her, and flexed her jaw, breathing out of her nostrils.

“Yes,” Stacey said.

The lawyer set a small tape recorder on the table between them and clicked it on. She asked Stacey for the spelling of her legal name and her birthdate, then wrote them on the top of the page, along with the time and date of the interview. “Now, Ms. Chapman, let’s start with a rough outline of the morning. What time did you arrive? Who was already present and who was scheduled to work?” she asked.

With her mom and Greg’s help the night before, Stacey had spent two hours planning what exactly she wanted to say. Starting with the end of morning swim, she’d written extensive notes on who was where at what time. She didn’t want to give the impression that anyone was irresponsible when Jessie’s accident happened.

Now that she had to give her formal statement, though, she felt sick to her stomach. She hadn’t realized they’d want her to talk about the whole day. “Um… Jessie lives near me, so I gave him a ride to the pool. We got there at 7:57, and Bob and Melissa were already there. We all had a lot to do to clean the facility and prepare for The Plunge Olympics events. By nine there was a large crowd waiting to come in.”

“You are referring to pool manager Bob Smith and lifeguard Melissa Phillips, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know the maximum pool capacity and do you feel it was adhered to during the morning community event? Or do you have reason to believe it was breached?”

Adhered to? Breached? Stacey shook her head. “Uh, the sign posted by the pool says capacity is 250, and I think it was ‘adhered to’. Bob put up a sign that no one else could come in. But what difference does it make? The drowning didn’t happen during morning swim. It was after, during lap swim, when there were only three people in the pool.”

The woman held her pen between both hands above the legal pad. “Ms. Chapman, your testimony is intended to help us understand ALL of the factors that contributed to the incident in question. Whether there are any patterns of negligence at the Mesa Valley Community Pool, and which—if any—safety precautions were disregarded.”

“Okaaayyyy…” Stacey’s eyes narrowed at the lawyer. Clearly the woman was trying to bait her into saying something that would get her or another guard in trouble. “Well, we didn’t go over capacity. And as soon as it was apparent we would have so many swimmers, Bob called Mark to come in, too.”

“Yes. Tell me more about that. You are referring to assistant pool manager Mark Rosenthal, correct?” Ms. Lopez asked, flipping back through her notes from her interviews with Bob and Melissa. “What time was he called? When did he arrive?”

“Uh…yeah, so Bob called Mark right around nine, because there was a huge crowd lined up outside. And Mark got there by about nine-thirty.”

“How would you characterize Mark’s attentiveness that morning?”

Stacey knit her brows. “What do you mean? Mark was very attentive.”

“Mr. Rosenthal wasn’t expecting to be working that morning, so the request might have come as a surprise. If he had participated in any late-night activities, or had gotten too little sleep, his ability to perform his job to the fullest extent may have been jeopardized.”

Stacey narrowed her eyes again. Now she was certain Ms. Lopez was trying to get her to say Mark was at fault. “Mark was totally focused, and noticed hazards and swimmers breaking rules that the rest of us missed.”

“Can you expand on that for me?”

Stacey’s nostrils flared as she recounted Mark pacing the deck with the lifeguard buoy, and how he even noticed the middle schoolers at the top of the bleachers. “Mark is a really good lifeguard. From my first day working at the pool, he helped me look for ways to prevent accidents and avoid needing to rescue swimmers.”

“I see. Let’s move on. What time did the morning events end, and how were the patrons cleared from the facility?”

This was the point where Stacey’s notes began. She read from her page. “A few minutes after twelve, Melissa was in the tower and one lap swimmer—a little old lady in a purple swimsuit—was about to get in the water. Bob came into the office, followed by Mark and Jessie.”

Stacey went on to explain how Bob and Mark discussed ways to make the next Plunge Olympics events safer, and that Bob asked her and Jessie to stay for the afternoon to be sure enough lifeguards would be working in case they had another huge crowd. She said Jessie and Mark stayed, while she ran to the pharmacy and Bob went to the city offices.

“Is it standard practice for Bob to leave unexpectedly or for a guard who is on the clock to leave the premises?”

The tape recorder wheels groaned and squeaked.

“I mean, sort of. Bob never left without Mark being there, though. And, sometimes one person would leave to get lunch or something during lap swim since there were never very many swimmers. But we wouldn’t have gone anywhere if we thought the situation wasn’t safe.”

The lawyer’s pen scratched quickly across the yellow page, writing everything Stacey said word-for-word.

“A moment ago, you said Ms. Phillips took the first lap swim shift. But you were at the end of your break when lap swim began, correct? Shouldn’t you have gone out to watch the water instead?”

“Yeah, but not always. If any of us wanted to be done lifeguarding early, we would offer to take the first shift. I just assumed that’s why Melissa went straight to the tower.”

Ms. Lopez’s eyebrows lifted as she wrote. “So, despite that Ms. Phillips was one of three guards on duty, and being paid until one o’clock, she might have been planning to leave before that?”

“Wait! That’s not what I said. It’s just, sometimes there’s no one in the water, and other guards might come in early. So—”

“So, under those circumstances, it is protocol that a guard might leave the facility before his or her shift ends.”

Stacey sighed heavily. “I guess. Maybe sometimes it happened. But it wasn’t ‘protocol.’ And Melissa and I never talked about it. I have no idea whether that was what she was thinking or not.”

“Umm hmmm.” Still writing, the lawyer flipped to the next page without slowing a beat. “And after thirty minutes, you were supposed to be up in the tower, correct? Not Jessie Thomas, who had worked much more in the previous two hours than you had. But he covered for you? Can you explain that to me?”

“Well, I…Bob—” Stacey’s words caught in her throat. She closed her eyes and reminded herself not to say anything that would get anyone in trouble. Her dry mouth offered no relief as she tried to swallow and start again. “Jessie doesn’t drive, so I offered to go get the poster supplies Bob wanted,” she said in a raspy voice.

“Do you need a glass of water, Ms. Chapman?”

“Yes, please,” Stacey breathed out. As Ms. Lopez walked across the room and poured a glass from a pitcher, Stacey lifted her arms, attempting to air-dry the sweat that had pooled beneath them. She flapped the front of her T-shirt a few times to prevent sweat patches from collecting and dripping down her chest.

The lawyer set the glass on the table in front of Stacey, then picked up her pen. “How long do you believe you were gone on your poster supply errand, Ms. Chapman?”

After several long gulps, Stacey cleared her throat again and answered. “About twenty minutes.”

“From the timeline you’ve given me, wouldn’t that still have gotten you back in time to take over for Melissa at 12:30?”

“I got back right at 12:30. But I had to go to the bathroom, so Jessie said he would cover for me until I could come outside.”

“I see,” she said, looking Stacey in the eyes a second longer than was comfortable before returning to her notes.

Did Melissa say something else in her own testimony? About the tests? She wouldn’t have. Would she?

Ms. Lopez went on. “Now, please tell me in as much detail as possible what exactly you remember happening. Begin with the moment Jessie said he would go out to lifeguard on your behalf.”

“So, like I said, I went into the bathroom at 12:30, and Jessie went out to take over for Melissa in the tower. There isn’t a clock in the bathroom, so I’m guessing it was like 12:35 when I heard a whistle and a splash.”

“Can you please clarify which guard tower Jessie was in?” she asked.

“I didn’t SEE him in tower two, but that was the tower Melissa was in, and where we always sat during lap swim. It’s the one closest to the office and bathrooms, near the middle of the pool.”

“Five minutes seems like a long time for a quick bathroom break. Can you explain your assumption?”

Stacey licked her lips before answering. “I was, um…having stomach issues.” She clenched her fists in her lap.

“Alright. So at approximately 12:35 you heard a whistle and a splash. Then what happened?”

Stacey lifted her own notes again. The paper shook as she read. “I opened the stall door and started to run out toward the deck. Before I was outside I also heard Mark yelling, but I’m not exactly sure what he said. When I pulled open the outside door, I saw Melissa standing frozen in the office doorway. I looked toward the water, and saw Jessie floating face down, blood pooling around him. I also saw an elderly swimmer at the far end holding onto a diving block, trying to lift something heavy from under the water.”

Head still down, writing quickly, the lawyer asked, “Was the ‘something heavy’ Mr. Henderson?”

“I don’t know his name. Is that the name of the man who drowned?”

“The individual who drowned is named Mr. Henry Allen Henderson. But I am clarifying whether it was Mr. Henderson that you saw the man lifting, or something else.”

“Sorry. It all happened so fast, and at first I had no idea what I was seeing. Mark was running toward Jessie with a backboard and he yelled ‘Call 9-1-1.’ Melissa went inside to call, then Mark said he needed my help.”

“When did you discover that there was a second victim?”

“After Jessie was breathing, I ran over. That’s when I realized it was a drowned swimmer that the old man was trying to hold up.”

Ms. Lopez asked, “How did you know he had already drowned at that point? Did this affect your response to offer aid?”

Stacey’s heart started racing. “No! I mean, he had to have already drowned, right?” Stacey said, her voice becoming frantic. “When I first saw him, the other swimmer had his head above water, but his—Mr. Henderson’s—eyes were open and not blinking. His lips were blue.” Stacey started to shake. “But we REALLY did everything we could to help.”

What if he WASN’T dead yet when I first went outside? Should I have gone to him first and left Mark to help Jessie on his own? Oh my god.

The lawyer looked up. “Take a moment if you need to, Ms. Chapman. I realize this must have been a very traumatic experience for you. I am only trying to get the details as clear as possible from all of the staff’s accounting of the events.”

The water in Stacey’s glass sloshed as she lifted it to her mouth for another sip. She set the glass down carefully and continued reading from her paper. “The old man was holding Mr. Henderson’s face out of the water by the time I got in to help. He appeared to already be dead, so I assisted Mark in backboarding Jessie and getting him safely out of the water before attending to the other victim.”

“Okay. Stop there for a moment, please,” the lawyer said. “Earlier you mentioned there were three swimmers in the pool. So far you have only accounted for two. Do you know where the third swimmer was when you observed the pool after exiting the restroom?”

“Uh, yeah. The lady in the purple suit.” Stacey closed her eyes and tried to think. “She was in the shallow end. Lane one. At the ladder, climbing out, I think. Later I saw her on the bleachers, and she spoke to me and the paramedic.”

“Okay, for now let’s stay with the moment you first saw the pool. Using whatever measurements are most comfortable to you—inches, feet, meters—please estimate for me the location of Jessie Thomas floating face-down in the pool, when you first saw him, as it relates to the tower he would have been in, the side of the pool where he was provided CPR, and also his proximity to where you saw Mr. Henderson’s body being held up.”

“Umm…can I—” Stacey pointed to the extra pens beside the lawyer’s notepad. She turned her notes over to the blank side of the paper. She began drawing a blocky, upside-down letter L, and marking locations on top of and around it, including a square she labeled T2 to represent the tower, and six stripes stretching the long arm of the L for the lane lines. As she moved the pen on the page, her nerves began to calm.

“So, if this is the pool, this is where the lifeguard tower Jessie would have been in is located, and this is the deep end where I saw Mr. Henderson in the water.” Stacey drew a small circle with an H in it in lane three. “I was standing here, by the guard shack, when I first saw Jessie floating around here in lane five,” She drew a circle with a J in it between the tower and the H. “Jessie was about twelve feet from the old man and Mr. Henderson. He was about twenty yards from the shallow end, and less than ten feet from the tower. It looked like Jessie dove in, maybe a little too shallow to try to go under the lane lines, when he hit the bottom.”

“Do you know how deep the water is where it looked like Jessie might have dove in?”

“It’s three-and-a-half feet deep under the tower.” Stacey could visualize the numbers on the wall in her mind. “And six feet at the far end where I saw the old man holding the guy who drowned…Mr. Henderson. So, maybe like…four or four-and-a-half feet deep?”

“Is there appropriate signage in that section of the pool that reflects that it is not safe to dive? Was safe diving depth and procedures part of your training?”

Stacey hesitated as she remembered the numerous times she and other crew members had dived into the water from one tower and swum to the other to cool off, even though they knew it was against the rules. She thought of Jessie’s and Mark’s tricks off the diving board. Jessie’s gainers off the side starting on the first day.

In her mind, Stacey could see the faded silhouettes of divers with diagonal lines over them, painted every few feet on the concrete around all of the shallow end of the pool. What depth do they end at?

“Yeah. It’s marked, and we follow safe diving procedures,” Stacey said. “I think Jessie would have just dived in automatically, though, trying to get to the swimmer quickly and avoid the lane lines, not even thinking.”

“Isn’t that exactly what your training was for, Ms. Chapman?” the lawyer asked. “So, you would think first about how to most safely protect yourself and the other swimmers if ever the need for a rescue was to arise?”

“Yeah, of course. But Jessie would have wanted to get to the man as fast as he could. And the end of the pool where I saw Mr. Henderson IS deep enough for diving. It’s just that Jessie was diving from too high up, and the lane lines were between them, and—”

“How high is the tower?”

“The platform where we stand is, like, five feet high, I think?”

“So, you are saying that from a height of at least five feet above the water’s surface Jessie dove into water approximately four feet deep?”

“Yeah. I think so, but….” Stacey squeezed her eyes shut, searching for Ms. Moreno’s words. “Sometimes the angle of the sunlight can affect how deep the water looks. Because of… reflection? No. Refraction. The lane lines would have created a vanishing point different from the direction of Mr. Henderson’s body, and that would have affected Jessie’s perspective. His depth perception would have been off.”

The woman looked up at Stacey and squinted her eyes. “Those are very technical terms, Ms. Chapman. Have you discussed this testimony with someone who may have been encouraging you to describe it this way?”

“What? Of course not!” Stacey said defensively. “I took art lessons this summer. Watercolor. And my teacher—Ms. Moreno—taught me about how light and distance and angles can affect perspective. I actually asked her more about it to help me understand why a kid I had to rescue a few weeks ago was hard to see at the bottom of the pool.”

The lawyer’s face became very stern. “There was another incident with a child needing to be rescued this summer at the facility on Seventh Street?”

Stacey’s trembling returned, and her voice lurched into a high pitch. “It was nothing like what happened Saturday with Jessie. It was just a little boy who couldn’t swim well. He went off the diving board when he shouldn’t have. It was no big deal, I promise. I got him out and he was totally fine.”

“Did you also jump from the lifeguard tower for that rescue?”

“Yeah. Of course. From Tower One. But, it’s the deep end and I went feet first.”

Ms. Lopez made a note in the margin of her paper, then sighed. “Okay, back to the incident on July 20th. You left off when…” she dragged her finger up the page and tapped the spot with her pen. “…you got in the water and decided to respond to Jessie’s injuries first. What happened next?”

“I helped Mark get Jessie onto the backboard and out of the pool.”

“Can you tell me how exactly you went about back-boarding Mr. Thomas, please?”

Stacey pointed at her drawing while she explained. “By the time I got to Mark, Jessie was face up. I’m not sure how Mark flipped him, but he was getting the backboard under Jessie’s shoulders. I helped get the rest of Jessie’s body onto the board, and started strapping his ankles and arms in place while Mark secured his head.”

“What was Ms. Phillips doing?”

“After she called 9-1-1, Melissa came back to the side of the pool. Mark told her she needed to put pressure on Jessie’s head wound once we got him out of the water, so she grabbed a towel sitting on the deck nearby.”

“Was Mr. Thomas conscious?”

“Not at first. And he wasn’t breathing.” Stacey couldn’t remember anyone checking for Jessie’s pulse, or for breath, but decided not to mention it. “Mark started chest compressions. On the third one, Jessie coughed up the water in his lungs. Mark and I tilted the backboard so he could get the water out.”

“Approximately how long were you and Mr. Rosenthal backboarding and providing CPR for Mr. Thomas?” the lawyer asked.

“It wasn’t CPR,” Stacey said. “Just chest compressions. The backboarding took maybe thirty or forty-five seconds. By the time Jessie was out of the water and breathing again, maybe two minutes had passed.”

“And for the two minutes you, Mark and Melissa were attending to Jessie, and another swimmer was in the water, alone, attempting to help Mr. Henderson?”

“Like I said, it seemed like he was already dead. But as soon as I knew Jessie was breathing, I ran as fast as I could to see if there was any way to help Mr. Henderson.”

“How was Mr. Henderson taken out of the pool?”

“Well, we only have one backboard, and he didn’t appear to have any head or neck injuries, so Mark and I pulled him out under his arms.”

“You lifted him out together? How long did it take Mr. Rosenthal to arrive so you both could attend to Mr. Henderson?”

“He swam across, and arrived just after I did.”

“But Mr. Rosenthal had been out of the water attending to Mr. Thomas beside the shallow end of the pool, correct?”

“Yes,” Stacey said.

“How did Mr. Rosenthal swim across so quickly? Did he also dive across the shallow end?”

Stacey considered this. How did Mark get there so fast? He must have dived in too, right? “I didn’t see Mark dive, and I don’t believe he would have, especially after what happened to Jessie.”

“I see.” Ms. Lopez scrutinized Stacey for a moment. “You said you and Mark ‘pulled’ Mr. Henderson from the water. My understanding is Mr. Henderson was a very large man. How were the two of you able to lift him safely out of the water on your own?”

Stacey remembered how the heft of the lifeless body kept sinking back toward the bottom of the pool. “It wasn’t easy. We had to brace ourselves with the diving blocks, and loop our arms under his, then slide him along the deck.”

“Do you believe this was the safest method for the protection of all those involved?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Stacey said, her voice small. She could hear the sound of the man’s head thumping on the deck in her mind. “He needed CPR if there was any chance of saving him. It was our best option at the time.”

“How long after Mr. Henderson was pulled from the water did it take before CPR was administered?”

“Mark began chest compressions immediately. I checked for a pulse and breathing. There were neither.”

“Was Mr. Henderson provided mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?”

“I attempted mouth-to-mouth after Mark did about fifteen compressions. No air would go in. I tried to clear his airway of any obstruction, then tried giving breath again, still with no success. Then Mark tried, and also could not get air into Mr. Henderson’s lungs. That’s why the paramedics intubated him.”

“In the interim, whenever breaths were unsuccessful–” Ms. Lopez said, but Stacey sternly cut her off.

“—Whenever a breath was not being administered, Mark was pumping Mr. Henderson’s chest. Hard. He never stopped, except when he tried to provide breath as well. Even after the paramedics arrived.”

Ms. Lopez completed those notes before asking, “How much time passed between the time chest compressions began and when the paramedics arrived, would you say?”

“Maybe ninety seconds?” Stacey said. How would I know? “I wasn’t looking at the clock.”

“Once the paramedics were on the scene, did you remain involved in the resuscitation efforts?”

“No. I told them we couldn’t get air into Mr. Henderson’s lungs and they said they would intubate. I moved out of the way, and let them take over. Mark kept doing chest compressions while two paramedics inserted the tube and pumped air with a plastic pump. When a third medic arrived, Mark helped as the four of them lifted Mr. Henderson onto a gurney. He had to be out of the puddles when they used the AED.”

“Did you witness the paramedics administering the defibrillation?” the lawyer asked.

“Yeah.”

“Were you able to determine if any of their efforts to revive Mr. Henderson were at all successful?”

“It didn’t make any difference.” Stacey envisioned the vacant eyes staring straight up at the sky. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Nothing made any difference. He was gone.”

For the next twenty minutes, Ms. Lopez asked about the ambulances, fire trucks, police officers and medics on the scene, how long it took them and Bob to arrive, where they entered and exited.

Stacey felt numb as she rubbed her eyes and cheeks, recounting details that couldn’t possibly matter. None of it would help Jessie. Or Mr. Henderson.

Nearly two hours passed before the lawyer took a deep breath, then looked Stacey directly in the eyes. “Is there any additional information you think I ought to know, Ms. Chapman? Anything that has not been covered in our conversation? Specifically, are there any factors that might have caused, or could have prevented, the incidents on July 20th? Anything that might have prevented you or other staff from responding quickly, or could have prevented the victims from receiving the best possible care?”

Stacey stared back. She knew at some point the lawyer might have found out about the pregnancy tests. Or someone could have mentioned Mark’s pills. His habit of sleeping at work. But it wasn’t going to be Stacey who told her.

Stacey said calmly, “Nothing comes to mind.”

Ms. Lopez slowly nodded as though contemplating Stacey’s words, then pressed stop on the tape recorder. She clicked the end of her pen before setting it down next to her notes. “Thank you for coming in today. If we have any further questions, someone from my office will give you a call.”

Stacey stood, and turned, leaving her own notes on the table. As she pulled open the conference room door, her eyes met Mark’s.

Mark was seated in the hall. His head was tilted back against the beige wall, and his expression was solemn. His eyes shifted toward the open conference room door, and back to Stacey again. Before Stacey could ask how he was doing, Ms. Lopez called Mark inside.