Chapter 22
LAYLA
After Santiago’s pep talk on Monday, I was happy I hadn’t put in for a transfer after all.
The rest of the week had gone smoothly, even if the training was continuing to get harder by the day, and thanks to the fact that he kept treating me exactly the same as he did everyone else, no one seemed to be any the wiser about what had happened between us.
Since we’d talked about it, it also didn’t sting as much now when he treated me that way. He was only doing what he had to do, and I understood that now.
At the same time, however, putting it behind us was not going well for me. Every night when I closed my eyes, his face was all I could see. I dreamed about his eyes, his voice in my ears, and his body moving with mine.
When he led us to the pool after our run on Friday morning, though, I groaned internally. A day with him in swimming trunks was not what I needed right now, but it seemed that was what I would be getting.
I could practically taste the anticipation in the air as we gathered next to the pool, wondering what was in store for us today. Santiago smirked when he caught a few people glancing at the tarp-covered helicopter.
“We’re not doing another crash simulation today,” he said to the relief of most, but to my disappointment. “While we will do a few more simulations before our time together is done, today we’ll be focusing on rescue training.”
He pointed at a line of dummies I hadn’t noticed before that were lying beside one another at the other end of the pool.
“The other instructors and myself are going to be drowning victims. You will have to dive in, retrieve us, tow us back to the side, and then you’re going to perform CPR on the dummies. ”
I smiled, but I hid it by looking down. My dad and I used to do rescue training for fun during the summer in our pool at home. At first, he’d thought I was kidding when I asked him to show me how to do it, but when he realized I was serious, he was over the moon.
It had been something we could do together that we were both interested in, and we’d made some good memories while he’d taught me everything he knew. As I was thinking back to those days, Santiago spoke again.
“At this point, you’ve been over the theory surrounding CPR hundreds of times and you’ve practiced on our dummy friends before, but this is the first time you’ll be running through a scenario from beginning to end.”
A few people around me nodded, and Santiago grinned.
“Drowning victims are never calm when you reach them, unless they’ve either already blacked out or already died.
When you reach us, we will run through various scenarios.
At times, we’ll be combative. People in that situation are often scared, for obvious reasons, and they’re not always thinking clearly.
For others, our condition will be much more dire, and that will be when you have to resuscitate your dummy once you get us to shore. ”
He pointed at the bleachers. “You will be waiting at the top of those. On Andrews’s signal, we will start drowning and you will have to reach us as fast as you can. You are not to move from your seat until you get the signal, though. No waiting halfway down so you can get to your victim faster.”
Another round of nods. He clapped his hands and motioned to the instructors lining the pool.
“Those of us who are not drowning at any given moment will be watching you closely. We’ll be looking at your speed, your technique, and the way you interact with your victim if conscious, as well as how you treat them when they’re unconscious. ”
Glancing at the instructors, he waited until he received a nod from each of them before he turned back to us. “Okay, cadets. To the bleachers. On Andrews’s whistle, you’re going in one at a time.”
Since I was standing near the back of the formation, I was one of the first to reach the top of the bleachers. Some of the others hadn’t even started climbing up yet, and as I turned to take my seat, I was just in time to see Santiago pulling his T-shirt off over the top of his head.
My pulse started hammering between my legs, and I swore he was moving in slow motion. Everything else zoomed out of focus as he revealed inch after inch of his gloriously tanned, ripped torso.
I glanced around to make sure no one was watching me watch him, but I was also careful about making it look like I was just staring absently off into the distance.
Everyone else was talking quietly among themselves, though, and the instructors were either getting things ready or taking off their own shirts.
Santiago was chatting to one of the other instructors as he got his shirt all the way off and handed it over to the other guy.
Meanwhile, I was doing my best not to drool.
He had his back to me, and I couldn’t stop staring at the toned ropes of muscle there that rippled as he moved or the way his trim hips twitched forward just a tiny bit when he laughed.
Holy mother of Moses. Why does he have to be so damn sexy?
What made it worse was that I now knew exactly what it felt like to have that body pressed against mine. I knew the weight of him when he collapsed down on me after he’d come and I remembered what it had felt like to have those hips fitted between my legs.
Jameson suddenly dropped down beside me. “You worried about this?”
I blinked a few times before discreetly pressing my legs together to try to get rid of that pulsating beat of my heart between them. “No, I’m not too worried. You?”
“Nah.” He smiled as he looked out at the pool. “I’m kind of looking forward to it, actually. It’s been a long time coming. I’m ready for this.”
“Same here,” I said confidently. “How are you guys holding up after this week?”
He shrugged. “We all knew it was going to get harder as it went on. Monday was rough, but after that, he seemed to get a little bit calmer. I heard from Matt that it was Pete who brought that woman back. He also told Matt that he wasn’t proud of what he did to the guys who caught them.
I don’t blame Cortez for being hard on us after that. I heard Pete bit someone.”
Since I didn’t want him to know what Santiago had told me, I stared at Jameson blankly. “You’re not pissed at Pete for putting us all in that position?”
“Nah.” He chuckled. “I’d rather take the punishment than have anyone else fall out at this point. We’re a unit now, you know? I’d take the punishment any day.”
I wondered if that applied to punishment for something I might do, too, but I didn’t ask. Instead, he and I both turned our attention back to the pool when Santiago dove in and the whistle blew.
Matt jumped up first, racing to our instructors’ aid and making it through the exercise in record time. His dummy was pronounced to be alive after he did CPR for a few moments, and then he smirked as he went to sit on the other end of the bleachers.
One by one, we went through the same exercise. It was another tough day. One of the instructors had committed to his role so much that he nearly drowned Mel in the process. As far as I was concerned, he was the one who’d been the most realistic victim so far.
My father had told me that victims were often so panicked when you reached them that a rescuer was in danger themselves. When it was my turn, I was glad I had the same instructor—especially since it meant I wouldn’t have to touch Santiago while he was only wearing his trunks.
I hit the water gracefully, in my opinion, then cut through it as fast as I could but stopped about a foot away to get the instructor’s attention.
According to Dad, real victims were often disoriented in this scenario and it was easy to startle or scare them if you just wrapped your arm around them straight off the bat like some of the other cadets had done.
After drawing his attention to me, I gave the instructor a gentle smile. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you. I’m going to put my arm just under your armpits now and bring you to shore.”
The whole exercise of getting his attention took less than twenty seconds, but he was much calmer and more compliant with me as I towed him to the side of the pool than he had been with any of the others.
Since he was alert and not in need of CPR, that was the end of it.
I checked him over briefly, but then I smiled and blushed when he played the role of a very enthusiastic, very grateful victim and hugged me.
“My hero,” he said with a laugh.
As I walked away, some of the other instructors burst into applause and Santiago even gave me a pat on the back.
“Is Perkins really the only one who’s been paying any attention in class?
A person in distress is still a person and you have to treat them as such.
You can’t wrestle someone into submission in the middle of a turbulent ocean, but you also can’t always have a nice chat like she just did.
What you need to do is to find the happy middle. ”
With that, the next cycle started and we did it all over again. After each one of my turns, I got complimented by the instructors, and at the end, I definitely felt like I’d been the strongest of our class for this part of our training.
The victorious feeling surging through me was short lived, though. Santiago stepped forward again when the exercise was done, and unfortunately, he had his shirt back on and a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Alright, cadets. This has been a hard week. A long one. Your weekend starts now. We’ll see you back here on Monday morning.” His expression turned hard. “Don’t bring anyone back to Station with you, got it?”
Everyone agreed, and Pete looked green around the gills as he nodded enthusiastically. While the rest of them hurried off, excited and already making plans, my nose scrunched up. I hadn’t realized we’d have the whole weekend off again.
And once again, I had no idea what I was going to do with myself. My parents had gone away to some convention, so I wouldn’t even be able to see them for lunch again, but more than that, I really just wanted to get away.
So while I had no idea what I was going to do, I did know that I refused to stay here. As the others left and Santiago followed after them, I watched him go, wondering what his plans for the weekend were and if there was any chance that he’d let me crash them.