I’m wired a little different.
For some reason, I’m not now, nor ever have been a spectator.
If there is an accident, or other incident in my presence; I take charge of the scene and provide first aid until authorities arrive.
I have the ability to stay completely calm when others can’t.
I can keep it together, make rational decisions, exude authority, and act in the moment.
Whether it’s facing an armed man I may shoot, to pulling a passenger from a burning car.
I’ve done it.
I then usually have the shakes, fairly severely afterward.

I left most of that behind as a young man in my late 20’s. Although I’ve been involved in several incidents since I hung up my ‘Sam Browne’ and badge.
This was one of the most recent major incidents, and the direct reason we retired when we did.

I am almost 62 and I retired at 55 in July of 2017.
Well, I actually just quit.
I was given a retainer for two more months in order to be on call. I couldn’t always get a reliable internet connection on the road and I can’t take someone’s money for nothing, so I shut that down in Sept 2017.

So you are thinking, what day in July did you retire? I didn’t really retire in July 2017. I just quit going to work then…

I mentally retired on a Thursday, around 1:35 PM, December 15, 2016…

Life was good for the @The_CINC and I.
It was shortly before Christmas 2016. Tiny dancer, our fourth child and surprise baby, was a junior in college. We lived in a four thousand square foot brick rambler on 7 wooded acres, 40 miles south of Washington DC. It was our second home in what at the time was 33 yrs of marriage. We had lived there for over 22 yrs. The last and final house payment was to be due Nov 10, 2017.
It then would be all ours.

My wife, @The_CINC at the time, had achieved the highest point you can achieve as a civilian Govt Employee (GS15/15 which no longer exists) without going into the Senior Executive Service (SES). She had been offered an SES promotion at one point but turned that down in 2010. When it (SES), had been offered to her, she had been promoted to the point which it would really constitute a lateral promotion. Which would have meant, more work, more responsibility, more time away from home, for the same salary. For at least 10 years.
We knew we were probably going to Retire, so it made no sense for her to invest the time it required.
She worked for OSD, DOD, WHS (The office that runs the Pentagon, they are the ‘Landlords’) for 34 years. At one point she ran a division that had a yearly budget of $1 Billion.
She would be eligible to retire in April 2017.
We really hadn’t decided what we were going to do.
I was waiting for a top-secret NSA/DOD clearance and it was supposed to be coming through at anytime. One of my specialties was encrypted secure communications.
I was a subcontractor for IBM and they were paying $50,000 for my vetting. It had taken 2 years because I was a traveling consultant that didn’t associate with my neighbors.
I was away on travel for work all of the time. Our property was situated so that we couldn’t see any of our neighbors from our house. We never saw any of them. We never had neighborly interaction.
Once that clearance came through, I would be able to double my six figure salary.
Here we were, at the top of our earning potential, very few bills, house almost paid for, empty nest.

Life was good…

Then on Thursday, around 1:35 PM, December 15, 2016.
I was in Birmingham AL, working at the US HQ, of BBVA/Compass Bank, it had been recently acquired by a Spanish bank. I was digitizing and updating their manual and electronic bank and treasury transactions. I had been on this contract for three years. The last 10 months or so I had been mostly remote, working from my lazy boy in my basement.
They requested that I come to Birmingham for some end of the year meetings and Christmas parties.
My normal work travel schedule was; I flew in Monday mornings, getting to the office around 10:00 AM, I then would work 10 hours Monday, 12-14 Tuesday and Wednesday; 6-8 on Thursday before catching a flight home around 4:00 PM. I would have 40-45 hours of work completed in 4 days by the time I caught my flight home.

This particular Thursday, I was sitting at my ‘station’, there weren’t really ‘cubes’, just tables with 3-4” high dividers that featured connections and plugs. It was a giant open room, with fifteen foot ceilings, semi enclosed at each end by meeting rooms. My seat was at one end near the meeting rooms. Behind me to my right was a large opening which led to a spacious elevator lobby which was part of large open multi-floor Atrium.
The bank of elevators comprised a divider for another large working area just behind it.
The area could easily contain 150-200 people.

I had just come back from lunch. I was at my seat, trying to wrap a few things up, before heading to the airport. A woman calmly walks behind me asking
“Does anybody know first aid?”
I stood up
“Excuse me?!?”
She pointed to the elevator lobby behind her.
So I walked that way to see what was happening…

I am a trained first responder. I was a uniformed police officer at The Pentagon and I was a FFX County VA police officer. I was also a trained BSA leader with extensive back country first aid training.
So I went to see what, if anything, I could do.

As I entered the elevator lobby I saw an extremely obese white male lying partially on his left side.
He weighed at least 350 lbs.
The skin on both his face and hands was translucent.

He had been getting off of one of the elevators, coming back from a ‘Christmas Lunch’, and collapsed.

A woman was by his side rubbing one of his hands, talking to him.
Another man, standing near his feet, was watching, looking concerned.

I looked around, there were about 10 people nearby, just watching.

“MA’AM!”
I startled the woman to look at me…
“We have to treat him for shock!”
That was the first thing I could think of, get him flat on his back, and elevate his feet. Get blood into his core.
It had the added benefit of giving these two folks something to do, while also getting them out of my way.
I requested that the gentleman get a foot stool from an office nearby, and then I asked the woman to find a blanket or coat to cover him.

Once they walked away on their missions, I began to assess the situation.
I got down on my knees, behind him, and pulled him over so that he was lying flat on the floor. As he was on laying his back, his head was to my left, his feet were to my right. The elevators were to my front, with a large opening behind me, one to my left, and the elevator lobby to my right.

The movement of his body, when I rolled him over, told me he was dead.
I checked his eyes, they were starting to ‘glaze’.
He had no carotid pulse.
I ripped open his shirt and tshirt to his waist.
I placed my right ear on his chest, allowing some weight to feel movement.
No heartbeat, no respiration.
Oh well, too late.
He’s dead.
I’ve seen, and handled corpses in various conditions.
When you find a corpse.
You just know.
I was going to get up, and walk away when I heard what sounded like a woman sobbing.
I looked up from the now corpse, and to my shock, I was in a semi circle of about 40 ft in diameter. With the one elevator bank to my front as the anchor.
There had to be 200 or more people.
Watching me.
I didn’t know him, many of these people did.
The only sound was the cycling of the elevator.
My first thought was “Shit, now what?!?”
I looked down at him, I’m not sure if I sighed, but I feel as if I most likely did.
I measured with my fingers to position my hands on his chest, and began CPR compressions.
If you’ve never actually performed CPR, the first compression breaks the ribs away from the sternum. I’m not sure how loud it actually is, but it sounded and felt to me, like cracking your knuckles loudly.
Then, with every compression the cartilage grinds and clicks.

My chest compressions, and the fact he had just had a large lunch, combined to force food out of his mouth. A man dropped to his knees to my left and asked
“Aren’t you supposed to do breaths?”
I looked at the man and thought to myself “He’s dead, doesn’t matter!”
I actually said
“Turn his head, sweep his mouth, and knock yourself out.”
I wasn’t going to put my mouth on his, with partially digested food on his face, when I knew he was dead.
If I’d needed to give him mouth to mouth, to save his life, I would have done what I had to do.

A woman hurriedly dropped to her knees across from me, she had one of the new AED machines that had been recently installed.
She opened the case, and froze.
She didn’t know what to do, where to begin.
I’m still giving compressions, the guy is giving breaths.
I could see the instructions, so I began walking her through using the machine.
“Pull the two electrodes from the packages.” I said calmly.
She looked at me, I said again “Pull the two electrodes from the packages.”
She took them out of their sealed plastic envelopes, one in each hand, stopped and looked at me again.
“Strip the plastic (from the adhesive). Place the one in your right hand on his chest, away from my hands (I’m still doing CPR) the one in your left down on his side.”
She did as I instructed, and waited for instructions.
I was getting tired.
“Hit the ‘button’ please…”
She pressed the AEDs button, and the ‘universal female’ voice began a countdown to the ‘shock’.

“In Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
One…
Beeeeeeeep!”

At one, I stopped, and lifted my arms in the air as if I were signaling a touchdown.
I don’t know why.
As soon as the jolt finished ‘seizing’ the body, I restarted my compressions.
She looked at me.
“Hit it again..”
The countdown began.
At one, I stopped, and lifted my arms in the air as if I were signaling a touchdown.
I still don’t know why.
As soon as the jolt finished ‘seizing’ the body, I restarted my compressions.

Dammit, I’m fat (295+), I’m out of shape, and no, round doesn’t count.
I’m a sedentary IT consultant, on an expense account.
If the damn ‘Rescue Squad’ doesn’t show up soon, I just may be laying beside him.
Thankfully, just then, the elevator doors opened, and a group of EMTs exited with a stretcher. One of which replaced the woman at the AED. He put on latex gloves, and we locked eyes. He was ready to take over.
I stopped, stood up, and tried to walk back to my work station.
The crowd was five to six deep, they parted, to let me through.
I don’t know if anyone said anything to me or not.

Once back at my work area, I packed up laptop, and readied to leave.
I then headed out.
As luck would have it, as I went to a different bank of elevators, the EMTs decide to use the same elevators, as me. Here they came, pushing the gurney, one of them, on the guy, still giving compressions.
I took the stairs three flights instead.
Of course, as I entered the lobby, the EMTs with the gurney exited the elevator.
Different guy on his chest this time.
They pushed the gurney and its two passengers outside to be loaded.
The fellow that was ‘giving breaths’ approached me.
“Man! We really stepped forward!”
He put out his hand to shake mine.
I looked at him, and just turned away to go to my rental.

I drove in silence to get fuel and to turn in my rental at the Airport.
I didn’t say more than three words before I arrived at my ‘Gate’.
Just as I arrived, my phone buzzed, it was my ‘boss’ at the bank.
“Yeah” I answered
“I just wanted you to know, he didn’t make it.” He said simply
“Yeah, I knew he was dead before I started CPR, but thanks.”
I then called my wife, @The_CINC.
She was still at her desk.
I gave her a replay and ended the conversation with “I don’t want to die in a ‘Cube-farm’, let’s retire.”

Truth be told, I saw myself on that floor in a few years.
I lived an unhealthy lifestyle.
I sat at a keyboard without moving 12-14 hours at a stretch, and ate way too much food.
I’d been over 300 lbs (325) in 2004, and ‘flirted’ with 300 since I got below again.
It had to stop, and we didn’t really need the money.
@The_CINC retired with 34 years of ‘Federal Service’ the last day of April, 2017. The first day she was eligible.
We went to closing on the sale of our house July 25, 2017.
I told the Bank, I would be quitting my remote support effective 30 September 2017.

They (the bank) along with my employer attempted to hold some type of ceremony.
I shut that down.
If he would have lived, it would have been a celebration of his survival.
He died, and it would just be for the purpose of stroking somebody’s ego.

Picture: The Statue of Vulcan, ‘God of the Forge’ Birmingham AL