I was doubled with Aaron, and he, Chris, Scott and I were all sitting up at the tower goofing off and laughing and having a good time. All of a sudden a little boy ran up to us and started yelling about his parents having found a body out in the water. Absolutely zero thinking time, Scott, Chris and I jumped out of the tower and just took off running. We fucking ran... I've never ran like that in my life, while I called it into the radio and told my supervisors that we were going to be commencing CPR.
And then I turned and I saw the man. Four people were pulling him by his arms and legs and he was ... a fucking person. A real fucking person, this was no CPR Annie, this was no Choking Charlie, this was a real man, with real foam and real blood spilling from his mouth. I panicked, I did, and they pulled him up to Scott and I and I handed him my CPR face shield. Because I knew I couldn't put my mouth on this man. Scott and I rolled the man over and foamy brown stuff poured out and there was blood EVERYWHERE and there were people yelling and I could see the supervisor's truck rolling towards us, trying to avoid hitting the many onlookers. When we felt he had been drained enough, we set him on his back and Scott put the mask on his mouth and gave him two rescue breaths. I was standing by for the compressions when Scott repositioned the man's head and tried again. I just stood there, shaking, looking down at this man completely dead, blue, bloated. His eyes were rimmed in some sort of gummy blue slime and he was staring up at the sky. It felt so strange to touch him: he was an inanimate object and I felt wrong for thinking such.
Chris and Brandon, our supervisors, finally ran up and Chris screamed at me to help. By then, Scott had finished his rescue breaths and although I didn't want to- God knows I didn't want to touch that dead man- I bent down next to him and placed my hands above his sternum and began the compressions. I could hear the water bubbling in his mouth as I compressed and choked out, "one, two, three..." until 15, and Scott bent down and gave him breaths. Chris and Brandon were attempting to get the bag mask out, and Scott got up to help them while I was halfway through my compressions. "No..." I thought... and sure enough, I was done with my compressions and they were still setting up. I had to bend down and grab this man's face, tilt his head back, and place my mouth on the face mask. When I blew, brown water and blood oozed out of the sides of his mouth, and it felt as if I was blowing into a water cup with a straw. I'm not even sure if the breaths went in. And then I switched to compressions, and the mask was there, and none of them had to touch him but me getting death all over my fucking hands and shirt and every time I took a pause I noticed that nearly a hundred people were crowding around us, morbidly enjoy this horrible show.
Brandon kept trying to relieve me: he told me he could help, and I didn't want to... I wanted to make up for lost time, I didn't want to be the weak one, I didn't want to leave this man's side because this was not practice, this was a real dead man with real blood and real slime in his eyes and he was DEAD he was fucking DEAD at my feet and my compressions were creating a pulse... I didn't want to stop even for a second. And then Chris and Brandon shoved this other contraption down his throat, nearly to his lungs, and used that for breathing, while I sat next to him compressing, compressing, and trying not to cry.
And the ambulance showed up and the EMTs filed out and I stepped back and everybody was staring at me. I looked at my hands and I knew there was DEATH on them and this man was NOT coming back... and he didn't, he died right there on the floor of East Beach even with all those people trying, even after I did all I could, even after Scott, even after the supervisors, even after the paramedics. And I ran back to my tower where Aaron was waiting and burst into tears. I had never seen a dead man before today and I didn't realize there would be that SMELL and I will never forget his eyes as long as I fucking live.
And I cried, and people tried to cheer me up, and some man made me take a picture with his baby son ("Look, she's a hero!"), and I went to a debriefing with counselors and nothing they could say could erase those eyes from my mind, nothing could make me erase the terror I felt or the feel of dead skin or the smell of rotting flesh or seeing the bloated belly of a man drowned. And I will never forget the people pushing each other in order to see this man at my feet dying when I would have given anything to run away.