It’s the skill no civilian hopes to have to use. If someone needs CPR, it’s about as bad as it can get: their heart is already stopped, it isn’t properly beating and will stop, or they aren’t breathing so even a normally beating heart will stop. One of the EMS trainers told us not to be concerned when we performed the chest pumps and felt crunching under our hands – that’s just the cartilage between the ribs breaking. I’d heard of this, but the next thing he said did shock me. “What do you do if someone’s rib pokes out?” Just keep going.

Even though CPR isn’t accurately portrayed in most movies, mostly to heighten drama, it’s still a pretty drastic process. You essentially are doing the work of a beating heart through layers of skin, muscle, bone, cartilage…and that requires a lot of force, force that necessarily damages some tissues. But if someone isn’t breathing, you really can’t make them worse then they already are. As my dad said when I told him about the training experience, “You can’t kill a dead person.”

Even though, as I said, I really hope I never have to use this training – because if I ever did need to, that person would already be in pretty bad shape – but I’m very glad I got the opportunity to learn. Being prepared to help is part of being a good citizen. This goes beyond just ability to help: every student who came to those sessions was making a commitment to their communities by effectively saying, “I will reach out to my neighbor in need.” It is heartening to me to see that many of my peers came out to learn CPR and be there for the next person in need.