PART 2
Trent called 911.
Mr. Fitz didn’t wait for the ambulance.
“Aspirin,” he said to the crowd. “Who has aspirin? Regular strength.”
Mrs. Kaplan dug a bottle out of her purse. He made me chew one.
Then he turned to the firefighters from Engine 14.
“Your rig has a defibrillator. Get it.”
Two of them were already running.
I don’t remember the next part. They told me later.
My heart stopped right there on the sidewalk in front of the bus stop.
Mr. Fitz started chest compressions on the snow. Counting out loud. Steady. When the firefighters came back with the defibrillator, he told them exactly where to put the pads.
One shock.
Then my heart started again.
The ambulance arrived four minutes later. Mr. Fitz rode with me, still giving orders.
When they wheeled me into the hospital, the cardiologist on call looked up at him and froze.
“Dr. Fitzgerald?”
He’d trained her. Fifteen years earlier.
She put a stent in my artery that afternoon. Ninety-nine percent blocked. They called it “the widowmaker.”
“Without what he did on that sidewalk,” she told my daughter, “your mother wouldn’t be here.”
I woke up two days later. Mr. Fitz was sitting in the chair by my bed, reading a medical journal.
“You owe me a loaf of rye,” he said.
Then he told me his story.
Six years ago, his wife got sick. He spent everything they had trying to save her. When she died, he stopped going to work. He stopped answering the phone. He lost the house. Then he lost everything else.
“I didn’t feel like a doctor anymore,” he said. “I didn’t feel like anything. Then a woman at a bus stop started bringing me bread every night and calling me by my name.”
Meanwhile, a customer had filmed my firing on her phone. The whole thing. “Go feed your bums on your own time.” The receipts on the counter.
Then she posted it next to the sidewalk video.
It was seen nine million times.
Corporate fired Trent within a week.
They called and offered me his job.
I said no.
Because old Mr. Hartwell called me first.
He’d seen the video too. He was furious. He bought back the little building on Liberty Avenue, and he asked me to run it with him.
We reopened in March.
The firefighters from Engine 14 came to the ribbon cutting.
Mr. Fitz did too. Clean-shaven. A new coat. His old colleagues at the hospital had helped him find an apartment. He’s teaching CPR classes now, every Saturday, in the back room of our bakery. Free.
The staff basket is back by the door. “Nothing good goes in the dumpster.”
And there’s a brass plaque on the bench at the bus stop outside.
“Reserved for anyone who needs a loaf of bread. Ask for Celia.”
THE END.
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You never know who you’re being kind to. Or who will be kneeling beside you when you need it most.
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