Florida Knight by Blair Bancroft

Author:Blair Bancroft [Bancroft, Blair]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kone Enterprises
Published: 2012-09-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

The search was short. They’d all seen the performer fall straight down from the stage. Kate was at the forefront of the mass of willing hands surrounding the tank as Michael and the other actor hoisted the young man’s inert body up out of the sucking goop. The two men, supporting the third, looked like some nightmare creature out of a horror film, a brown amorphous mass lumbering through waist-high mud without visible means of locomotion.

“Hose. Behind the stage,” the actor gasped as they reached the side of the tank. Several young men in the audience took off at a run.

Kate and two other spectators relieved Michael and the actor of their slippery burden, hoisting the inert performer over the edge, carefully lowering him to the ground. Fortunately, the hose was equipped with a spray nozzle. Kate set to work clearing the young man’s nose and mouth. Handkerchiefs appeared, passed hand to hand from people in the crowd. From the unconscious actor, however, there was no sign of life. Forty seconds, maybe sixty, since he’d cleared the tank. How long in the mud before that?

A hand, dripping mud, thrust past her, checking for a pulse. Michael’s decisive voice rang in her ear. “He’s not breathing, Kate. “You know how to pump his chest? Good. I’ll do the mouth-to-mouth.”

“Your face!” Kate handed him the hose and the last clean handkerchief.

As Michael dashed water over his head, he suffered his second attack of déjà vu for the day. “Did anyone call 911?” he shouted as he shook water out of his hair, scrubbed the handkerchief across his face.

“I did,” “Yes!” chorused several voices from the crowd.

Michael nodded his satisfaction, squirted water into his mouth, spat a dirty stream onto the ground, repeated the process. “Okay, let’s do it,” he said to Kate.

While the unconscious actor’s partner hovered like a black wraith over the proceedings, Michael and Kate performed CPR. A few minutes later, as the EMS crew made its way through the burgeoning crowd, they were rewarded by a gasp, a faint stirring of life. “Okay,” Michael breathed on a gusty sigh. For a moment before the professionals took over, he and Kate stared at each other above the performer’s mud-covered body.

“Damned golf cart,” Michael grumbled twenty minutes later as he and Kate took turns hosing each other off.

“Huh?”

“They brought one for Mark. At the fair in Manatee Bay. I wouldn’t let them touch him. But there’s no way to get an ambulance in here. I have to admit the idea of a stretcher on a golf cart isn’t such a bad idea.”

Kate couldn’t think of an adequate response. Although the young man on the way to the ER was the victim, Michael had not exactly had a good day either. No matter how tough a façade he put on, Kate knew the tournament had hurt. Watching his brother’s friends perform the same acts that had caused Mark’s injury must have been torture. And now . . . finding himself responsible for yet another life.

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