Melanie had bought some new clothes especially for the weekend, including a white muslin summer nightgown. She didn’t want her friends to perceive her as dowdy. She had put on a few pounds, and she had all good intentions of going to the gym, but her nonstop duties caring for her rambling family and unkempt household left her no time for the luxury of attending an exercise class. Even though she weighed a little more than she should, she was in good shape for a woman who had gone through childbirth five times (seven if you counted the two miscarriages between Tracy and Stella) and who had breastfed babies for a total of nearly nine years. Running after children all day long at her job as a preschool teacher kept her active. Ned liked to say “children keep you young.” If that aphorism held any truth then Melanie would be about four and not forty.
She got in line at a fruit smoothie stand and stared at the technicolor pictures of the different drinks, trying to decide which one to buy. They all looked delicious, shimmering in sherbet-shades of orange, purple, pink, and yellow. Even the green one looked appealing, but who drank a spirulina-spinach smoothie for fun?
Suddenly, a beefy man at a dining table across the way began to make choking noises as he clawed at his throat with puffy fingers. Bystanders stopped to stare at him, but no one galvanized into action to come to his aid. The overdressed jewelry-bedecked woman who shared his table squealed incomprehensibly. Melanie bolted from the fruit smoothie stand, wove her way through the paused bystanders, who acted as if shot with tranquilizer darts, and vaulted a low metal railing surrounding the dining area where the drama of the choking man continued to unfold. She dropped her large handbag unceremoniously on the ground at her feet, encircled the man with her arms, and lifted him partially out of his chair with a strong Heimlich Maneuver jolt. A hunk of ham flew out of his mouth and bounced off the squealing woman’s left boob, landing in her soup with a splash. The man coughed like an old radiator as Melanie slid him back onto his chair. If he was coughing then he was breathing. She hoped she hadn’t put her back out.
The bystanders transfixed in the walkway clapped, as if Melanie had staged the entire life-and-death episode for their benefit to relieve their travelers’ boredom.
Melanie retrieved her handbag from the floor and brushed it off absently.
The squealer came to her senses and rose from her seat to thank Melanie profusely. Melanie considered saying, “I’m a preschool teacher, ma’am, and it’s all in a day’s work.” But she restrained herself. In truth, Melanie had to take the full refresher course in CPR and emergency first aid every year to keep her teaching certification. At least she had made good use of this year’s refresher by saving the choking man from death-by-pork.
Although badly shaken by his brush with asphyxiation, the ham-eater recovered enough to thank her. She modestly disentangled herself from the encounter and hurried away from the scene. She had lost her appetite for the smoothie after seeing that piece of ham land in the soup. Honestly, they don’t pay preschool teachers enough, Melanie thought.