By Kevin S. Giles

Commotion from a crooning bear named Billy Bob and his band’s clashing symbols hid the first cries of distress. I didn’t expect to encounter a dying toddler at ShowBiz Pizza.

I had gone there with my family for lunch. We were somewhere in Kansas City several years ago.

As the girls watched Billy Bob and his cacophonous crew in the back room, I went to the men’s room. I heard wailing. It was high-pitched and mournful.

A hallway led to the front of the restaurant, separated from the band room by a solid wall. When I got there, I saw a woman running from table to table, screaming for help. She held a girl about 2 years old. The girl was blue. Her tiny arms swung lifelessly.

“Holy Teresa Mother of God, please help my baby!” the mother pleaded to patrons who stared at her, dumbfounded, their mouths full of pizza.

Find Kevin's books on Amazon (and leave a review, please!)

A girl in a ShowBiz uniform stepped in front of me. “That baby is dead, you know,” she said stonily.

I asked if anyone had called 911. She said no. “Do it now!” I ordered.

Seconds before I reached the mother, a young construction worker took her child, attempting to revive her. The man, a twenty-something, pushed on the girl’s back. He thought she was choking. Nothing happened. Together we put the girl on the floor. She had blonde curly hair. Her lips were purple, her eyes squeezed tight. I thought she was dead.

A few months earlier I had taken CPR classes. The instructor had told us, “Pay close attention to details because sometime, when you least expect it, an emergency will happen, and you will need to save a life.”

I had learned the importance of clearing airways to check for obstructions. I also knew from the class that only fingertips must be used on a small child’s chest to avoid crushing ribs.

As I knelt over the girl, the mother’s relentless sobbing filled the room. The construction worker cradled the girl’s head with rough hands familiar to outside work. I had a fleeting thought that he, like me, probably had daughters. Little girls for whom we’d do anything to save.

I opened her mouth, feeling inside for objects that might cause choking. It was clear except for mucus that I wiped away. I began the regimen of alternating chest compressions and breathing into her mouth. More shoes appeared around us as people watched, silently.

I recall feeling dread. Dread that I missed a step. Dread that I might hurt her. Dread that the little girl wouldn’t wake up. There’s no digital measurement in those circumstances that says, “What you’re doing is working.” Or, “You are doing the procedure correctly.”

About two minutes later, one of the girl’s eyelids popped open. Seconds later, so did the other. The girl stared back at me. Her eyes were blue sparkling marbles. She shuddered. Her chest rose as her lungs took in air. She didn’t look scared, but calm, as she watched two strange men leaning over her.

Sirens approached. Emergency responders surrounded me. One fitted an oxygen mask over the girl’s face. The mother fell to the floor beside her. She prayed aloud as she caressed her daughter’s face. I stood and shook hands with the construction worker.

I went back to Billy Bob and his band. It was noisy in that room. My family asked where I had gone for so long. I said I had revived a young girl. They looked skeptically on this admission. I’m a storyteller, after all, but some things I don’t make up. This incident was real. I had a hard time believing it myself.

We were eating pizza when a ShowBiz employee, an older woman, came to the back room to find me. “The mother wants you to know she thanks you for what you did,” the employee said, explaining the mother had left in the ambulance.

Then my family understood.

I’ve reflected on that incident many times over the years. It was a snapshot in time that came and went like the snap of a camera shutter. I never knew the girl’s name, or her mother’s, or where they lived. I often wondered if the girl would have survived without resuscitation. Did she choke on something she ate? Was she epileptic or suffering from some other condition I didn’t understand? What if I hadn’t heard the mother’s wailing? Would the girl have died?

What I do know, for certain, is that I reacted automatically. Our three daughters were young girls then. I always hoped someone would run to help them if they were hurt or lost or suddenly stopped breathing. It disgusted me that people in the front of that restaurant did nothing to help the frantic mother, save the one construction worker. My mother-in-law, a nurse, was in the back room with my wife and girls. She would have come to help in a heartbeat had she heard the commotion. My wife, a teacher with boundless love for children, would have come also.

I’ve always believed that helping people in distress comes with the privilege of occupying space on Earth.

That said, we all know that rescues come in degrees of danger. Performing CPR on a victim is much different from dramatic emergency situations involving water or fire, when rescuers who make split-second decisions, risk becoming victims themselves.

When I was a boy, a neighbor and prominent businessman in my town escaped from a crashed and burning helicopter. The pilot was injured and trapped inside. The neighbor suffered permanent disfiguring burns to his face and hands when he jumped into the flames to rescue the pilot.

Now that’s true courage and defined heroism.

Lately I pay closer attention to rescues in the news. A 15-year-old boy climbed up the wall of a burning house to save a mother and her children trapped in a second-story bedroom. A girl on her way to school jumped into a frigid pond to save a drowning driver in a submerged car. Neighbors come running to stop dog attacks. Strangers climb into mangled cars to begin first aid. Ordinary citizens resuscitate heart attack victims. In the wave of mass shootings across our nation, stories abound about people in Las Vegas and elsewhere who became on-the-spot medics and others who made heroic stands to draw murderous fire away from others.

In all of these instances, other people stood by and watched.

I’ve tried to understand the psychology behind human inaction. I’ve concluded that the “fear of getting involved” is sometimes the fear of not knowing what to do. Some people don’t think they’re qualified to intervene. Others are so conditioned by the onslaught of violence and misfortune they view in films that they don’t grasp a real tragedy unfolding before them.

Understandably, many people are scared. Who among us will risk injury or death to save someone in peril?

In the years I spent as a news reporter I became familiar with tragedy. I saw it repeatedly in my coverage of law enforcement and the criminal courts. People perish, often senselessly, when nobody reacts to save them in those critical moments between life and death. Others survive because of strangers’ selfless acts of kindness.

A sheriff I’ve known and respected told me, “When something bad happens, you never know who will step up. Often, it’s the people you would least expect.”

Receive Kevin's free e-letter! (In return you get his story, 'The Girl Behind the Glass')

Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.