"I know, Clem."
"Am I in trouble?"
Officer Sutter was standing over us. I hadn't heard him come. He crouched down on his heels so he was at her eye level and took off his sunglasses.
"No," he said. "You're not in trouble. I'm going to need to take a statement from you and from your dad, and probably from the lifeguard and a few other folks. But no. Kansas has a Good Samaritan law that covers anybody who gives emergency care in good faith, and that's what you did. I'm sorry I made you sit there." He looked at the bag in his hand with her spent pen in it. "I'm going to have to hold onto this one for a while. As evidence."
"Evidence of what?" Clem asked.
Sutter put his sunglasses back on and looked across the deck at the empty gate.
"We'll see," he said.
Yoshiko Prosser came over a minute later with her straw hat in one hand and her phone in the other, and knelt down with some effort on the concrete beside us, and said, "Officer, I believe you'll want what's on this," and Sutter said, "Yes, ma'am, I believe I will."
I drove Clem home and made her take a hot shower, and while she was in it I called Saoirse at the operations center. I told her everything, standing in our kitchen with my hand flat on the counter. She didn't say anything for a while. I could hear the low murmur of the dispatch floor behind her, people saying numbers to each other in calm voices.