I went out the side gate instead of over the wall, because the wall would have put me downwind, and I ran along the outside of the block wall toward the maintenance gate, which Kenton had left open behind him. I could see it before I got there: a faint, yellowish-green haze hanging low around the pump house, almost invisible in the hard light, like heat shimmer that had picked up a tint. The pump house door was open. It had been propped open with one of the blue jugs, lying on its side. And on the gravel about ten feet from the door, on his hands and knees, was Everett Hollister, coughing.
It wasn't an ordinary cough. It was the cough of somebody whose airway is trying to close, a wet, barking, desperate sound, each one cut off before it finished. He was making the same kettle whistle my son had made on the pool deck a year before, only deeper, and slower, and worse.
You're supposed to stay out of a chemical gas cloud. Every safety course I've ever taken says so. Don't become the second victim. But I could see the wind, a little hot wind out of the southwest that was pushing the haze toward the pool and away from the maintenance gate, and Everett was at the edge of it, not inside it, and I took a breath and held it, and I went and got him.
He was heavy. He was a big man and he was not helping. I got my arms under his armpits from behind and dragged him backward, his heels scraping two long lines in the gravel, maybe forty feet, until we were out the gate and on the asphalt of the access road, upwind, in the thin shade of a mesquite. I let go of my breath and took another, and the air tasted like a swimming pool somebody had lit on fire, but it was air.
I sat him up. Sitting up is better than lying down when you can't breathe. His face was gray-red and wet, his eyes streaming. He had a hand pressed flat to his chest.
"Mr. Hollister," I said. "Everett. Look at me. I'm Mireya. I'm a respiratory therapist. You inhaled something. I'm going to get you help. Slow breaths if you can."
He looked at me. There was nothing in his eyes but fear.
I took out my phone and dialed 911. My hands weren't shaking. I've noticed this about myself over the years, that they don't shake during, only after. The phone rang once and a woman answered.
"Nine-one-one, what is the address of your emergency?"
"Saguaro Bend subdivision, Cholla Springs. The community pool on East Mariposa Lane, behind the clubhouse, at the pump house. Access from the maintenance road off Ocotillo. I have an adult male, seventy-one, with a chemical inhalation exposure, I think chlorine gas, possibly from mixing pool chemicals. He's conscious, severe respiratory distress, wheezing, coughing. There's a visible cloud near the building."
"Okay, ma'am, I'm sending fire and medical to you now. Stay on the line with me. What's your name?"