She forced herself to take a deep breath, and it tripped that switch inside her that made her calm in emergencies. She had no idea why she was like that, but she would take advantage of it when it happened. Snagging her phone, she looked up CPR quickly, then rolled the boy over onto his side, hoping some of the water would drain out of his lungs. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t’ve breathed much of it in.
Putting the phone on speaker, she dialed her sister, needing to get him off the shoreline and somewhere warm. While she spelled out the problem, she rolled the boy onto his back again, very carefully, and began to apply CPR. She’d never been more grateful for her twin’s strange ability, or her own, when her twin popped into view in the shadow of a tree after only one cycle of compressions.
His skin was still frighteningly cold. While her twin pulled the jacket tighter around his body, she checked the shore of the icy lake for his clothes, coming up with a pair of jeans and a sweater. No shoes. She hurried back to her sister, and the two linked hands, crouched over his still body, while her dark-haired twin teleported them all back to her apartment.
The dark twin hurried off immediately to find some granola bars and hot drinks, and the red-haired twin grabbed all the blankets off her couch and spread them over the boy. Then she bolted to the bathroom, pausing only to wind her soaking braid up into a bun and pin it there, before grabbing a towel to put under his head.
Then she started CPR again. Maybe a minute had passed. Thirty compressions, carefully measured, two breaths. Repeat. Pray.
Finally, long after she’d lost track of how long she’d been trying to save his life, he sputtered, and coughed up what seems to be half a lake.
As the twins fussed over him, frantically trying to save him from the cold that was eating him alive, he lay still…not so much as a flinch indicating he was alive at all. If it hadn’t been for his faint heartbeat or his shaking torso, anyone would’ve said he was dead.
Some colour returned to his pale face after he’d been wrapped in the coat for some time. The warmth was slowly brining him back, sparking some life back into his frozen features. It wasn’t until the CPR, however, that his eyes snapped open, alert and terrified.
He immediately began to cough up the water he’d swallowed, soaking the floor around him in the stuff. This went on for a few seconds. Each time he thought it was over he’d all of a sudden splutter out another mouthful of the lake.
Finally, it was over. He was awake and, despite the terror the leaked into his expression, he was relieved to be alive. He opened his mouth to speak, wiping away some of the thrown up water off of his chin “I-I…” he paused, attempting to stop himself shaking so much so that he wouldn’t stammer his words. “Where am I? W-what happened?” He tried to pull himself onto his feet but simply didn’t have the energy to move.
Two faces, identical green eyes but framed by different-coloured hair, leaned over him. The dark-haired twin gently pushed him back to the floor; the red-headed one murmured, “Sshh. Don’t try to move yet. You were drowning. I pulled you out and we brought you back to my place.” She pulled the blankets a little higher on him, where he’d dislodged them trying to sit up.
“I’m Winter. This is Summer,” the other one chimed in. Letting him go, she pressed a steaming cup on her twin, insisting in a quiet voice that Summer had to recover as well from her dip in the icy lake. When Summer finally gave in, Winter fetched more towels, mopping the floor hastily and draping one over her twin’s hair.
Summer spoke to him quietly, in between sips. “How do you feel? Can you feel your hands and feet yet?” She nodded to the bundle on the couch, his jeans and sweater. “I couldn’t find all your clothes.” That came accompanied by a duck of the head and what might be a faint blush, suggesting as it did his nearly-nude state.