Bill. Inspection Notice. Bill. Second copy of a textbook for notes. A questionable package or two for her roommates (her bet was on clothes from an online store). A few bits and pieces of advertising material and a letter addressed to her with the seal of the Xavier Institute in the top corner. Zinnia tore open the letter-headed envelope with enthusiasm, she was certain it would be a confirmation. Who wouldn’t jump on free first-aid training? She skimmed over the words ‘grateful’ and ‘welcome’ to ‘confirmation of date and time’. Perfect. The course was not a hard one, she had lead it multiple times before both for a little side cash and increasing the general usefulness of bystanders in an incident. Not that many New Yorkers jumped in to help each other, but those who did ought to know at least the basics.

She ascended the steps to her front door with a grin plastered on her face. This was it.

This was an in to one of the main mutant hubs. A whole bunch of mutants in one place. With further approvals she could do some surveys and data collection on what particular health concerns those with an active X-gene suffered from (aside from the physical and emotional abuse which they seemed to be at far greater risk from than the general populous). And by having run a course there she may even have some contacts who would make that easier. But she was getting ahead of herself now. She had sent a pack of 10 pre-training workbooklets, about as many as she could easily supervise and train. It was now just a matter of waiting and seeing who turned up on the day.

~~~

The gates loomed above her but she wasn’t intimidated. She straightened her shirt and rolled her shoulders in preparation. Game on. She pressed the buzzer.

She had the library all ready with the tables on the main floor pushed aside and the space all tidy and ready for their visiting guest.

Maya had distributed flyers as well. Just a paper on the announcement cork board in each hall and an extra paper under Sam's door, Cafas' door, Maya/Gawain's door, and Jude's door. Any X-men on campus, actually. They all should be there. Maya sincerely hoped that everyone except Jiri would attend because it was remembering Jiri laying on the ground still and bleeding that had prompted this whole thing.

She'd panicked. Hadn't known what to do. Didn't know how to make it better instead of worse.

That was why this first aid thing absolutely had to happen.

Step one of making what she did not a total failure was to learn from her mistake.

Maya clattered out the front door at the first hint of buzzer.

The woman who waited at the gate was absolutely stunning. Maya had no defense and simply had to return smile for smile. "Welcome to Xavier's Sister School, are you Ms. Zinnia?" Maybe she seemed an angel because Maya was so keen to learn from her? Either way Maya hit the allowance code and ushered the woman in, ready to escort her across the long lawn and into the Mansion proper.

It was, only after she'd greeted the other woman, that Maya realized that she'd forgotten or perhaps lost her shoes somewhere along the way.

First aid class in the library.

At least, that's what the bulletin board said. Knowing how to treat injuries would be a useful skill, especially considering this was New York City. Therefore, Clyde was going to attend it.

He was en route to the library when he nearly tripped. A shoe? There it was, sitting in the hallway, all by itself, no mate in sight. Weird.

Wait, the last time he'd found a random clothing article in a strange place, it turned out to be a psycho shapeshifter girl. Maybe it was her. He knelt down next to the shoe and whispered, “Hey, just in case yo that crazy #$@%^ who slapped me...”

It probably wasn't really her, but anyways, he picked up the shoe and shook it violently before setting it back down.

That little piece of “revenge” having been taken care of, Clyde continued to the library and took a seat at one of the tables. He was early, so all he had to do was wait for the class to start.

Zinnia watched as a tall, slender woman with shiny white hair crossed the lawn to let her in. It was almost a guarantee that this woman was a mutant. Idly Zinn wondered what her power might be. And if her hair was naturally like that or chemically assisted. White hair was in. Then the woman was greeting her and smiling and Zinnia was smiling and confirming that yes, she was the instructor coming to teach first aid.

It wasn’t until they reached the extra-large door that Zinn realised the lady wasn’t wearing any shoes. Perhaps it was mutation related? Or perhaps the mansion was like her grandmother’s house, where visitors were instructed to ‘leave your dirt at the door’. She glanced about for a tell-tale shoe rack, and instead spied a group of children walking past in shoes. She kept hers on.

“Aren’t your feet cold?”

Perhaps it was a rude question. If her power was shooting icicles from her toes or something.

The woman led them on to the library, there was one shoe on the way, but no other. Perhaps some kids had been kicking it down the hall. It seemed unlikely that someone would take of their shoe, walk far enough to be out of sight of it, then remove the other. But then, stranger things have happened.

The Library was clearly marked as such, and a glance inside showed her that her space had been cleared, and the assorted bags and boxes she had sent ahead were neatly in a pile. Good, it wouldn’t do to not have any dummies to CPR when the time came. She smiled at a child occupying one of the seats. It was an excellent idea to start young. Even if a child didn’t have the strength to depress an adult chest, having the knowledge to try was so much more empowering than standing and watching helplessly. If not for someone teaching her the basics of first aid, her brother might not be alive today. Well, the training and the mutation.

“Welcome to First Aid training. I think we’re a little early, so I’ll give it a bit of time in case there are others coming, but let me introduce myself…”

She wrote her name on the provided whiteboard, and began her brief introduction; her background as a nursing student and the critical moment when she knew how important first aid was. Recounting the story of her brother's near-drowning at the beginning of her career had made her shaky and upset and she remembered the feelings of powerlessness. Nowadays she felt empowered by the story, and wanted to share that power with others.

“As mutants” {she felt she was making a fair assumption, given their location} “we sometimes have an advantage to first aid. And sometimes we don’t. It is good to remember that the person you are working to help may be a mutant, and it is important to keep yourself safe. If they are awake, ask them questions- if they are unconscious, look before you leap in. It’s all well and good trying to help someone, but giving mouth-to-mouth to an acid spitter is putting yourself in harm’s way. Can you think of any other examples of how mutations might affect the way you perform first aid?”

She took a sip of her bottled water and opened it up to the class.

> “Aren’t your feet cold?”

Maya sighed and let the sound slither in an unnatural way around them as they walked.

"I'm an air elemental. Shoes are... restrictive." And her most forgotten piece of clothing. Thank goodness she was a woman with the social ability to wear skirts or she might just forgo pants as well.

Oh. She saw one of her shoes and studiously ignored that it was laying, lonely, in the hallway. Maya also had problems staying fully corporeal sometimes. In that regard, she was lucky it had only been the shoes that she'd lost in her lapse of attention.

Maya was pleased and disappointed when she saw the library. True, no one had pranked the library between the moment she left and now, but also there was only one student in attendance. Well. One was better than none. The elemental gave a little wave to Clyde (it was Clyde, wasn't it?) and took a seat so that she, too, could stay a while and listen.

Maya pulled a notepad out and made some scribbles when something caught her attention. Some of it was very useful.

> "Can you think of any other examples of how mutations might affect the way you perform first aid?”

She wasn't that kid in class who was the teacher's pet, but there were only two of them so... "Uhm. As an air elemental, I've helped people breathe by touch. No mouth-to-mouth needed." That was good, right? Yeah. Totally good. She ducked and was more than ready to be out of the "spotlight," small as it was.

It wasn't long until a pair of women walked in. The first was a white-haired woman Clyde had seen at the Mansion before several times, though he couldn't recall speaking to her. Anyways, since she waved, he returned the gesture. She was barefoot, which was odd considering the time of year. At least this wasn't the Danger Room.

The other woman was, as Clyde soon found out, the first aid instructor. He listened quietly and patiently as she, Zinnia, started the class and shared her story.

> “Can you think of any other examples of how mutations might affect the way you perform first aid?”

The question left Clyde deep in thought. As far as he knew, there wasn't much his mutation could do that would help or hurt in those situations. But how any mutations could affect how a mundane skill like first aid was carried out... that was something he hadn't considered. “It's all the more important to keep an injured mutant calm, because some lose control when scared oh in pain,” he finally answered.

She nodded along to two excellent points, using mutations to expand the scope of first aid was exactly the sort of thing she was talking about, and it was not only your own mutation you had to watch out for, but other people’s as well. In an unknown situation it was always a good idea to calm the injured person down. This class was going to pass with flying colours at this rate.

“Great work, it’s also worth noting that if they are conscious you should always ask questions:” She turned and wrote the acronym AMMPLE on the provided board, downways like an acrostic poem and began filling them in as she spoke.

“A-llergies, is there anything you are allergic to? This can be important for when the ambulance gets on the scene.
M-edication, are you on any medication at the moment? Elderly people taking aspirin for their hearts can bleed very heavily from minor wounds, and some medications react badly with others.
M-utation, do you have an X-gene that requires particular caution or special treatment? For example, some of the time I breathe in carbon dioxide and out oxygen- putting me in an oxygen mask when this is happening would be the same as putting a pillow over the face of a human, these are important details.
P-ast history, has something like this happened before? Obviously not relevant for things such as wounds from fighting, but it is particularly relevant if the person has lost consciousness, or blacked out, as past history of the same could mean something more sinister.
L-ast time you ate? This is important if they need to go in for emergency surgery, also important if you are speaking with a diabetic who is low on insulin. And finally;
E-vents, what happened that led up to you needing to step in? If you saw it happen, then it is good to match their version of the events with what you saw- see if there are any gaps. If you didn’t see what happened then this question can help you determine what kind of care they are going to need.”

She took a sip of water and gave them time to note it down. It was in the infobook she had sent ahead, but it was one of the easier ones to remember, and made a huge difference when it came to passing the casualty over to someone like herself or an ambulance officer. Sometimes the information handed over from a bystander on the scene was the difference between life and death for a casualty. It was important to give people the tools they needed to ask the right questions.

“Ok, has anyone performed CPR before?”

She had the dummies in zippy bags behind her, and in order to get their certificates she would show them the correct technique, once each for adult and baby-under-18months, then guide them through one round, then ‘test’ them, by watching them complete a set of 30:2 five times with no instructions. It wasn’t a hard exercise, but it was one that needed to be done right.

Ohh! This was great note taking! Maya scribbled down every bit that she had time for about the question asking. AMPLE. There was AMPLE time to ask questions, right? She could remember that. Maybe. Probably. Especially now that she'd taken notes on it.

> “Ok, has anyone performed CPR before?”

Maya raised her hand while she finished up her notes and then looked around. She wasn't sure why she bothered to look around. There were still only just the two of them.

"Uhm I took a video antenatal class. That covered the basics of infant CPR, but... it was only a video series and work book thing." Maya fiddled with her pencil. She'd tried to read up on all the safety measures she could while she'd stayed for monitoring and agreed to the shock bracelets. It wasn't a time she was entirely proud of since that was when Jude had decided to run away and Sebastian had decided to go crazy. Still, she'd done the best with what she could. Apparently she'd been needed elsewhere when she was selfishly trying to gestate.

Clyde stared at the word written on the board. AMMPLE. Heh, another acronym. Just like his high school American Government class. As he listened, he jotted down the meaning of each letter. Allergies, Medication, Mutation, Past history, time of Last meal, and Events that lead to the situation. Overall, these were important bits of information he was learning.

To his surprise, he also learned that the instructor apparently photosynthesized. She looked normal, but then again, so did he and many other mutants.

> “Ok, has anyone performed CPR before?”

Clyde shook his head. “I haven't. Once read a postah about it in a nurse's office, but that was a long time ago.”

So the pale woman had but a little basic knowledge about the second form of cpr they would be learning. And the boy even less. It was alright though, that was what she was here for. She unzipped the bags holding their practice dummies, one full-sized torso of a man, and one full-bodied replica of a baby, realistic except for the blank skin-coloured shapes of eyes and hair, and the mouths which hung wide open. She lay the torso on the floor, and the baby she set on a table. She showed her hand, held like a child pretending at a gun for cops and robbers. Then lay her fingers across the chin of the dummy to open the mouth wider.

“Now, we will begin with the adult. Some people teach the beat to a song, but what if you cannot remember the song in the heat of the moment? Or how could you keep count of how many repetitions of the song you have done? Better to just remember the numbers. 30:2. I will be testing you on five repetitions of the 30:2, thirty pumps, two breaths.”

She lay the plastic mouthshield over the mouth of the dummy. While it would not protect against anything so dramatic as the acid breath they had mentioned earlier, it would do just fine for germs. Zinnia demonstrated, the pumps depressing the chest of the male dummy a third of its depth, the air hissing out of the faux lungs inside.

“You want to press down about a third of the way, 7, 8- so if it’s a really fat person, you’ll have to press harder, 13, 14. Same too for a barrel-chested guy, 19, 20. This is where it is important to keep count, 23, 24. But if you forget where you are up to, just make an educated guess. 27, 28. Better to pump a few times too many, or a few times too few, than never start because you’re scared you’ll get it wrong.”

She puffed into the mouth of the dummy and indicated the rise and fall of the chest with her hand.

“You don’t want to use a whole breath and overfill the lungs, and you want to let the air drain before you breathe the second breath. Alright. Your turn.”

She indicated the dummy and passed each of her students a clean mouthshield, a simple piece of plastic with a valve which allowed the air to pass through into the mouth of the unconscious body, without anything else passing back. Few things that could be passed back would be welcome, other than perhaps a puff of air.

"Whoah. It's kind of a lot to remember isn't it?" Not that the woman had any control over that. Maya accepted her dummy germ shield like the great honor it was.

And then it was her turn. "Uhm. How do you know if you're pushing too hard or not hard enough? You said a third of the way, but I don't know what whole way down looks like." And she was almost certain she couldn't push that hard anyway. The mouth guard slid home into the dummy's mouth. Maya looked at the dummy's face for a beat and made a silent promise to him that she would save him even if he was just pretend.

A journey of 30 chest compressions started with just 1. She got up on her knees and with a small amount of concentration, her body seemed to become a bit more opaque. Maya put her hands together just as Ms. Zinnia had and pushed on the chest. It moved a little. She pushed again, harder. That was maybe a bit more in line with what she'd seen before so Maya started counting from there. By the time Maya got to 30, her poor spindly arms felt a bit like jelly. She used her power to give the guy two breaths (but not too much breath!) and reclaimed her mouth guard before she retreated.

Next time, she was going to use her power to do the heavy lifting. She let the gathered incorporeality flow out from where she'd concentrated it and that was that. It was the other student's turn.

Thirty pumps, two breaths. One-third of the way. Clyde added that info to his notebook. He watched as both women performed CPR on the dummy, giving him a good visual of what the procedure looked like.

Now that it was his turn, Clyde placed the germ shield in the dummy's mouth. As he started the procedure, he realized something. The dummy's chest was surprisingly hard to compress. Having the body of a ten year old child didn't help. Despite his efforts, he couldn't press the dummy's chest all the way to the one-third mark. Maybe he'd have the strength if he aged himself a few years, but this was the middle of a lesson. He couldn't just leave to fetch a change of clothes, and he doubted the two women present would appreciate it if he destroyed that which he was wearing. So, he settled for performing CPR with shallow, incomplete compressions.

“I'm don't think I was pushing it down far enough,” he commented upon finishing. “But I'm an age shiftah, so I could age up if it's an emergency.”

Maya asked for a little clarification, and Zinnia was happy to provide it, better to figure it out here than on the field.


“With these guys they’ll give a little ‘huff’, when the air goes out. Obviously not the same with a real life person, but a good place to start. The whole way would be pushing them flat against the ground, like a piece of paper. Your aim should not be to break bones, but it’s worth noting that it can happen.”


And it had, several times to people she was assisting at the hospital, and once with one of her nursing home clients. That had been the worst one, the sweet old man, his bones already frail with age, but the home had a duty to keep trying until the ambulance arrived and could take over, or declare the person officially dead. It was one of the less glamourous parts of her job. Who was she kidding? It was all less glamourous.


The kid did his best, which was all she could ask for. He didn’t quite have the full range of motion of an adult, and his centre pivot was closer to the ground, giving him less leverage. She did have a few pointers, but she let him finish fist.



“Always good to have your mutation as a back-up plan. You can also go a little more from the hips than the elbows, let your body do the work not your arms. In a city like this it is unusual to be alone, yell for help, then you can instruct an untrained adult.”


She indicated the baby laying on the table. This was a little different, but the school almost doubled as an orphanage from what she heard, with even the very young being ‘enrolled’, or dumped at the gates.


“With little ones, less than about 2, you don’t want to tilt their head the whole way back, otherwise you’ll close off their airway altogether” she demonstrated by tipping the baby’s head to a full position ‘open’ in an adult, deadly in a baby “you want them up enough that you can get in there, but not too far, they should be looking up, not back. Here it is really important not to use too much air. Just a tiny little puff, and watch the chest to make sure it rises and falls before you do the next one. If it doesn’t, adjust the headtilt.”


She puffed and waited, puffed and waited.


“Two fingers is all you need for this, find the position and 30:2”


The plastic infant huffed as she compressed, hissed slightly as the air drained from her faux lungs, then huffed again. This one she was sure the kid could manage, as the pressure required was much less. After this it was a quick rundown on how to use an automatic defibrillator, which was pretty easy as it spoke the instructions to the user, she would hand out a quick quiz sheet and they would be officially crash-coursed. She had also brought along some manuals to leave with them, if they wanted to do a little more research on other injuries: burns, stings, cuts and the like.

Maya went for her notebook while the kid tried. He had even better questions than she had and the elemental didn't want to miss any of that good information Ms. Zinnia was passing out.

Leverage from the hips instead of elbows for more strength. You can instruct someone else who is untrained.

Then it was baby time.

It was just a dummy. Maya tangled her fingers up in front of her as she watched the little lifeless doll compress under just two fingers. Just a dummy. Just a dummy. She had to repeat that as she accepted the little bundle for her turn.

Hers was a little smaller than this when they'd taken him away.

1, 2, 3... She was not going to cry. It was just a dummy. It was so much easier to mess this one up, though. It made sad little whuffing sounds under her fingers. Just a dummy. Just a dummy. Just 30! She didn't care if it had actually been 30 compressions or not, it was now 30. Maya popped the mouth guard in, breathed into the dummy once, waited, and breathed again before retreating back to her notepad.

She didn't have notes, but she tried to scribble something down anyway.

It was just a dummy! This was so stupid!

Don't tilt a toddler or baby's head back. Use hips instead of elbows to apply additional force. As for finding an adult, well, Clyde wasn't planning on wasting any time doing that if someone ever needed CPR.

Again, Clyde watched the demonstration. Notably, the Mansionite appeared rather upset during her turn with the baby dummy. A dummy was all Clyde could see before him. But performing CPR on a real person, adult or baby, would be something else. It could mean the difference between life and death. Worse still, one could perform CPR but the subject could end up dying anyways. It was a skill Clyde genuinely hoped he'd never have to use.

This time around, CPR was easier. The smaller dummy could be compressed with only a gentle push. But the thoughts weighing on his mind made him more determined to get the procedure right.