Kevin Branson's Felonious Resuscitation
Risk is usually assessed by the amount of reward one receives for the level of risk one must take, and usually a desperation risk has an inordinately low reward. But once in a grey moon,” usually” does not win the day and the reward for that desperation risk turns out to be higher than anyone could have imagined, such was the case one chilly autumn evening in 1982.
I was living in South St. Louis at the time and went to a party in Kirkwood. Later in the evening, the party got busted by the cops, and everybody scurried out of there like roaches when the lights come on. In the chaos, I lost tract of my ride and found myself stranded with another friend Kenny, who likewise lived in South St. Louis. It was Saturday around midnight, so we thought we might have a chance to catch a bus a few blocks away at the bus loop. After waiting an hour, we realized there would be no Bi-State hero this evening. We were indeed stranded, left only with our twenty two year old legs, but even more so, our twenty two year old sense of adventure and lack of good common sense.
We decided to check the cars in a nearby auto repair shop for one that might have keys in it. Cautiously we crept between and around the injured vehicles, making absolutely certain we weren’t seen. Bingo! A Nova with the dashboard completely absent, but it started right up. In a loud whisper, I called for my soon to be accomplice to,
“come on”. We didn’t get three blocks when we pulled up to a four way stop sign and there was one of Kirkwood’s finest making a left hand turn from our right to left. As he passed by me, window to window, he gestured to me that my lights weren’t on. I responded with a hand gesture of “o k” and promptly made a right hand turn to the third driveway on the right, where Kenny and I exited the rolling evidence. We ran hastily to a nearby church where we could still see the car but could not be seen ourselves. After ten minutes we concluded the coast was clear, so we slithered back into the car and got the lights, wipers, and heater to work. Still pumped with adrenalin, we decide to head for the eastside as all the bars on the Missouri side were already closed.
A couple of hours later, we were headed back to Missouri and opted to stop by a little greasy spoon named Mr. Mac’s and get some breakfast. Kenny was driving as we were going down Arsenal Street from I-55. The car was dying when we came to stop signs, so Kenny was kind of rolling through the plethora of intersections Arsenal Street offers. When, just as we were approaching our seedy destination, we saw the flashing lights of a police car in our rearview mirror. Kenny proceeded to make the left turn he had already signaled to do, hoping the cop would just keep on going. We would not be so lucky, for it was us he was pulling over. Our hearts fell into our gut with a thud as we contemplated spending the next five years in prison. As the officer strolled somberly toward the driver side window, I felt my freedoms slipping away. “Driver’s license and registration please,” he said deliberately. Kenny replied, “I don’t have my wallet, but I think Kevin does.” I was quite certain that my incarceration was about to begin when the officer asked me to step out of the car. Thoughts of flight filled my head, my heart pounded erratically as my clammy hand reached for the handle. The door seemed to weigh a ton, for it separated me from the safety within and my captor on the other side.
As I reluctantly pried my fear frozen body from the anonymity I once had, my legs too shaky to run, I realized, my name from this point forward, would indelibly be tied to this stolen vehicle.
As I was reaching into my back pocket, all of a sudden this woman came running down California Street from a couple blocks away, screaming at the top of her lungs,” Officer! Officer! My baby can’t breathe.” With the reflexes of a puma, Kenny bolted toward the woman like a man with a mission. Turning back after he had run about a hundred feet or so, Kenny, a paramedic in the Air Force for a few years, waved to the officer who was still standing there a little dumbfounded, to “come on.” As the officer began running at full trot toward the woman and Kenny, I felt my freedoms soak back into my veins. Suddenly I found myself standing there alone next to the stolen vehicle and a cold, empty squad car still running with lights a flashing. I turned my attention to the spacious liberty of the opposite direction and began walking briskly toward my new found freedom. I circled four or five square blocks over the course of the next hour to a perch three or so blocks from Mr. Mac’s, where I could see that the squad car was no longer there, but the Nova was. I sauntered my way to the front door to find Kenny sitting in Mr. Mac’s sipping a cup of deserved coffee wearing a huge glowing smile. When I walked in he gushed, “You are not going to believe what happened.” Stoically, he told me his account of how when he and the officer got there, the baby of twelve to eighteen
months of age had turned blue and was not breathing. He then gave the baby mouth to mouth resuscitation while the officer called for an ambulance. For ten long minutes he had supplied the baby’s lungs with life giving oxygen until relieved by the paramedics. Once relieved he turned to the officer and apologized for leaving his wallet on the kitchen table, but before he could say “kitchen,” the officer interrupted him with a conciliatory pat on the back and that he need not worry about it. Moments latter they walked back to the cars, shook hands, and the officer sped off to another call.
There we were, in too much shock of what had transpired to converse in complete sentences, but we completely understood each other. I enjoyed the delectable flavor of scrambled eggs and freedom while Kenny wolfed down a giant portion of hero’s biscuits and gravy .Truly that was the best breakfast either one of us had ever eaten.
The desperation risk we took was grave. Our excepted freedoms were the stake we gambled with so carelessly. But all of it was necessary for us to arrive at a point in time to save an infant’s life. Yes, sometimes rewards are oblivious to risk.
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