A chair scraped harshly against the deck. A glass shattered—sharp and violent, the sound tearing through the music.
I turned just as an older man near the center of the deck lurched to his feet, his hands flying to his throat.
“Oh, my God,” someone said.
The man’s face flushed an alarming shade of red, his eyes wide and frantic. He tried to speak and couldn’t. Tried to breathe and failed. He gagged, bending forward, coughing without sound.
Choking.
The word landed in my mind with sudden, brutal clarity.
“Is there a doctor?” someone shouted.
A woman screamed. Chairs scraped back. People stood, forming a loose, panicked circle that did absolutely nothing to help.
I felt a strange, detached clarity cut through the adrenaline. I’d learned about this—about how crowds stalled action instead of speeding it up. The bystander effect. How everyone waited, assuming someone else would step forward. A doctor. A nurse. Anyone more qualified. Responsibility diffused until it belonged to no one at all.
The man stumbled, nearly falling. Someone caught his arm—and froze, helpless.
My heart slammed into my ribs. Adrenaline surged so fast it made my vision blur at the edges.
I stayed seated.
For half a second, maybe longer, I didn’t move.
Shock, I told myself. Or that old instinct to step back, to observe, to let someone else take charge.
Phones were already coming out, screens glowing as people lifted them automatically, documenting without thinking.
The man’s lips were starting to turn blue.
Natasha’s hand closed around my wrist.
“Sophie,” she said, low and urgent. “You took a CPR class in college. Remember?”
I swallowed hard. “That was years ago.”
“But you remember it,” she insisted. “You do.”
The man gagged again, a horrible, silent convulsion.
“I can’t,” I said automatically. “What if I mess it up?”
Natasha’s grip tightened. “What if you don’t?”
No one else stepped forward.
No doctor. No nurse. Just panic and noise and the awful, escalating certainty that time was running out.
Something in me snapped into focus.
I stood.
“Move,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.
People stared at me, startled.
“I said move,” I repeated, louder now. “He’s choking.”
