X-Ray vignette

The tall, pillared nave of the stone cathedral was filled with the moving sound of Bach’s “Saint Mathew Passion.” The singers, 20 or so of the congregations oldest members, plus two younger members, understood the true nature of the piece, having practiced all year, and most of their audience sat in rapt admiration of the beauty of their singing.

In the middle aisle, however, rather closer to the front of the nave than to its back, a small group of people was not paying attention. One of them was a young woman, very beautiful but clinically dead. Two were EMTs, vigorously performing CPR to revive the young woman, and two more were paramedics, who struggled feverishly to provide the young woman with an airway by fitting a tube into her trachea.