Took their breath away (but gave it back again)

There are a few perks to being a member of St John that often get either overlooked or blown completely out of proportion - the one I had recently was that of the adoration of dozens of schoolgirls. I had to laugh.

The basic story - at a high school sports carnival we had two kids run into the first aid post yelling that their friend couldn't breathe. This usually translates to asthma attack, so we grabbed our gear and off we went. The girls ran ahead, but we (professionally) maintained our steady walk. We got to our patient, a young girl with (*surprise!*) asthma. She was breathing shallow with a bit of a wheeze, but was conscious, alert and stable. We administered Salbutamol - she had her own but had left it upstairs in her bag - as well as a nice steady flow of oxygen to give her that universal pick-me-up. When she was a little more recovered we walked her over to a room we had set up and put her into a stretcher for a little bit to rest it off.

I could have told her that morning that participating in two endurance events without her Salbutamol handy might not be the best idea and a minor asthma episode was to be expected. What I hadn't expected was to emerge from the room to have dozens of girls staring at me. It was very... Children of the corn.

One of them piped up with a worried look on her face "Is she going to die?" - I let out a grin.
"It's ok, she's fine - just a little asthma. She just needs to rest for a few minutes and she'll be out again."
"Thank you!" the girl cheered and ran off.

The rest of the duty went quietly and quickly - another minor asthma episode and I was free to go home from yet another job well done.