Chapter 2 — The First Heartbeat

The second Red Cross Club activity took place on Thursday afternoon, exactly one week after Thien Kim made the entire medical room silent with her harsh question. During those seven days, she thought about not coming back no less than five times, each time telling herself that perhaps she was not suitable for an environment where the leader could calmly say "no one can save everyone" as if it were an obvious truth and not a pain.

But when school ended on Thursday, her feet still automatically turned toward the infirmary, as if her body had made the decision instead of her mind.

The medical room today looks completely different from the first day. The tables and chairs are pushed close to the wall to leave a wide space in the middle, on which is spread a light blue mat. A plastic CPR mannequin, upper body, lies neatly on the carpet, next to it is a bandaging tool box with all kinds of rolled bandages, triangular bandages, and a hard plastic brace bag.

"Thien Kim, you're here," Ms. Hoa, the school nurse and club advisor, greeted when she saw her enter. Ms. Hoa is in her forties, with a small figure but her eyes always exude the certainty of someone who is used to handling unexpected situations. "I heard Vu talk about the other day. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with your question."

Thien Kim paused slightly, not expecting that story to have been told. "Yes... I'm sorry for reacting a bit harshly."

"There's no need to apologize," Ms. Hoa waved her hand, her voice warm. "Here, everyone has their own reason to participate. Some people are curious, some people want to look good on their profile, some people because they have witnessed something that makes them want to learn how to handle it better. There is no wrong reason, as long as you still want to learn."

Those words made Thien Kim feel a little more relieved, although she was still not sure whether Ms. Hoa guessed her reason correctly or not.

Minh Vu appeared soon after, holding a stack of photocopied documents, his mouth still chewing a piece of candy. "Hello everyone! Today we will start learning basic bandaging first, saving CPR for the next session because we need to prepare more thoroughly." He put the stack of documents on the table, his eyes glanced around and then stopped at Thien Kim for a brief moment, accompanied by a small smile as if to say "glad you still came".

Thien Kim wasn't sure if she imagined it, but she felt a bit of warmth spreading in her chest.

Today's class had about twelve members attending, a few fewer than the first session — something Minh Vu explained was normal, "at first everyone was excited, but after the next session, we knew who really wanted to stay." People were divided into pairs to practice bandaging simulated wounds on each other's hands, using rolled bandages and red paper wound simulation patches.

Thien Kim was paired with a boy named Duc, in grade 11, who seemed quite clumsy from the beginning. When it was Thien Kim's turn to bandage Duc, she followed every step she had memorized from the instructional videos: clean the skin around the hypothetical wound, place sterile gauze on top, wrap the bandage in a spiral from bottom top, and secure the end of the bandage with clips.

But her hand trembled slightly, and the first time she wrapped the bandage, she wrapped it too tightly, causing Duc to cry out softly.

"Sorry!" Thien Kim quickly took it off, her face red. "I... I'll do it again."

"It's okay," Duc smiled, rubbing his wrist. "It's just a little tight."

But for Thien Kim, "just a little tight" is not an acceptable answer. She took off the bandage and wrapped it again from the beginning, this time intentionally wrapping it more loosely, but it was so loose that the bandage almost fell off as soon as Duc moved his hand. She bit her lip, a familiar feeling of helplessness starting to creep into her chest — the same feeling she had three years ago, although the situation this time was completely different, there was nothing dangerous about it.

"Let me see," a familiar voice rang out next to me. Minh Vu had walked around the room observing each pair, and was now standing right behind Thien Kim, bending down to look at Duc's hand. "It's not bad, you just wrapped it a little too evenly. You need to gradually tighten it a little with each turn so the bandage doesn't slip. Let me model it again."

He sat down next to Thien Kim, took the tape from her hand, his fingers lightly touching her hand for a brief moment, making her a little startled. Minh Vu didn't seem to pay any attention to that, just focused on wrapping the bandage slowly, explaining each step in a clear and easy-to-understand manner.

"This is not a technique that requires absolute precision," he said, still looking at his hands. "As long as it's not too tight that it restricts blood circulation, and not too loose that it slips off, it's considered a proper bandage. There's a pretty wide range in between."

"But how do we know how wide that range is?" Thien Kim asked, her voice more serious than she intended.

Minh Vu looked up at her, seemingly surprised by the question, but then smiled. "That's a good question. It really comes down to experience. The more you do it, the more your hands will automatically know how much force is enough. No one is born knowing, including me."

"Have you ever wrapped it wrong too?" Duc interjected, his voice curious.

"Why?" Minh Vu laughed even harder. "In 10th grade, during my first practice session, I wrapped the bandage so tightly that my training partner cried out, his hand turned purple. Ms. Hoa had to run to take it off immediately."

Ms. Hoa, who was standing nearby observing other groups, heard it and immediately turned to contribute. "That's right, back then the old homeroom teacher teased Vu for a whole month."

The whole group burst into laughter, including Thien Kim, although her smile was a bit more forced than the others. But that story, no matter how small, made something in her calm down a bit - it turned out that even someone who seemed calm and proficient like Minh Vu had made mistakes, had been clumsy like she was now.

"Try it again," Minh Vu said, handing the tape back to Thien Kim. "This time don't think about being perfect, just think about cutting evenly."

Thien Kim took a breath, took the tape, and tried to do as he said. This time, the bandage was wrapped more evenly, moderately tight, no longer making Duc wince. When she finished fixing the bandage, she looked up at Minh Vu, waiting for a comment.

"Very good," he said simply, but his eyes showed genuine satisfaction, not just a polite compliment. "See, it doesn't have to be perfect the first time."

That sentence, accidentally or intentionally, coincided with the words she wrote in her notebook the night before. Thien Kim felt a slight lump in her throat, but she just nodded and said nothing more.

The rest of the class went more smoothly than she thought it would. She practiced bandaging a few more times with Duc, each time better than the last, and slowly, she realized she was starting to get a little more comfortable with letting her hands shake slightly, letting the first few times be imperfect, as long as she still got it right in the end.

Near the end of the session, Minh Vu gathered the group together and gave each person a piece of paper to write down the basic bandaging steps to review at home. "Next week we'll learn CPR," he announced. "This is a bit more difficult, because we will use a dummy to practice chest compressions, and everyone needs to practice thirty consecutive chest compressions to get used to the rhythm. Have any of you ever learned CPR before?"

Several hands raised, including Thien Kim's, even though she only learned through online videos and never practiced on a real dummy.

"Good," Minh Vu nodded. "But even after learning the theory, practice will still be very different. Don't be subjective."

That statement made Thien Kim a little worried all the way home. She had read and watched CPR instructional videos countless times, memorized the ratio of thirty compressions, two rescue breaths, and knew exactly where to place her hands on the sternum. But she also knows that the knowledge in her head and the ability to do it in real moments are two completely different things - the most painful lesson she ever learned, three years ago, with baby Bin.

That evening, while sitting at her desk, Thien Kim reopened old CPR instructional videos, watched them over and over, her hands unconsciously simulating chest compressions on the table. She knew she was worrying too much for a practice session on a plastic dummy, not a real situation, but her body didn't seem to know the difference.

Her phone vibrated with a text message from Tuyet Mai. "How is the club today? Is it okay?"

Thien Kim looked at the screen for a moment, then typed a reply: "It's better than I thought. That homeroom teacher... isn't as bad as I thought."

"See, I told you so," Tuyet Mai replied with a smug smile emoji. "So are you going to continue going to school?"

"Yes," Thien Kim typed, then paused for a moment before adding. "Next week we'll learn CPR. I'm a little worried."

"You always worry about everything in advance," Tuyet Mai replied. "But you can do it every time. Trust me."

Thien Kim smiled looking at that message, even though there was still a part of her heart that didn't completely believe in her friend's encouragement. She put down the phone, opened the first aid handbook, and turned to the last page where she had written the words the night before. She read it again, then under that line, wrote a new line: "Today I did it wrong twice before I got it right. And nothing bad happened."

It was a small note, nothing special compared to the dense pages of technical procedures at the front of the notebook. But for Thien Kim, it was a small proof, the first brick in a foundation she didn't even dare believe she could build - the foundation of self-acceptance doesn't have to be perfect on the first try.

She closed the notebook, turned off the desk lamp, but before she fell asleep, the image of Minh Vu's hands gently guiding her to re-wrap the bandage, and his words "it doesn't have to be perfect the first time", lingered in her mind, following her into her dreams that night - dreams that were no longer about baby Bin and the choking cough three years ago, but about a roll of gauze wrapped at the right rhythm, tight enough, neither too loose nor too tight.