First Aid, Second Thoughts

Resusci Annies are definitely creepy items. They come, heads eerily wrapped in cling film. The combination of their blank features and limbless torsos are the stuff of third-rate zombie movies. Their faces peel off.
And then of course, their only function is as a body forever on the verge of death. Their hearts are non-existent in reality but what-is-not-there is constantly being pummelled and goaded frantically into an existential almost life. Chest compressions, painfully beating it out with the Bee Gees  ‘Staying Alive, Staying Alive, Ah ah ah ah ‘ . 
Like their human counterparts, too far gone or damaged to kick start, they mirror only the failure to get that ticker going under its own volition. There can never be a re-capture of that fleeting sparkle of vitality. When their plastic lungs are inflated for the last time there is no possibility of even an agonal breath to give a semblance or hope of revival. Because not having ever been alive, neither are they dead. Who would mourn the demise of a rubberised vegetable existence anyway? 

If you hadn't guessed, it’s the First Aid 2 day refresher course, practising for two things, how to save life and finding ways to look at death.