#109 Mary Anne to the Rescue

Summary

Mary Anne, her family, and the entire BSC are having a snack in the airport cafeteria while they wait for Dawn's plane to get in. All of a sudden, a man at another table starts choking. Sharon rushes over to him, gives him the Heimlich, and saves his life. Everyone is completely grateful to Sharon for what she did, but Mary Anne is a little traumatized, too. Instead of taking action like Sharon did, Mary Anne was totally freaked out. In fact, she almost fainted. She's really ashamed of herself for being such a scaredy cat, so when Kristy suggests that the whole BSC take a first aid class at the community center, Mary Anne is excited; she's hoping that taking a class like that will help her be less useless during an emergency. Unfortunately, the class itself isn't what Mary Anne expects it to be. The graphic first aid posters on the wall gross her out, and even even the thought of a bloody, serious emergency makes her naseous. To top things off, Logan has some bad news for her after class. Not only is his dad sending him off to this wilderness survival camp for the summer, but he also wants him to go away to boarding school. It's the same school that Mr. Bruno himself went to and enjoyed, and he wants his son to have the same experience. Logan, obviously, doesn't want to go, and his mom seems less than enthusiastic as well. Unfortunately, when Mr. Bruno makes a decision, there's no arguing with him. Dawn tries to push Logan to talk to his parents, but he snaps at her and says that that's not how his family works.

The next first aid class centers on CPR, and they start with a baby. It's only a doll, but it's so lifelike that Mary Anne ends up really disturbed. In fact, she almost faints again. First aid class is definitely NOT helping her with her fear of emergencies. Next, the class makes a visit to an emergency room. Needless to say, Mary Anne is about as far from excited as she could possibly be, especially when a little boy who'd had a febrile seizure is brought in for treatment. Mary Anne sees the whole thing, and she can't wait to get out of there. The last straw comes when the class participates in Stoneybrook's Safety weekend. The students are going to be staging a fake accident scene, and Dawn volunteers Mary Anne to be the "heavy bleeding victim." Mary Anne tried to make it clear that she didn't want to participate, but gets roped into it anyway. She then has to spend her afternoon lying in a disgusting pool of fake blood, getting more and more angry. Afterward, she kind of blows up at Dawn for getting her roped into the fake accident, and Dawn points out that Mary Anne probably should have tried to speak up a little more.

Not long after, Dawn and Mary Anne are sitting for the Hsus and Kormans. Everyone is swimming, and things go well until Timmy Hsu ends up in the deep end. He can't swim, and starts to drown. Mary Anne, remembering the lesson on drowning from the first aid class, dives in and saves him. She's proud of the way she handled the emergency without freaking out, and that inspires her to be a little bolder with Logan. She encourages him to speak up and tell his parents that he doesn't want to go away to school, which he does. Mrs. Bruno even stands up to her husband, and Logan gets to stay in good old Stoneybrook.

Rating: 2

Thoughts and Things

• I totally identified with Mary Anne's squeamishness about blood and guts and hospitals; in 9th grade health, I wouldn't even open the textbook when we were studying first aid because I didn't want to see the pictures. :)
• The description of the seizure kid coming in to the emergency room was surprisingly...detailed. Not what I'd expect in a BSC book.
• Mary Anne and Logan are wearing the same shade of lip gloss on the cover. :D
• I keep forgetting to acknowledge this, but Abby and the Mystery Baby marked the 3/4 point in my blog project. Only 25% of the books left to recap, including Friends Forever and The Summer Before.