PART 2 — THE PROGRAM
Mr. Fischer reached under his lap blanket and pulled out a folded wedding program, worn soft from handling, from a wedding back in May.
At that wedding in Grand Island, he said, his voice thin but steady, I stood up to dance with my great-niece and my heart stopped. Right there on the floor. I went down and I did not get back up.
Most people froze. But the DJ did not. He cut the music, came out from behind his booth, and started CPR on me on that dance floor. He kept my heart going with his own two hands until the ambulance came. The doctors said another minute without him and I would be gone.
The man Mr. Hargrove mocked for pushing play had left his booth to push on a dying mans chest, and that man was sitting right there, alive, because of him.
I kept the program from that night, Mr. Fischer said, and I asked everyone until I learned the young mans name. Then he pointed across the ballroom at the DJ booth. When I rolled in here today and saw him, I knew I had to say it out loud at last.
The reception went quiet. Mr. Hargrove, the bank president who tipped loudly for show, lowered his microphone.
Joey just turned the music back down and said he only did what he hoped anybody would. But Mr. Fischer shook his head. Not anybody could, he said. You did.
My son plays the Macarena for drunk people, the banker had joked. One May he kept a mans heart beating on the dance floor. That is the man behind the music.