Personal Narrative: A Real Life Test

day would offer a real-life test.

As Carla Berkowitz walked up to classmates Jessica Quaggin-Smith and Max Kazer on Monday afternoon at Lake Shore Park, not far from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, she noticed a shirtless man in gym shorts and black sneakers leaning back on a nearby bench with his head tilted back.

"He looked really uncomfortable. His mouth was open and he was just in a really awkward position. Something didn 't look right, didn 't feel right to me," said Berkowitz, 23, who lives in the Gold Coast.

The trio, students at Northwestern University 's Feinberg School of Medicine, rushed over to him. They said they saw that the man 's eyes were glazed, his lips a bluish color and his skin was pale. He appeared unconscious. Quaggin-Smith, 22, checked for the man 's pulse but couldn 't feel one.

"It kicked me into

"It was a mixed feeling because on the one hand I was 100 percent sure I was doing the right thing in addressing it and being there, being the one to step in. But on the other hand, how well-trained am I? How qualified am I? Am I going to make the situation worse in some way?" Kazer said. But, he said, he relied on his training as a crowd gathered around them.

"In every stage in our career, we 're going to have moments like that and you can 't be taken by fear and you have to know that you 're able to do this," he said.

A bystander, Sharyl Mackey, called 911. She was in the park with her children, and her 5-year-old son had kicked a soccer ball over to the man, who had playfully thrown it back a few times before running another lap. When the man returned, he collapsed on the bench, she said. Mackey said she got up to check on him, noticed he wasn 't breathing and yelled for help. Already, the three students were heading in that direction.

"I was just praying that help would come quickly," said Mackey, 41, of Streeterville. "He was apparently a healthy man and obviously a nice person. It was a beautiful day and it was