Penny followed the stretcher aboard the Yarmouth. In the emergency of offering quick treatment to McClusky, no one heeded her. The man was rushed into the air lock and placed on a long wooden bench.
A doctor went into the chamber with him, signaling for the pressure to be turned on. Bends could be cured, Penny knew, only by reproducing the deep water conditions under which the man previously had worked. Pressure would be raised, and then reduced by stages.
“How long will it take?” she asked a man who controlled the pressure gauges.
“Ordinarily only about twenty minutes,” he replied. “But it will take at least two hours with this fellow.”
“Will he come out of it all right?”
“Probably,” was the answer. “Too soon to tell yet.”
To wait two hours was out of the question for Penny. After discussing the matter with police, she agreed to notify Mrs. McClusky of her husband’s difficulty. Glad to be rid of the duty, they dropped her off at the house on West Newell street.
Mrs. McClusky, a stout, red-faced woman with two small children clinging to her skirts, seemed stunned by the news.
“Oh, I knew this would happen!” she cried. “Ed has been so careless lately. Thank heavens, he was taken to the decompression chamber instead of the police station! A good friend of Ed’s lost his life because no one understood what was wrong with him.”
Penny called a taxicab for Mrs. McClusky while she excitedly bundled up the children.