Marty Clark was talking to his nephew, a Boston police officer, at their family’s annual Memorial Day barbecue when the subject of CPR came up.

Clark asked if it was still the same ratio of compressions to breaths.

“‘No,’ he said, ‘you don’t breathe anymore,'” Clark recalled Thursday.

Two months later, that conversation may have saved Peter Morrison’s life.

Clark was riding his bike through Payson Park in Portland on the afternoon of July 28, about to exit onto Baxter Boulevard and head left toward Falmouth, when he looked to see if any traffic was coming.

There was just another man on a bike, going in the other direction, so Clark adjusted his speed to pull out right behind him, but as they passed each other, the man — Morrison, 52, a pediatric neurologist at Maine Medical Center, husband and father of four — fell to the ground.

“Just dropped out of the air. Boom,” Clark said.

Morrison had been biking with a group that he joins most Mondays, but wasn’t feeling well and had decided to head home on his own. He’d made it about 10 miles, almost all the way to where he lives in Back Cove.

“Suddenly, I realized things were rapidly changing,” he said. That’s the last thing he remembers.

Clark had thought Morrison might have just hurt himself, but when he saw his face, “he had the thousand-yard stare,” he said.

He started compressing Morrison’s chest — like his nephew told him — and didn’t stop.

A jogger came by and took over from Clark, followed by a woman who knew how to take a pulse. She didn’t feel one.

Meanwhile, Paul Halvorsen, an off-duty Portland fire lieutenant, had just gotten his bagpipes out of his truck and was walking to practice with the Claddagh Mhor Pipe Band in the park when one of his bandmates told him people were giving someone CPR on the boulevard.

He went down to help and offered to take over the compressions, which he did until emergency responders arrived. Paramedics shocked Morrison twice, and his pulse returned.

Clark remembers seeing Morrison’s chest move on its own for the first time.

“We were all crying,” he said.

After the ambulance left, Clark continued on what was supposed to be a 50-kilometer ride, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened and, not long after he rode into Falmouth, decided to turn around and go home.

The next day, while he was giving his daughter a haircut at the salon where he works in the Old Port, he told her the story and asked if she could help him find out if the man survived. He had called the Portland police and Maine Medical Center but was told they couldn’t give him any information.

His daughter, Tara Clark, wasn’t sure what she could do, but after scrolling Reddit the next morning, she had an answer for him.

Looking for the jogger who saved a life on Monday
byu/redfin525 inportlandme

A friend of Morrison’s brother described what had happened in a post, saying that a man had had a heart attack and his family was hoping to find out who had helped him, so they could thank the person.

Tara Clark responded that it was her dad.

A friend of Morrison’s wife helped connect them with Halvorsen, and on Friday, the family met the two men at the fire station by Bramhall Square to exchange hugs and express their gratitude for their quick and courageous action.

“Don’t run away, run in. That’s always my motto,” Clark said.

It’s an attitude he’s had since someone helped him get into recovery from drug and alcohol addiction 36 years ago.

“I just do what was done for me,” he said.

In almost 25 years as a firefighter, Halvorsen said he’s never had to jump in as a civilian and put his professional training to use in that way.

“Right place at the right time, I guess,” he said.

As Morrison recovers physically from the ordeal — now with a stent in an artery that was completely blocked, despite him managing his heart health with medications and evaluations — he’s also wrapping his mind around the situation emotionally.

“There’s not really a way to repay something like this, but in some ways, I hope I can honor it in how I live,” he said.

As a doctor and a dad, Morrison is used to being the person others depend on, but now he sees how much he needs his community, too.

“This whole thing is kind of a reminder that life is fragile, and we rely on other people more than we like to admit,” he said.