A dental assistant told a state jury Wednesday that when she asked her boss, former Kailua dentist Dr. Lilly Geyer, if she should get help during an emergency involving 3-year-old Finley Boyle, Geyer told her no.

Geyer, 41, is on trial for manslaughter for recklessly causing Boyle’s death or for recklessly failing to get the girl medical help. Boyle went into cardiac arrest and died a month later.

Kathleen Cacal was one of Geyer’s two dental assistants at Island Dentistry for Children on Dec. 3, 2013, when Boyle was scheduled to have root canals done on several of her teeth. Cacal said she was the one who gave Boyle a mixture of three sedatives about an hour before Geyer showed up at the office to do the procedure.

The other dental assistant, Nicole (Dudoit) Martin, was assisting Geyer. Cacal said she was at the reception desk doing other work when she said she heard the office’s emergency oxygen tank getting wheeled into the room where Boyle was being worked on.

When she went to the room she said she saw an oxygen mask on Boyle and Geyer rubbing Boyle’s chest while saying the girl’s name.

Cacal said she asked Geyer, “Should I go to Dr. Reis?”

She said Geyer’s response was, “No.”

Dr. Brit Reis is a pediatrician whose office was across the hall from Geyer’s.

Cacal said she asked Geyer a second time then went anyway before getting a response. At Reis’s office Cacal said she stood in the waiting area until someone came out. It was Reis who came out.

“I said if she could come and help us,” Cacal said.

She said Reis told her to call 911 and that Reis and one of her assistants went to the dental office.

Reis testified last week that she and her assistant got Boyle breathing after performing CPR. She said she thought Boyle was going to be OK when a city ambulance crew took Boyle away to Castle Medical Center.

Geyer is also on trial for causing the brain damage that put Boyle into a coma before she died and for directing Cacal to administer the sedatives after her state license to prescribe and administer drugs had expired.

Cacal is not being prosecuted even though she did not have a license to administer drugs and said she did not have a prescription for the sedatives she gave Boyle. The state had charged her with dispensing drugs without a prescription involving another patient, but later dropped it.

Martin pleaded no contest to two counts of the same charge involving the same patient and had her pleas deferred. The charges were later dropped.