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Although Mary's adrenaline always races at a call, this time she felt
literally propelled. She barely dried herself, stuffed her dripping hair
under a helmet, raced into the subzero morning and leaped into her
pickup. Because this was a daytime call at the far end of the district's
rural boundary, Mary knew that farmers would be the only ones
responding--and that could take a long time.
Except for the passing volunteer who had phoned in the report, Mary
was the first rescue worker on the scene. It resembled the aftermath of
an explosion. Although there was no fire (first accounts were
inaccurate), a pile of twisted metal lay on the highway. Wreckage was
strewn across the fields and road shoulder. To Mary, the site seemed
mysteriously stripped of color, ominous in black, white and gray.
There was no sign of a second vehicle. Mary would later learn that a
semi-tractor had been pulling a front-end loader with metal tracks, on a
flatbed. An oncoming compact car carrying three University of Wisconsin
students had swerved into the protruding steel treads, which had sheared
off the car's roof like a giant can opener. The truck driver had
continued on for another mile or so, initially unaware of the accident.
But now Mary investigated quickly. A young man, obviously dead, lay
under the station wagon's left front bumper. The other volunteer was
consoling a young woman pinned inside the wreckage. Mary rounded the
metal tangle toward the passenger side, then stopped. Was that a third
body in the ditch? She ran, sliding down the incline on her knees.
A blond girl, about twenty-one, looked up at Mary with terrified
eyes. Mary felt an instant bond. "I'm Mary," she told the
young woman. "I'm a firefighter, and we're going to help you, but
we need your cooperation, okay?"
The girl nodded, trembling. "I'm Lori."
Before moving a patient, rescue workers must make an assessment.
Gently, Mary examined Lori's left side and found only a bruised calf.
"When I got to her right shoulder, it literally fell out into my
hand," Mary says. "I padded it up the best I could, and kept
looking."
But as she lifted a lock of Lori's hair to check a trickle of blood,
Mary gasped. She was looking at a gash at least six inches long and
three inches wide, forming a pool of blood underneath the girl. Lori's
heavy clothes and matted hair had hidden the horrible fact that she was
bleeding to death right in front of Mary.
How could she stop the flow? Mary had first aid and CPR training,
"but firefighters are primarily expected to fight fires," she
notes. "We don't carry medical supplies-- everything is on the
equipment van." Coming from miles away, the van might not arrive
for fifteen or twenty minutes. Mary needed pressure bandages
immediately. What about her fireman's gloves? No. They were big enough
but dirty, and pressing them against such a terrible wound would
introduce more infection. "God," Mary prayed, "please
help me help her. There's no way I can do this on my own."
What could she use? Worried, Mary looked to her left. Nothing but
fresh, undisturbed snow across the fields. She glanced to her right, to
a group of bystanders forming along the highway. Maybe one of them had
something sterile to stem the flow. For a moment, she looked back at
Lori--and her heart seemed to stop. In the snow to Mary's left, half an
arm's length away, "just where you want your material," sat a
dark red bag with black handles and a black medical emblem.
Who had brought it in that split second when Mary had looked away?
There was no one near her, no footprints marring the smooth snow. And
the bag looked nothing like the florescent orange ones local EMS
personnel used.
Mary didn't have time to wonder. She hit the clip, and the bag
snapped open to reveal a veritable pharmacy. Rubber gloves, tape,
bandages, and absorbent squares of every kind and size, all sealed in
sterile containers--everything that she needed was there, in the order
in which she would need it. Quickly Mary went to work, applying as much
pressure as she could against the gaping hole, adding new gauze squares
as the old ones became saturated.
"Come to the hospital with me, Mary, please," Lori
murmured.
"I will, honey. Just hang on."
Firefighters didn't go to hospitals with victims as a rule, but Mary
couldn't imagine leaving this girl. Something seemed to be holding them
together in a protective glass bubble, shielded from the horror, somehow
safe. Mary knew the Life Flight helicopter had arrived--she could hear
the engine descending. But she and Lori didn't feel the propeller's
blast of wind. Nor was either of them cold, despite the sub-zero
temperatures.
As personnel loaded the other girl into the helicopter, paramedics
arrived and ran to assess Lori's condition. "Stay with me,
Mary," Lori pleaded, her voice fading now.
Mary nodded. Her fingers ached with the strain, and her hair had
frozen solid under her helmet. But she still felt that strange--and
loving--connection. They would have to pry her away from Lori.
But Lori had lost too much blood to survive a helicopter trip.
"There's only one thing to do, Mary," a paramedic decided.
"You're going to hold Lori's life in your hands, literally."
"How?"
"We'll show you." Quickly, the paramedics taped Mary's
hands against Lori's wound, and then to the backboard. It took six men
to haul both women out of the ditch without disturbing their
arrangement. Sirens screamed, lights flashed.
Mary smiled down at the girl as the van raced against time. "I
told you we'd stay together," she reminded her.
It was hours before both victims stabilized and Mary felt able to
relinquish her link with Lori. Only then did she remember the mysterious
medical bag. She drove back to the scene to retrieve it.
Several firefighters had seen Mary using the bag and had assumed it
was hers. If anyone had come across it, he would have returned it to
her. Nor had the site been left untended. Since the accident, it had
been under constant surveillance. The medical bag, however, had
mysteriously vanished. And although workers painstakingly collected all
accident fragments, no trace of bandage wrappings, gauze, or other
debris from the bag was ever found.
Today, Mary and Lori enjoy a close friendship, forged during those
desperate moments in a ditch, when both felt held in the Divine
Physician's hands.
"As much of God is visible as we have eyes to see." Read stories of people of all ages, religions and races who have been touched by
heaven.
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