“The Storm” (Chapter 22, Women Warriors)
Author: Melanie Kay
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Melanie Kay is a road patrol deputy/paramedic for the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office in Michigan. She has been in EMS/paramedic since 1997 and a deputy since 2006.
It was just after midnight on a very stormy May night. The call came over the radio as a three year old boy missing from an apartment complex. The first deputy on the scene responded in routine fashion, gathering information and conducting a house check that we all know to do in these situations. Nine times out of ten a call from a frantic parent or family member results in police arriving, checking the house, and finding the missing child sleeping under a bed or hiding in a clothes hamper.
The weather was bad. Wind and rain whipped the landscape, which was aglow in flashes of luminescent lightening, punctuated by deafening thunder. I just assumed this would end in the nine times out of ten category. At the time my youngest son was three years old, and I could not imagine him outside in this kind of weather. Shortly after the first officer arrived he advised he would need more help. Despite having checked the apartment and the immediate surroundings, the little boy was nowhere to be found.
I arrived on scene to find the boy's aunt and grandmother inside the apartment. The aura surrounding the situation was easy to read—panic—I saw it in their eyes and heard it in their voices. As a mom I dread being in a situation where I don’t know the whereabouts of my three year old boy at midnight in the middle of a storm. My heart went out to this family, and I immediately thought of my own little boy at home tucked safely in his bed. I resisted the urge to call and check on him. We immediately devised a game plan utilizing the few resources and scant manpower we had at the time. Equipped with a rain coat and flashlight, each of us went our separate way into the storm in an attempt to locate the toddler.
My first instinct was to look in the bushes near the apartment, knowing children have a natural survival instinct. Next, I planned to search areas in the complex he would be familiar with: the playground and the office. After a few minutes of probing the bushes, I saw the local fire department had arrived with extra manpower and lighting. Meanwhile, the wind was so fierce it hampered our ability to even walk, forcing us to bend over to make any forward progress. The monsoon-like rain limited the ability to see, almost as if one were looking through a waterfall. The frequent lightning strikes were akin to scary special effects in a horror movie. All I could think about was the little boy out in this weather. Alone. Scared.
The apartment buildings had two large retention ponds located near the entrance and separated by the main drive into the complex. While acting as drainage, they also gave the property an aesthetic appearance. One of them was near the office and the playground. I scanned the first retention pond where the fire department was setting up light towers, praying my eyes would not see what I had been conjuring up in my mind since I arrived. Nothing there.
I crossed the street to the other pond near the apartment office with my ear close to the radio, hoping for a voice to announce they’d found him and he was okay. As I made my way down the muddy embankment, the light from my flashlight was inadequate to see across the pond in the cascading rain. I could not wait for the fire department to finish searching the other pond, so I stepped boot high into the water in an attempt to stretch my beam a bit farther out into the water. It was dark and murky. I took another step in the muck and it was then that the light captured what I dared not think about. Looking back, I don't know if it was actually the light from my flashlight or the eerie back light from lightning that had just flashed, but I saw as plain as day the little boy in his pajamas, floating face down about ten feet from me.
Shoving my flashlight in my back pocket, I started wading out to him. I got about waist deep and grabbed him. I had no idea how long he had been in the water, but he felt warm. My paramedic instinct kicked in immediately. I flipped the tiny lifeless body face up and opened the mouth. He was not breathing and had no pulse. I scooped him up and carried him to the bank of the pond where I could administer some chest compressions to help pump water from his lungs and open his airway. As I was making my way to the embankment, I tried to radio that I had found the boy and I needed help. I also wanted to request an ambulance for a drowning at the south retention pond. No one knew where I was or that I had found the boy. Unfortunately my radio traffic was not getting out; possibly because of the weather or because it may have just been submerged in the pond. Either way I was on my own.
I placed the boy on his back and gave some chest compressions. Just across the parking lot was my police cruiser with all the advanced medical equipment I needed: oxygen, intubation and IV supplies and a heart monitor. I performed a few more chest compressions and then gathered the child and made my way to my cruiser. Halfway there I saw my sergeant heading back toward our vehicles. “Sarge, call an ambulance!” He saw I had the child in my arms and ran to help me while making the call on his radio. The limp little boy was placed in the back of the fire engine and we went to work. Within minutes an ambulance arrived and he was moved to the back of the rig. We immediately left for the hospital and continued to work on the boy during the trip. It was a short ride to the local emergency room where advance care continued. No effort was spared to save that precious little angel, but despite everyone’s heroic actions and prayer it was not enough. He died.
I watched the ER staff work on the little body while he lay on that big gurney, he seemed so small in comparison and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was sleeping. But in my heart I knew what the outcome would be even before I heard the doctor say it. “Time of death is . . .” Walking away I heard the sorrowful sounds of the little boy's family crying out as they learned the fate of their child. I glanced into the room and saw the boy's father fall to his knees, as if begging the doctor to take back the news he’d just given them. I thought about the somber reaction of the staff in the emergency room, standing quietly, looking to each other for comfort, and trying to understand why an innocent baby has to die. I walked away from it all, with a strange, yet vivid memory—hearing my boots squish from the pond water in them as I walked down the hallway. I suddenly realized how cold and wet I was, and all I could think about was that I have to get changed out of these clothes and get back to work. I again resisted the urge to call home to check on my own children. What I really wanted to do was go home and see them, touch them and wrap my arms around them.
Back at the station, I found a dry uniform and boots and hit the road to finish my shift. To many people this probably seems warped or somewhat abnormal, but for me it was completely natural. Police officers develop their own defense mechanisms and coping strategies to deal with crises. Mine was to go back to work. What happened that night was tragic, but tragic things often happen in police work, but if we let them consume us we wouldn't last very long before the horror take over our mind.
At the end of the shift I changed into my jeans and tennis shoes and left “work” in my locker. I went home and became mom again, and made my way to both my son's bedrooms lying next to each of them, staring. I was thankful they were safe and said a silent prayer for the family that had lost their little boy in the storm.
For more information check out the book’s website at: http://womenwarriorsbook.com/ .
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