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TwitThis"He's Not Breathing!"
Liz considered swimming for the boat, and rejected the idea, certain she would drown in the flood if she tried. Then, a few feet away, she spotted an air mattress. She threw herself on it and paddled out to the boat.The craft was caked in sludge, the engine clogged with mud. Without much faith, Liz turned the key. The motor caught and ran.
She had no spotlight, only the little red and green running lights, but she brought the boat around to the edge of the cove where the children were sobbing in the dark. One by one, she lifted them aboard. Marissa and Jenni carried Casey over the rocks and hauled him onto the boat. Once aboard, they crouched between the two captain's chairs and continued their grueling task: ten chest compressions, one breath. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Earlier in the day, Liz had noticed a houseboat anchored directly across the lake about a mile away. Now she gunned the engine in that direction. Beyond the area affected by the flood, the lake was eerily calm and glasslike.
Once alongside the houseboat, Liz and the kids began screaming for help. A man and a woman stumbled out onto the deck.
Liz explained what had happened, and asked if the couple would take the four younger kids aboard and watch them while she went for help. They immediately agreed. Then, with the two girls still doing CPR on Casey's motionless form, Liz sped off.
It was ten miles to Arboles Marina, where there was a campground. By the running lights, Liz could see only a few feet in front of her, and went as fast as she dared. She steered by instinct and dead reckoning. There was a cell phone in the boat's glove compartment; she took it out and punched 911 again and again.
The girls were awfully quiet now, and Liz feared they were tiring or despairing. "Count the compressions!" she yelled to them. "Shout them out so I can hear them!"
For Marissa, calling out the compressions became a mantra. It helped dissolve her fears about the little boy she thought of as a brother. Yet how long could they keep breathing for him, keep his blood circulating?
Then a call went through. Liz stopped the boat dead in the water. "We need an ambulance at Arboles Marina. We're doing CPR on a six-year-old. He's not breathing." The phone disconnected. She had no idea if or how much of her message had gotten through. She hit redial and urged the boat forward.
The trip took on a heartbreaking repetition: The girls chanted over the roar of the engine, and Liz redialed and redialed.
Another call went through. She slowed the boat. "We're on Navajo Lake ..." The connection blinked off. Twice more this happened.
The girls were still counting out their chest compressions. Then suddenly they fell silent.
"What's going on?" Liz shouted.
"I think he's breathing."
Liz's heart leaped. "Don't stop," she said. The girls went back to their job. Then out of the blackness, Liz saw something that made her almost queasy with relief: the lights of an emergency vehicle parked on the boat ramp at Arboles Marina.
She pulled up to the ramp, and two volunteer firefighters hefted Casey out of the boat. It had been more than an hour since the flood hit. By some miracle, Casey was breathing on his own when he was airlifted away.
The night had been brutally traumatic, and for Casey, the horrors were not to end soon. He spent 37 difficult days in a Denver hospital. There were touch-and-go moments, times when things looked hopeless again. But at every turn, his little body and big spirit prevailed. Today he is a healthy, active eight-year-old.
Dr. Alan Steinman, former chief medical officer for the U.S. Coast Guard, an expert on drowning, is not completely surprised that Casey survived without permanent impairment. "Children have a better survival rate than adults, especially in cold water," he says. "The heroic CPR provided his body with enough oxygen to spare him from irretrievable damage."
Sometimes crisis changes everything and everyone. At other times even traumatic events have no immediate or easily discernible effect. All the issues between Liz and Marissa were not resolved and their relationship was not magically transformed. There are still tensions between them, but each has a new respect for the other, and Marissa's life is back on track.
Life goes on. And that is enough. Just ask Casey.
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