The people who brought her back, a doctor who answered my calls for help, three police officers, and a squad of EMTs who were just seconds away, never asked for a dime.
It was a beautiful late summer day and my wife and I were attending a local high school football game. Her 15-year-old son was in the marching band and she wanted to see him perform. Being the social butterfly that she is, she was not content to be a spectator. She had volunteered to help out with the halftime show and went down to the field just before halftime. I watched from my seat 5 rows back, on the 50 yard line as she helped roll out the cart holding the timpani drums. She took the covers off and then positioned herself along the fence surrounding the field to await the end of the show. When the show was over, she took the drum covers back to the drums, helped to cover the them, and then she, an adult male and a high school drummer began to wheel the cart back to the school.
At first it moved slowly, being dragged across the field, but as the cart reached the track it began to pick up speed. The drummer, a high school freshman, lead the effort, with the adult man steadying the front of the cart. Mrs. billybush’s role was steadying the back of the cart, a task that seemed pointless and unsuited to he five-foot-nothing, 90 pound frame. As soon as I saw her go into a slow jog, I knew she was going to fall, and then, as the group rounded the first curve, she did fall. At first I thought she had just stumbled, or maybe the cart had had knocked her over. I watched as the cart continued out of the stadium, never slowing down. I’m sure they never saw her. NOBODY saw her.
I looked back to where my wife had fallen and she hadn’t gotten up. She wasn’t trying to get up. I stood up on the bleacher, pointed in her direction and yelled, “She’s hurt”, but there was no one within the sound of my voice who was in a position to help her. I ran down the bleachers and along the sidewalk that surrounded the field, pushing my way through the crowds of people returning from the concessions. As the crowds grew thicker, I decided I needed to jump the fence. Now, I am a 51-year-old man, somewhat overweight and out of shape, and I was wearing sandals. I knew it was going to be a risk, but I made it over the fence, landing on my feet.
When I got to her side she was not conscious, her eyeglasses laying on the track by her side. Still, no one appeared to have noticed her. I screamed for help and people came. The first was a woman who said she was a doctor. She quickly assessed that my wife was not breathing and started CPR. Next was a police officer, the school resource officer who checked for a pulse. When he found none, he sprinted to the opposite side of the field, where the on site EMT squad was parked. I’m told he pulled his hamstring along the way, but never stopped. I still get teary-eyed thinking about it. A second officer took over chest compressions, and a third produced a knife and cut off her shirt. There were other doctors there as well. One, a former college football star turned anesthesiologist, asked me her medical history. Another stood by me, trying to keep me calm. When the squad arrived with the defibrillator, it took two shocks, two minutes apart to get my wife’s heart back in rhythm. It was the longest two minutes of my life.
When the city rescue squad arrived, my wife was conscious, but not lucid. An EMT told me they were taking her to the nearest hospital, just a mile-and-a-half away. They loaded her into the back of the ambulance and I jumped in the front and we were there in 5 minutes. I spent an excruciating amount of time in admissions before they led me to her room. She arrive moments later, conscious and aware. She had three questions, “What happened?”, “Where am I?”, and “Can we afford this?” I have seen people cast doubts on claims of concerns over cost in life threatening situations, but this is the world we live in.
As to what happened, my wife had not fallen. Instead, she went into Sudden Cardiac Arrest, her heart in a rhythm “not compatible with life.” Had we not been lucky enough to be in a place where she could get immediate help, she would not be here. She had no history or discernible warning signs that something like this could happen. The “Where are we?” was easy. We were at the closest hospital. I wasn’t given a choice. Didn’t want one. As for “Can we afford this?”, I told her not to worry about it, I was confident we could. I told her I thought insurance would cover an ambulance ride if the patient was admitted. I was wrong about that.
My wife was admitted to the ICU and I spent the night in her room on the couch. In the morning some friends arrived and loaned me their cell phone(mine was dead and hers was in her purse, which had been left in the stands 5 rows back from the 50 yard line.) I called the number on the back of my insurance card and explained to the representative what happened. She asked me what hospital we were at and when I told her she said, “That’s good. It’s a Tier 2 hospital, so you’ll only have to pay 20%.” My wife now stable, I told the nurse we would have to transfer her to the closest Tier 1 hospital, another 2 miles away. I began to worry a bit about the cost, but my mother, a former health care worker, told me she thought they would waive the copay in the event of an emergency. She was wrong about that.
The medics arrived several hours later to transfer her to the Tier I hospital, which also happened to be Mrs. billybush’s employer. Care there was covered 100% after the deductible was met. In total, we paid 20% for the first ambulance, which was out of network, 20% for one day in the first hospital, 20% for the ride in the ambulance that transferred her to the second hospital, and we paid up to our deductible at the third. It was a painful dent in our savings, but we could afford it, but so many people can not. I have long supported a single-payer healthcare system, but these events have driven home how important it is. Even now, I worry that my wife may not be able to keep working and we lose our insurance, and about 40% of our income. We can argue about the details, but there has to be a better way.
We never got a bill from any of the people who saved my wife’s life. They did what they did because they cared about their fellow humans and their only thought was to help in whatever way they could. That is the way it should be.
