Zap, Crackle, Pop

Suddenly, I collapsed.
My coach, just a few feet away, ran over. Another across the gym rushed to her side. The other ushered the rest of the girls into the locker room. Somebody called the paramedics. They were only two minutes away, but you can't wait two minutes when your student's heart is no longer beating.

The two coaches started CPR; the girls in the locker room started to pray. Two minutes later, the paramedics were there; they stuck the shocky-shocky pads to my chest and let 'em fly.

Zap.

Didn't work. They charged 'em up again.

Zap.

In the meantime, the school office called my mom. In typical junior high administrator fashion, they spoke so calmly over the phone that my mom thought she would arrive to find me propped against the gymnasium wall, smelling salts under my nose.

Things were a little different.

She arrived to see the paramedics wheeling me out on a stretcher. They drove me to a hospital. They helicoptered me to another hospital. My lungs had filled up with fluid from the trauma. They dunked me into a medicated coma. I vibrated on a breathing machine for the next four days, a tube hanging from my greenish, half-open lips. My friends prayed. My family prayed. My ward prayed.



Then, on Friday, I woke up.

With a sigh that echoed like an avalanche through my little social world, the chaos subsided. We were amazed with what we saw when the smoke cleared.

A cloudy February day and a muddy track, which made the students practice inside. Coaches and doctors who had stepped up and acted with haste and precision. Paramedics who had done the wrong thing, which turned out to be the right thing. Love and care from the school administration.

And suddenly, it was very clear that a higher Authority had been above it all.