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I Saved My Friend’s Life

By Sivan Mashiach

Last Friday, I realized a dream, a dream that G-d would allow me to save someone’s life, but actually save the person’s life from start to finish. Not just be a part of the medical process that saved them but to actually save them with my own two hands.

I have been a paramedic for the past 20 years, and I have participated in countless CPR cases, some of them have been successful, others were not. I have been a participant in saving someone’s life many times, part of a team that did its job and passed on a live patient who survived their ordeal with the help of doctors in hospitals as well as the first responders who arrived before or after me. But over my many years, I have never yet been the person who arrived first at a scene where a person was dead. I had yet to be the person who connected my defibrillator to them and become the messenger of G-d who was primarily responsible for bringing that person back from the dead.

For years, I have dreamed of doing this, and every time an EMT or paramedic wrote a story in a WhatsApp group that they responded to an emergency, brought a patient’s pulse back, and that a few days later the person was released from the hospital without any neurological damage, I felt happy for them. But in my heart, I desired that one day the decree would fall that I would be able to be that person who wrote this story. Last Friday, that day came.

I was in the middle of cooking for Shabbos. It was 5:21 p.m., and I received a phone call from my friend’s husband who lives in the building opposite me. I was on the other line, so his call went to my call waiting. He called me again. It went to call waiting again. I switched calls and answered him but the line went dead. A second later, there was a knock at my door. At the door was their eldest son, a 12-year-old boy. In an incredibly calm and collected voice, he said: “My mother hit her head. She is bleeding and unconscious.”

When I heard this, my husband and I ran to our car, grabbed my medical supplies, and rushed over to their house. When we got to the house, we heard screams, “Over here. Over here.” We ran into the room and found my friend, a 38-year-old woman, unconscious. She was not breathing and had no pulse. Her quick-witted husband was performing chest compressions. He had taken one of my first aid courses many years ago. I alerted dispatch to the situation and began a full-on CPR and attached a defibrillator. It recognized a heartbeat and applied one shock. I began ventilating my friend as her husband continued compressions. Then we switched.

In minutes, the room filled with United Hatzalah volunteer first responders and ambulance teams. Together, we conducted a synchronized CPR that was for the ages. As we took over CPR from my friend, my husband, who is not a trained first responder, took the man aside and began to calm him and helped him calm the children. I kept telling my friend that she had to come back to us. She had to come back to her husband, her children, her community, and her friends. After 17 minutes of CPR and four shocks from my defibrillator, she finally listened to me and came back.

Her vital signs began to look good again, and the ambulance crew took her to the hospital.

Social service representatives from the city arrived and asked how they could help the family.

That Shabbat was not an easy one

When her husband told me the news, we both began to cry tears of joy and happiness.

on a personal level. My husband and I were worried about our friend’s condition, and we helped the family cope in any way that we could. As we are not able to use our phones on Shabbat except for emergencies, we had no way of knowing what was transpiring in the hospital and how our friend was doing. Together with other neighbors, we watched the children while the father accompanied the mother at the hospital.

Finally, on Saturday night, I spoke with the husband and heard that my friend’s situation was not looking good. We were asked to pray for her that she may have a full recovery. He said: “The doctors don’t know what caused her to collapse, and they don’t know how long her brain went without oxygen. They can’t tell me if or when she will wake up. We need a miracle.”

I spread the word around our community that the family was in need of our continued help and prayers.

On Tuesday, we got word from the hospital that my friend woke up and was breathing on her own. She was able to recognize her husband and even spoke to her children. There are no words to describe the joyous feeling I had. When her husband told me the news, we both began to cry tears of joy and happiness, each of us on our respective sides of the phone call. There is no doubt that the compressions that I had taught her husband had helped and that our intervention and beginning CPR so quickly were what saved my friend’s life.

I pray and thank the L-rd who gave me the chance to be one of his messengers and save the life of my friend. I want to thank United Hatzalah, the organization in which I volunteer, for giving me the training, equipment, and ability to save a life. I also want to thank my husband, who is also a volunteer with the organization and helped me realize this dream and every other dream that I have, as weird and wild as they are.

To you, the readers, I say: go learn first aid because the day will come when it will be your turn to save a life. It may even be the life of someone whom you hold very dear to your hearts and you will need to know what to do.