To Heaven and Back (9 page)

I became aware of my body and opened my eyes to see the faces of the Longs looking down at me. There seemed to be a sense of relief and excitement as Tom and Kenneth started telling the others what to do for me. They arranged a kayak to be my lift and secured my body to the top. The rocky river bank was adjacent to an extremely thick bamboo forest. The incline of the hillside was steep and appeared insurmountable.

As the Longs considered their options, several young Chilean men materialized out of nowhere. A couple of them helped lift and begin to carry the boat to which I was secured, and the other began to
push a path through the bamboo. No words were ever spoken to them or by them; they just knew what to do. It was slow going through the forest and I faded in and out of consciousness. Kenneth has always been filled with the qualities typical of an oldest child, and his drive pushed everyone else. Despite their increasing fatigue, no one was going to stop unless he did.

During my intermittent interludes of consciousness, I would confidently blurt out instructions for them to give me steroids; I knew I couldn’t move my legs and, as a spine surgeon, I assumed that I had broken my back and injured my spinal cord. If such were the case, the timely administration of steroids could lessen my degree of paralysis. This seemed like rambling to them, but it was difficult for them to ignore. Eventually they found a single-track dirt path, which led to a dirt road.

Our entourage slowly trundled along this dirt path, moving forward but not really knowing what they would do when they eventually found a road. The nearest village was too far to reach by walking and any road they came upon would be infrequently traveled. They vaguely hoped to find someone with an old tractor or other farm implement that could transport me more quickly to the village. At that time, ambulances were essentially nonexistent in this part of Chile so it was a great surprise when we emerged from the forested
hillside and saw an ambulance parked on the side of the road. The driver didn’t speak, but he seemed to be waiting for us.

After Bill had waved us off at the river put-in earlier in the day, he drove the truck to a sunny spot, parked and pulled out a book in preparation for a leisurely day of reading. He planned to meet us later in the day at the river take-out. During my resuscitation, one woman sort of “freaked-out” and ran away from the scene at the river. With what I am sure was God’s leading, she ran to the exact spot where Bill was reading. After a quick explanation, they both jumped into the truck and rapidly drove along the road in search of our group. They found us just as I was being loaded into the ambulance.

Tom and Chad drove in the truck while Bill and Kenneth rode with me in the back of the ambulance. The driver careened down the road toward the tiny first-aid station in the village of Choshuenco, and Kenneth was somewhat reassured about my condition and my degree of comprehension when I began insisting that the driver slow down before he killed us. When we finally made it to the first-aid station, Kenneth and Chad returned to the chaos at the river. Tom stayed with Bill and me.

When Kenneth and Chad returned to the river, they first tried to find the young men who had been
such a great help in carrying me through the forest. These young men were nowhere to be found and the people from the village had no idea who they could be talking about. They didn’t know of anyone fitting their description in the village, so the people thought Chad and Kenneth must be mistaken. Angels? Chad and Kenneth found their return trip through the bamboo forest to the river bank was even more difficult than when they had carried me out. They found the forest to be even thicker and the hillside even steeper than they remembered. It made the success of their earlier efforts seem even less plausible, unless one accepted that the process of my rescue was almost entirely a result of divine intervention.

Once all of the remaining boaters were accounted for, Kenneth and Chad tried to recover the two boats that were still trapped at the bottom of the waterfall. It was nearly impossible. The rock upon which they had been standing when they fished me out of the water was gone. It was not possible for them to stand in the current of the steep waterfall. It was impossible for them to reach or even touch the boats. It took more than an hour of dedicated working and suffering through multiple snapped ropes to get the first boat out. In order to achieve this, they had to first bend and fold both boats in half by securing lines to the boat ends and rotating them such that the current could do this work. When they finally retrieved the lines they had been using, they saw that there had
been enough friction and force between the lines to melt the knots together.

As they returned to Pucón, they were exhausted and overwhelmed by the absolute impossibility of my rescue and the supernatural aspects of what had occurred. God’s presence and purposeful intervention was clear to all those who were present on the scene. Tom, Kenneth, Chad, and Anne have all told me they feel that the situation went from one of total and absolute failure and hopelessness to one of success without any meaningful input from them. They have described it to me as a choreographed performance in which they were each just playing their roles. To this day, they continue to feel that ours is not just a good story. It wasn’t just one miracle; it was a constellation of miracles for which there is no possible explanation other than God’s intervention. As Chad later said, “Let’s not let life muddle what happened. We were all part of a miracle.”

Anne has reported that she was overwhelmed by the simultaneous and contrasting feelings of being so helpless and small in the universe and of being so loved by God that He chose to be present. She, and I think all of us, are still feeling undeserving of His intervention. With all of the suffering and people in need, it is difficult to understand how or why He intervened that day on the Fuy River in Chile, but He clearly did.

Anne has described feeling both helpless and remarkably liberated. She knows that God is in control and she feels that she now understands the verse in the Bible that describes how you must give up everything in order to gain everything:

The first-aid clinic in Choshuenco was quite rudimentary, with no diagnostic equipment and few supplies. Bill was relieved to find a supply of plaster however, and expertly applied long splints to each of my legs. I don’t think I said much, as I felt myself drifting back and forth between this world and the one I had left. I was still fully immersed in the visions, the passion, the intensity, and the love I had just witnessed in God’s kingdom.

In trying to sort out and make sense of what was happening, I made one absolute decision: I was not going to stay in Chile for my medical care, nor was I going to stop in any of the large American cities through which we would pass on our way back to our home in Wyoming. Jackson Hole had a great
hospital, doctors that I trusted and, most importantly, I knew that I needed to be with my children.

Bill and Tom loaded me into the backseat of the pickup truck for the beginning of our journey home. We drove to Coique, where there was a small airport. Finding the airport closed, we drove on to Valdivia, a bustling city of more than 100,000. Bill’s heart sank and he was brought to tears as we approached the airport entrance and saw that the entry gate was closed and locked. There would be no more flights until the morning.

We drove into the city and found a small hotel with a vacancy. As Tom said goodbye, Bill carried me up the stairs and we settled in for a long and restless night of waiting for the morning. A taxi returned us to the airport at the crack of dawn, at which point Bill found a small plane that was going to Santiago. He secured seats and gently lifted me into the plane. Bill was heroic. He dealt with the bags, the tickets, and with me in my debilitated condition.

I cannot tell you why we decided to take commercial flights rather than calling for a medical evacuation, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Bill carried me off one plane and onto the next. The flight from Santiago to Dallas carried few people, and there were several empty seats across which I could stretch out. Although the flight attendants raised their eyebrows at my appearance and behavior, none questioned my condition too thoroughly.

We were met with a wheelchair upon our arrival at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and we uneventfully passed through customs and back into the United States. Bill thought it would attract less interest if only one of my legs was bundled up, so prior to boarding our next flight to Salt Lake City, Utah, he removed the splint from one of my legs. Despite this, the flight attendants expressed significant concern after watching Bill gently lift me into my seat. In response to their questions, we stretched the truth … a lot. We explained that we were both orthopaedic surgeons and that I had injured my ankle while on vacation and we simply thought I would be more comfortable with it splinted.

The flight attendants clearly did not believe this fable, so they brought the flight’s captain to speak with us. He explained his concern that I would be a hindrance and an obstacle in the event of an emergency landing or crash. I chuckled internally and wanted to explain that after what I had already been through, I was sure this would be the safest flight he had ever flown. What I actually said was that I was trained in emergency situations, my injury really wasn’t too bad, and I would definitely not slow anyone down. Satisfied, he returned to the cockpit, and we were on our way.

I began to have some difficulty breathing upon our arrival in Utah. When we stopped for something to drink, I found that I was weak, ill, and unable to breathe deeply or fully. I felt very distant and
I don’t think either Bill or I were thinking clearly at this point. We never discussed going to one of the local hospitals in Salt Lake City, as I was resolute in returning to Jackson for my care. Thinking that I might have a blood clot or pneumonia, we telephoned my internist and asked him to meet us in our office upon our return.

Bill then loaded me into the backseat of our pickup truck, and we started the five-hour drive from Utah to our home in Wyoming. When my breathing became even more labored several hours into the drive, I began to question my decisions and to wonder if I would make it back to my children. Bill called my internist and suggested that he should meet us in the emergency room rather than in our own medical facility.

The elevation gain as we drove over Pine Creek Pass (elevation 6,720 feet) caused my breathing to deteriorate even further. I began to apologize to my husband—my loving, faithful, constant husband whom I adored. He had been one of God’s greatest gifts to me, and I apologized to him for not being able to make it home, for not stopping sooner, for choosing to return to Jackson, for leaving him, for dying. I apologized again and again and again.

In Chile I had felt confident about my decision to return to Jackson Hole because I thought it was God’s plan. Now that it looked like I would die before reaching home, I was filled with remorse at
my presumed misunderstanding. I was overcome with grief for my husband and for my young children. Willie, Betsy, Eliot, and Peter were so loving and vulnerable that I felt great sorrow at not being able to make it for them … for failing them.

As we drove over Teton Pass (elevation 8,431 feet), I began breathing so shallowly and taking in so little oxygen that I could no longer speak. Although I was quite comfortable, I began to fade in and out of consciousness as my usually law-abiding husband pushed harder on the accelerator and forced the speedometer ever higher. When we reached the hospital parking lot, the truck door was jerked open and I was quickly moved out of the truck and onto a gurney by the emergency room staff.