Page 11 of Before We Ever Spoke

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Kenny’s late-night interruption brought back memories of the knock on the dormitory door that changed her life forever. Cara and three of her high school basketball teammates were fast asleep, exhausted from the first day of the 2001 Wooster Fighting Scot Basketball Camp, when they were jolted awake.

Each summer, the players and coaches would spend four days living like college students in the dorms and play at least two basketball games against other schools in attendance each day. The trip was great for basketball but even better for bonding, and Cara looked forward to it each year.

"Cara...open up...girls...I need to speak to Cara...it's urgent…" came from the other side of the door. The voice belonged to the head coach of the Berea Braves, David Paul, who was trying to be both loud and quiet at the same time. Coach Paul was about to knock on the door again when it opened up.

"Is something wrong?" Cara asked as she looked at her coach, even though she knew the answer. Nothing could be right about a 2 a.m. wake-up call from her coach, who stood before her in a pair of red basketball shorts and a 2000-2001 Pioneer Conference Champions basketball t-shirt.

"Your mom called. Something happened at the Ford plant, and your dad was hurt. He was taken to Metro by helicopter."

Coach Paul tried to break the news to Cara the way he knew she would want it: Directly.

"Is he alive?" Cara asked before she could stop herself, but that was the way she was built. She needed to know before she could possibly process anything else.

"Yes, but I'm not going to lie, from the sound of things he is hurt pretty badly. Your mom asked if I would take you to the hospital, so get dressed and grab your things."

It was a 45-minute drive from Wooster to MetroHealth Medical Center, simply known as Metro to Clevelanders, which was recently ranked the top Level I trauma center in the country.

Cara felt numb as she rode in the passenger seat of one of the two large school vans that the team was driven to Wooster in. On the way to camp, the vans were a picture of joy and excitement, filled with giddy teenagers ready for a week of basketball and bonding. That seemed like a distant memory to Cara as she stared out the window.

Metro Health Medical Center architecture resembles that of twin smokestacks. The cylindrical buildings house some of the best trauma doctors and nurses in the world. In a city like Cleveland, there was always a steady stream of gunshot wounds, horrific car accidents, stabbings, and failed suicide attempts coming through the doors.

Workplace accident victims were also common customers at Metro, and Cara would soon learn that Charles Knox had just experienced one of the worst accidents ever to occur at the Ford Motor Company's Brook Park Engine Plant.

Coach Paul pulled the school van alongside the curb opposite the hospital parking garage. The van was too big for the parking garage, and he would have to find parking elsewhere after dropping Cara off. It was just past 3:30 am, which meant that visitors were required to enter via the MetroHealth Police Station entrance.

Coach Paul told Cara he would meet her inside after parking the van and to wait for him if she wanted. He already knew Cara well enough to know that she wouldn't, but offered regardless.

Cara, who up until this point had remained pretty calm, was visibly shaking as she exited the van. She barely nodded to him while her eyes stared straight ahead at the steel door at the bottom of a short flight of concrete steps. Metro was a county hospital and the outdoor decor that greeted Cara as she descended the concrete steps had a prison-like feel to them, save for a few shrubs and gingko trees.

12

Coach Paul watched Cara make her way down the steps towards the after-hours entrance. She had been quiet the entire ride, and he knew better than to attempt small-talk.

He had been in her shoes before at the age of 18 when his own father, Douglas, collapsed of a heart attack while golfing with his only son. They were in Hilton Head, South Carolina at the prestigious Sea Pines Resort Golf Club, home to the Harbour Town Links, when it occurred. It was the father-son trip that they had been planning for years, and a celebration of David's graduation from high school and subsequent basketball scholarship to Cleveland State University.

They had just finished the 13th hole, which was a par 4 hole with a green that features a "Mickey Mouse Ears" bunker which drops down to about 4 feet below the surface of the green.

The father and son made their way along the edge of the bunker towards their golf cart, with Douglas closest to the bunker. David noticed that as his father was recapping his son's beautiful approach shot that his words started to trail. Douglas had abruptly stopped walking, and as David turned back he saw his father slightly bent over with his hands on his knees.

"Dad? You okay?!" David asked as his father dropped to one knee and then toppled over into the deep bunker, rolling lifelessly down the sandy slope. David tried to grab him by the arm, but his father was just out of reach.

"Dad!" David cried as he jumped down into the bunker to his father's side, who was face-down in the sand. As he rolled him over to his back he realized that his father was not breathing and his eyes were rolled back in his head.

David did his best to wipe the sand off of his mouth as he simultaneously looked up for help, hoping someone else was close. He started to scream for help as loud as he could and even started to try and perform CPR on his father. He had never been certified to give CPR, but he had an idea and decided it was better than doing nothing.

Luckily, one of the course rangers witnessed his father fall into the bunker from the next hole over and was already using the walkie-talkie on his golf cart to radio the clubhouse for help as he drove towards them.

The ranger, who David would later learn was a retired fire chief from Rochester named Max, hopped out of his cart and took over. He told David to keep an eye out for the ambulance, which was already on its way. David felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience as he watched Max perform chest compressions and give resuscitation breaths to his father.

David always used to think it was cliché when people said a few minutes seemed like a lifetime. He was a very pragmatic young man, a trait which would help him become a very successful leader as a teacher and coach.

As David shifted his eyes back and forth from his father to the cart path in search of an ambulance he realized that the old cliché was, in fact, a reality. The ten minutes it took for an ambulance to arrive seemed like an eternity. An eternity where David had never felt more helpless and scared.

When the ambulance arrived the EMT's jumped into action, relieving a much winded Max, who had been continuously performing CPR on Douglas. Max had unfortunately seen this happen more than once during his first two years at Harbour Towne, as the course was typically filled with out-of-shape snowbirds often trying to play 36 holes in the hot and humid climate of the Carolina Coast.

Max watched as the EMT's worked on Douglas and loaded him onto the gurney and into the ambulance, which had pulled right up to the bunker on the 13th hole. He was always impressed by the coordinated efforts of a rescue squad, despite having witnessed so many in his own career. David joined his father in the back of the ambulance, and Max made his way back to his Ranger cart.

As he sat in the cart, drained, he said a prayer for both of them. He knew that despite his efforts, the outcome was going to be a coin-flip. He had seen enough of both sides of that coin to know that predictions were futile.

David will never forget the feeling of hope he had watching his father open his eyes in the back of that ambulance for the first time since he collapsed, even though he knew his father was probably scared and disoriented.

"Dad, it’s David. Keep your eyes open Dad...I'm right here Dad," David said repeatedly from his spot in the back of the ambulance as it pulled into Hilton Head Regional Hospital.

Douglas Paul survived his heart attack that day, and as David parked the van he prayed that Cara would be as lucky as he was 20 years earlier.

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