Into the Freeze

The entire week had been one snow day after another. Despite this, I decided to enjoy my time off by taking a day-trip to take photographs and see what else I could learn about Nevada.

The roads were icy and therefore slick – making driving fast a bad idea. So I took my time, stopping to snap a picture here and there.

It was jus’ before 11 o’clock that morning when I finally made it beyond Carson City and into the Valley bearing the same name. Off to my right, I saw a woman standing by the edge of the roadway — soaking wet and looking to be in a horrible panic.

As I pulled closer, I noticed a vehicle in the ditch by the freeway, it’s four tires protruding from a thin layer of broken ice. The upside down car was submerged in about four-feet of water.

I immediately stopped to help.

By the time I got out of my car and to the woman, I had a handle on the situation. She had screamed and yelled two words over and over at me: My baby!

Without waiting for any further information I pulled off my leather jacket, got the knife from my back pocket and jumped feet first into the water. Instantly I was freezing, but I couldn’t stop to think about how cold I was at the moment.

Instead I searched the passenger side of the car for the door handle. It was easy to find, but opening the door was difficult because of the mud and debris that held it in place.

Unable to open it, I waded around to the driver’s side and found it to be part way open. I ducked beneath the water’s surface and squeezed inside the vehicle.

By this time my hands and arms were so numb that I could hardly feel anything I touched. Instead I had to look for more than feel my way around until I located what I was hoping to find.

The baby carrier was upside down and resting on the ceiling of the car’s roof. I felt inside it – but there was no baby.

My mind was growing foggy from the ice-water and my lungs started to burn. So I started to back out of the vehicle.

That’s when I felt something brush the side of my head. I reached up and realized I was holding the leg of an infant.

With the baby in my arms, I scrambled out of the car and up the bank to a waiting crowd. I handed the infant to a bystander, who started CPR on the limb little body.

Someone else grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around me. I watched as the man I had handed the bay too worked to warm it up, with chest compressions and puffs of breath.

In what seemed like hours – but was more like minutes – an ambulance with its siren wailing pulled up to the scene. They didn’t remain long as they loaded up the infant and the mother and sped off to the hospital.

It took me more than two-hours to finally warm up enough to fill out the police report. Back home that evening, I learned from the local news that the infant survived — and her mother was okay.

That made the bone-numbing cold, worth it.