Watching his chest rise and fall, waiting for the fall to
settle, and praying that it didn’t, I reflected on the events that had occurred
in the past few days that had got us to where we were. Lying in the hospital
bed next to Camron, tears started streaming down my cheeks. I carefully grabbed
his hand and gently held it in mine, thanking the Lord once again for the
miracle that we had experienced, knowing that things could and should be a lot
worse than they were. I thought back to the days before the accident, my mind
willing it to be a dream, and consciously knowing that I would never wake up
from it. Then I was back in the truck again.
Fall had just begun, the deer hunt was all Camron and his
brothers could think about, so we took a weekend vacation to Hurricane to stay
with his sister Trina so Camron could hunt in New Harmony, near Cedar city. It
was a trip that turned out longer than we had intended. During the time that we
were there, I would see Cam late at night, and early in the morning when he would
kiss me goodbye, the cool wind would brush my cheeks from the open window, and
with heavy eyes I would wish him luck as he left for another hunt, so hopeful
that he would have success and his efforts would be rewarded. We stayed an
extra night, attending Sacrament and other meetings and then relaxing through
all of Sunday, resting up for the last hunt in the morning. I stayed in
Hurricane while Camron and his brothers took off to scout out their hunting
area. The plan was to wait through the day until Cam got a deer, if he did, or
if he didn’t, I would drive the truck to New Harmony to meet him and then we
would drive home from there.
The day began and quickly ended. I had called Camron, and he
still didn’t have a deer, but our plan remained. So I packed up our things into
the truck, and headed to New Harmony to reclaim my husband from his captors,
and take him home to have him to myself. I insisted that I should drive. I
wanted to get as much driving in as I could so that Cam could rest and then
take the later shift, which was usually the opposite of what we normally did.
On a normal night, Cam would drive until his eyes were about to fall out, and I
would lay on his lap in the front of our 1998 Ford F150 truck, with my seatbelt
on, but loose and comfortable, until he could not drive anymore and I would
finish off the trip and take us home. I got to the gas station where we had
planned to meet, and we reorganized the trucks and each took off in their own
direction.
We took Brett,
Camron’s younger brother, with us to drop him off in Cedar City on our way out
of town. After saying our goodbyes to the Cedar City-ites, we drove to get some
dinner for Camron and some gas in the truck so we didn’t have to stop again. I
was feeling very playful and had been in a really good mood since Camron got in
the truck. He talked on the phone while I danced around at the gas pump, trying
to get his attention, so lighthearted and cheerful. Then we were on our way.
Camron got done eating his dinner and laid down on my lap to get some rest
before my energy wore out. I had the radio on quietly so that Cam could get
some sleep, and I talked to the radio announcer and commercials as they went
on. The road was wide open, and I felt so safe.
I had no reaction
time. Right as I saw it we were headed straight for it. What I thought was a
deer was a giant cow lying in the road. Two loud thumps and the jarring to go
with it confirmed that we had just hit this huge animal. We were flying through
the air. The only thought in my mind was that I did not know whether or not
Camron had his seatbelt on. I yelled out for him.
“Camron, Camron! Are you okay? Camron!”
He wouldn’t respond. I watched in horror as everything
happened around me, I heard the glass shattering, metal bending, the world
around me turning and turning so quickly, but in such slow motion that I could
take in every detail. The worst of all, the one detail that will forever haunt
my memory, was Camron’s legs out in front of me waving around and twisting in
such terrible ways, so uncontrollable, lifeless. The truck finally jarred to a
stop, I could tell from the way my body was hanging in my seatbelt that we had
landed on the driver side door. I closed my eyes immediately, my lips expressing
exactly what my heart intended.
“Heavenly Father, please forgive me for my imperfections,
please bless Camron and please bless Karrington, that they will be okay, and
please Father, send us help and protection, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
I had avoided looking at Camron before, I was terrified at
what I might see, but after my vocal prayer, I felt the strength I needed to
see whatever the scene was. Then I heard him moaning. I found my seatbelt and
unlatched it, I fell to the window, the only one besides the windshield that
wasn’t shattered, I stood and in a split second took in the scene before I
started apologizing. Camron had somehow been turned around, his feet now took
the place where his head had been, and he was suspended by his seatbelt which
was tight around his chest just under his armpits.
“Camron, are you okay? I hit a deer, I am so sorry, are you
okay? What is hurting?” I asked eagerly, wanting him to talk to me, I needed to
know what I could do.
“My back,” he replied, “my back, it hurts, I need help out
of this seatbelt!”
His voice was so weak, it was drenched in agony, and his breathing
was labored. He twisted around the best he could and finally reached the
seatbelt and unlatched it. He was able to get his feet on my seat and the
steering wheel for support, and he put his arms outside the shattered window to
take the pressure off his back. Then I heard the man outside the truck.
“Is everyone okay?” He asked urgently.
“We are okay, but Camron’s back really hurts and I am 19 weeks
pregnant! We need to call help!” I answered; I just wanted everything to be
okay.
“The police have been called, they are on their way.”
Before I could even think, I spoke, “are you a priesthood
holder?”
“My husband needs a blessing, will you give him one?”
The man spoke to Camron through the darkness, “would you
like a blessing,” he asked. The only reply that Camron could give through his
pain and shallow breathing was a simple yes.
The man put his hands on Camron’s head and gave him a priesthood
blessing. I was still standing on the driver side window, touching Camron’s leg
very gently, not knowing the extent of his injuries, when the man finished with
his blessing.
“I am pregnant, will you please give me a blessing too?” I
asked, my voice shaking.
“Yes I will.” He replied.
I stood up straight, my head only reaching to Camron’s waist
from the way he was standing on the seat and the steering wheel, and the man
reached his hands effortlessly into the cab of the truck through the passenger
window to give me a blessing. Camron was able to maneuver his elbows just right
on the frame of the door to reach my head to participate in my blessing.
I was then instructed to find a jacket for Camron. The
darkness was haunting, and the sound of broken glass under my feet was
unsettling. I yelled though the truck that I could not see, and a light was
handed in to me. I searched though our things, everything so completely out of
order, to find something warm for Camron to wear. Although, I knew that he was in
enough pain that he wouldn’t even consider putting on a jacket. While digging
in the mess, I heard another man speaking, his voice uneven, as if he had
walked a long way.
“Is everyone okay? How many people are in the truck? The
police are on their way, are you alright in there?”
“We are okay,” I replied, “I am trying to find a jacket for
Camron to wear.”
As I was informing the second man, I saw a light through
what used to be the back window, and realized that there was room enough for
Camron and I to get through, and out of what used to be our truck.
“I need to lie down; can we get out, Sarah?” Camron’s
breathing was beginning to sound worse.
“I think we can fit through the back window, it’s broken
out,” I explained through my tears.
Just as I finished speaking, I looked down again, and saw
blood on my hand. I realized that it was stiff but I didn’t feel much pain, so
I continued my search. I lifted a shirt
off of the ground and found our phones right next to each other, so I picked
them up and put them in my jacket pocket. Camron didn’t have his shoes on, but
he was in desperate need of air and somewhere to rest, that he stepped down
onto the broken glass to walk out of the truck. I went out first, trying to
hurry to get Camron out as soon as possible. The second man spoke to me again
as I squeezed through the window sill.
“Be careful of the glass, it’s everywhere.” He explained.
As soon as I was through, I turned back to help Cam out. I
got on one side of him, and the first man was at his other side. We walked a
few steps, and Camron couldn’t support his own weight anymore. He turned away
from the man.
“You have to catch me,” he said, “I need to lie down.”
Camron let all of his weight go. Almost like a trust fall,
he let gravity take over, and fell back into the man’s arms. The man caught
Camron effortlessly and set him flat on the ground. I moved as quickly as I
could to be by Camron’s side. I knelt down by his head and tried to lift it
into my lap. My hand started to feel like it was broken, and trying to hold
Camron was too much.
“My hand,” I told the first man, “I think it is broken, will
you hold his head up?”
The man didn’t speak again; he just took Camron’s head into
his hands. I looked around me, panic setting in, as I saw red and white flashing
lights across the freeway.
“Why aren’t they coming over here?” I asked, my voice
shaking with my body, “What are they doing?
I felt something then, something hard and strong in my
belly, Karrington Jay. She was kicking, kicking stronger than I had felt thus
far in the pregnancy. She was telling me she was okay. She was letting me know
that she was still safe and warm. For just a moment I felt peace, then I heard
Camron moan, and I was back again.
The second man informed me that there were two other cars
that had hit the cow before us. I asked if they were okay, hoping that no one
had lost their life. He told me that everyone was okay. I looked down at
Camron, and caressed his face, telling him that everything was going to be
okay. Then I took out Camron’s phone and called his brother in law, Jonny. As I
was getting off the phone, the ambulance pulled up, there were so many people,
and I couldn’t count them all.
They went to work. Most of them went to Camron, and two
women came to me. They started asking me questions, and I kept asking about
Cam. They got me on a stretcher, and
carried me to the ambulance. I waited for what seemed like an eternity for them
to bring Camron onto the ambulance as well, when they finally did; he reached
his hand over to take mine.
I was taken to a separate room in the hospital. They took my
pulse, and checked my hands and feet for normal movement, all the while, I was
asking for them to listen to Karrington’s heartbeat, and inquiring about
Camron. They brought in a Doppler, and placed it on my belly. My heart stopped
just as the Doppler detected Karrington’s. Loud and fast, it replaced the
silence in the room; tears started streaming down my face once again.
“She’s okay,” I sobbed, “my little girl is okay.”
The next step was for my back and my neck to be checked
before I could have my neck brace taken off, and be moved from the stretcher. I
informed the doctor that the only thing that hurt was my hand, everything else
was okay. As soon as I was all clear, and my hand was cleaned off, I was taken
in to see Camron. He was on a stretcher that had been placed on an emergency
room bed. He had pillows tucked all around him, and blankets piled high. I came
closer to his head and saw everything that was connected to him. He had oxygen
tubes in his nose, and other tubes coming out of several areas of his body. I
touched his hand, my body was shaking uncontrollably, and I hoped that he
didn’t notice how scared I was. The nurses came in and told me that it was time
for my ultrasound and my x-ray. I didn’t want to leave Camron, but I knew that
he had some pain medicine in him that would help for a moment, and I also knew
that it was my job to make sure that my precious little girl was okay. I walked
slowly and carefully through a few different doors, finally coming to a dark
room with a bed next to an ultrasound machine. I had to have help getting onto
the bed, and had to concentrate more than normal to try to get my body to stop
shaking. The nurse closed the door, and then I saw my precious Blue Jay. The
first view of her was her face, something that she had never wanted to show me
before, then her little body, so perfect, so safe and comfortable. She was
waving at me and dancing around, having the time of her little life. I was
overwhelmed to see everything so perfectly intact. The nurse examined every
part of my womb, looking for any kind of distress, or tearing, anything
unusual, but Karrington was beyond perfect.
The rest of the night lasted way too long. Camron’s parents
and a few siblings showed up, and his brothers gave him a blessing while I was
out of the room. I stayed by Camron’s bed and the doctor came to give me my
release. I was still shaking, and had a wheelchair brought in so that I could
stay close by him. The doctor came back in a few minutes later and told us that
all the damage that Camron had acquired was on his right side; his ribs were
broken, and his kidney was cut in half and the bottom half was smashed he also
had a small laceration on his lung. He had a few scrapes on his hand and leg,
and a few bruises from the seatbelt, but other than those, he had no external
damage. We were told that he would have to have his right kidney removed, and
that we would be lifeflighted to Murray hospital for the rest of his care. We had
to wait several hours for the plane to get to us, and when one finally did, it
broke down, so we had to wait for a second one to come. While we were waiting,
Camron finally fell asleep; I sat by him and listened to his family talk. I was suddenly in the truck again. I couldn’t
snap out of it, I saw it all again, lived every moment again. I felt every
feeling that I had previously felt.
Someone noticed that I was staring off into the distance,
and snapped me out of it, they asked me if I was okay, and through a burst of
sobs, I tried to answer that I was. My mother in law and two sisters came and
stood by me, comforted me, and pushed me closer to Camron to feel and see that
it was over, and that everything was okay. I then received a blessing from
Camron’s brother in law Kevin, in which I was told that I had “angels from both
sides of the veil watching over and protecting” me. I was able to calm down a
little bit then, and after a few minutes crawled onto the bed next to Cam and
closed my eyes for a minute, until I realized that if I closed my eyes I would
see it all again.
The plane finally got to the airport, and it was decided
that although extra passengers were not permitted on the lifeflight aircraft,
in this situation it would be best for Camron, Karrington and I if we flew
together. On the way to the airport, I was in the front of the ambulance with
the EMT who was a first responder at the accident. Her husband was a highway
patrol officer who was also a first responder, and had been in the emergency room
with me, comforting me, and helping me with the police report and other things.
I was telling her about the accident, and the man that had given us each a
blessing. She then described the second man, and asked if that was who I was
talking about. I told her no, and described the first man.
“I never saw that man,” she said, “let me call my husband
and see if he saw him.”
She then called her husband and asked if he had seen the
first man. He told her that he had not seen a man there by that description.
When we landed in Salt Lake City, we were put in another
ambulance and taken to the Murray hospital, where my parents had stayed the night
waiting for us to get there so they could be with us. After two nights in the
Intensive Care Unit at the hospital, and two sleepless nights for me, Camron
was stable. The trauma team decided that because of the blood in his urine, the
part of his kidney that wasn’t crushed was still functioning, and he was given
permission to drink clear liquids. Camron and I talked about what had happened
to those who came and visited, and realized all the miraculous things that had
taken place. We were astonished by the things that happened, the miracles that
had touched our lives, things that we would never forget, and how could we? We
came to realize that the first man that had helped us was not like any other
man. Camron recounted what happened during and after the accident, and when I
heard him speak of it, my heart burst within me, I felt a spirit of
confirmation as I had never before felt.
“I was asleep before we hit the cow,” Camron says, “but on
impact I was awake. I felt the injuries as soon as they happened; the impact
caused most of the damage. Then we started rolling, I heard Sarah yelling ‘Camron,
Camron!’ but the pain that I was feeling was too much, and I could not respond.
I threw my arms and legs out instinctively to stop myself from hitting
anything, but I could not reach any of the sides. I looked down as we rolled in
the cab, I was spinning within my seatbelt, and saw that the passenger window
broken out, and the glass and other debris were spinning around from the
thrashing, it was in slow motion, and I knew that I was going straight through
my seatbelt and right through that window, and when I did, I would be rolled
over by the truck and killed. So I closed my eyes and begged Heavenly Father to
make it stop.
“When we finally stopped rolling, I heard Sarah start
praying immediately, when she was finished, she looked up at me and started
asking if I was okay. I reached over and tried to get my seatbelt off, the
pressure that it was putting on the injuries that I had acquired was
unbearable. When I got it off, I put my feet on the driver seat and the
steering wheel so that I could stick my head out the window, I could not
breath, I rested my arms on the door frame for extra support. Then I saw a
light, it came up along the freeway then turned, it started toward us, and was
there in a blink of an eye. A man with a flashlight started asking us
questions, and Sarah asked him to give us both blessings. After the blessings
were over, another man and a woman came and started asking us the same
questions, and while we were answering them, the first man turned, took three
or four steps, and then vanished.
“After a minute, Sarah found that the back window was broken
out, and we began to climb through it, Sarah went first, and I followed. As I climbed
through, I felt someone grab my right arm to support me. When I looked over, I
recognized the face of the man that had given us blessings. He led me to a
tree, where I fell back into him, trusting him completely to catch me and lower
me to the ground. Sarah had him hold my head for support because she couldn’t
do it herself with the injury she had, and when the EMT’s finally arrived, my
head was passed from one set of hands to another, but it was as though nothing
had changed.”
We both believe within our hearts that the man that helped
us was one of the Three Nephites. He was not seen by any of the EMT’s, but as
real as your hands, Camron and I felt his. He placed his hands on my head, and Camron’s
hands were placed on his. He vanished and appeared without a thought, and he
was there when I prayed for protection. Our lives were saved by the grace and
the love of God; there are no explanations for the wonderful events that took
place. Our things were scattered everywhere, guns and ammunition, chainsaws,
climbing equipment, and many other things that should have come forward on
impact were sent straight through the back window, away from us. All of the
things that we had in the front of the truck with us were no longer there,
everything that could have harmed us even in the slightest, was thrown out of
the truck or into the back seat. Camron felt that he was being held in place
when he reached out his arms and legs, surely he should have hit the things
that were loose in the cab. We believe that all of our injuries were sustained
on the initial impact of hitting the cow; we were protected from the life threatening
situation that we were asked to experience.
I believe that our Heavenly Father knows beforehand the
things that are to happen in our lives. I know that we are sometimes called to
pass through extremely difficult trials, but our Savior has made it so that we
do not have to pass through them alone, or afraid. We are given them to grow,
to learn, and to conquer the things that we believed to be impossible to
overcome. Many times I relived this experience, and it seems to weigh on me more
and more every time, one of the times was in the ICU.
“Sarah, you need to try to sleep,” mom said, “Camron is
okay, you don’t need to worry.”
“I can’t mom,” tears began to stream down my face once
again. “When I close my eyes I see it all again, it is my fault, I did this to
him.”
Mom looked deep into my eyes, a love so deep shining just
for me in that very moment. “How did you feel before the accident?” She asked.
I thought for a moment, searching for something that I did
wrong. “Honestly mom,” I replied, “I felt great. Camron and I had been dancing
around at the gas station, I was singing with the radio. I remember looking
down the road and thinking how clear it was, I saw my hands placed perfectly on
the wheel, and thinking how awesome I was driving. I was going a good speed,
and I felt so safe… and then we hit.”
“Do you believe that Heavenly Father knows beforehand the
things that happen in our lives?” She asked without hesitation.
“Maybe those things that you were feeling were Heavenly
Father telling you that this was just going to happen. You were doing all that
you could do, and this thing was just going to happen to you, and everything
would be okay.”
Camron and I were given a bitter cup to drink from, but
through the love and the life of our Savior, it was made so sweet. His kindness
does not depart from us, we are asked to pass through hard things, but we are
never asked to pass through them without His love or his watchful eye. If
nothing else, I have the knowledge that I was saved to testify to you of the
love of our Lord. When we live our lives as we know we should, always doing our
best even when it seems like your best isn’t good enough; we are blessed with
the Holy Spirit of protection. Though these times for Camron and I should be a
challenge beyond imagination, we have been blessed by a wonderful Spirit that
has brought peace and comfort into our home. We know of Him, we love Him, we testify
of Him; we strive to live our lives in accordance with His. His gift is the
gift of life, a gift that has been given to us. These things that I testify of
are true, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
