What I Saw
Early one misty morning, Patrick Schlagenhaft came upon a horrible tragedy and a profound miracle. He tells his story to Peter Rubin.

It was 5:15 a.m., raw and foggy, pitch-black. My windows were just starting to clear when I saw a girl in the middle of the street, covered in blood. All I could see was her eyes.

She came up to the door of my truck, crying and shaking. "You have to help me," she said, "My husband is knocked out, and my baby's in the car." She turned and pointed. Twenty feet away was this little car wrapped around a telephone pole. I couldn't believe she was walking, coming from that car. I later found out that she'd flown out of the car and skidded across the road.

I ran up to the car to see who was in it. I couldn't see much, just the back of a man; his feet were still in driving position, but he was lying in the middle, twisted backward between the bucket seats. He was so quiet. Is he sleeping? I couldn't believe he wasn't awake with what had just happened. I called 911, and the operator told me to look for a car seat. So I looked back at the woman, and I said, "Where's your car seat?"

"I don't have a car seat," she said. "I just had the baby."

I said, "Wait, you were on your way to the hospital, and you just had the baby in the car?" So now I'm looking in this mangled car, and I don't hear anything. So I run around to the other side of the car, where it was more intact. I opened the back door, and I could hear something coming from what was either the backseat or the floor--the car was so squashed that I couldn't tell. And I heard a noise, almost like something struggling to breathe, gasping for air, under a black jacket in the back of the car. I pulled up the jacket, and that's when I saw the baby.

I've seen births on the Learning Channel, and I'm telling you, this baby looked just born. I'll never forget what I saw. The umbilical cord was still attached at the belly button. It was wrapped around his neck, up over his shoulder and under his arm. He was lying facedown, his knees up to his chest and his face in his hands. I guess he was trying to breathe, but he had mucus covering him, and being facedown, he couldn't position himself to get air. My wife had had three miscarriages before then, so to see a baby here--one that had made it all the way through nine months, one that was born but now might not make it--that was kind of stressful.

I knew you have to brace their necks as you pick them up, but he was on his stomach, so it was tricky. And really messy. Blood and mucus, and the baby actually had a cut behind his ear from wherever he hit inside the car. So I picked him up and flipped him over really fast and cradled him back up so his head was in the crease of my forearm. I wiped the baby's nose and his mouth with my T-shirt. I'm wiping him and I'm wiping him, and I'm just thinking, Come on, man, you can do this, you can do this, and then he let out a big cough, his mouth opened, his little tongue started flapping, and he started screaming.

I kept telling the woman that she needed to sit down, because she was losing so much blood. "You're gonna pass out," I kept telling her, but there was nowhere to sit because she had no bottoms on and there was glass everywhere. I handed her the baby and told her to lean against the car so she didn't lose her balance; then I hopped back in the car to get the dad. His head was pointed toward the back of the car, and his eyes wide open. Big blue eyes. I remember thinking, He's so young. He had a baby face, white as a ghost, and blood was coming from his ears, mouth, nose, eyes. I knew that look on his face. I knew there was no way. The woman kept asking, "How is he?" and I tried to block her view so she couldn't see his face. I didn't want to say he was going to be okay, and I didn't want to say he was dead. So I kept telling her, "You keep that baby warm. Make sure the baby keeps crying."

The paramedics got there right when I was backing out of the car. I helped one of them pull the guy out, and we laid him on a stretcher beside the car. The woman got into one ambulance, and they put the baby in a separate ambulance and took off. It was just me and a few police officers, and the sun was starting to come up. It felt like nine, but it had only been an hour since I'd left the house. Later that day, one of the police officers called and told me, "The mom's stable, the baby's in critical, but it looks like they're both gonna make it." That made me feel a whole lot better.

For about three or four days, I couldn't sleep. I just kept seeing it every time I closed my eyes. The husband, the wreck, the mom standing in the middle of the street covered in blood. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it. It'll probably be that way for a long time. Every morning I go past that telephone pole on my way to Dunkin' Donuts, and I just shake my head. I can't believe that a life was gone right there. I told my wife: "I see the beginning and the end, and they're only about six inches apart."

(Patrick Schlagenhaft and his wife, Amy, had their first child in July.)