It was a warm summer evening and I was counting down the minutes until my husband and I could leave for our date. It had been ages since we had been able to get away on our own. My in-laws had agreed to watch our 18-month-old daughter, Preslee, while we attended a movie. As soon as we walked through the door, Preslee took off running to join her older cousins. As I said goodbye and attempted to sneak in a quick little hug before we left, she quickly ran past me and never looked back. I smiled as I watched her play and thought to myself, ‘It will only be a couple of hours.’ I never thought we would be dealing with our daughter drowning.
My husband and I enjoyed the next few hours of [rarely] found freedom. As we were driving out of the parking lot and headed back to my in-laws’ home, Patrick made a call to an unknown number that had called during the movie. In seconds, the atmosphere in the car changed. I could hear Patrick’s voice mix with desperation and fear as he spoke to the person on the other end of the line. I panicked as he suddenly made a U-turn and raced through a red light. I instantly knew something was terribly wrong.
My husband quickly explained that an old acquaintance, who was now a policeman, had heard our names mentioned on his work radio and immediately called Patrick’s cell phone. He told us to rush to the hospital because someone was being airlifted there. We both instantly knew it could only be one person, our daughter Preslee.
The next little bit is now a blur. The drive to the hospital. The way I felt when I called every family member back at the house to try and figure out what happened. I couldn’t imagine it had to do with a drowning. Nobody answered. We finally pulled up to the hospital and frantically ran through the halls until we were led to the right place. We were pulled into a private waiting room where a male doctor told us our daughter was being flown to the hospital at this very moment and would arrive shortly. All he knew was she had fallen into a canal and had been in the water from anywhere from 0-30 minutes. He apologized for not knowing any more details but told us we needed to prepare ourselves, because no matter the outcome of our daughters drowning, our lives had just changed forever.
The doctor quickly left the room and we sat there in disbelief. How did this happen? Shortly after, we were notified that Preslee had arrived. As I entered the hospital room, all I could see was a big group of doctors and nurses frantically working around a gurney. A sweet nurse noticed me and asked, ‘Are you mom?’ I nodded my head and replied, ‘yes.’ She gently grabbed me by the arm and pulled me through the group of people doing their best to save my daughter’s life and placed me right next to Preslee. At the first glance of her little face, I instantly began to cry. That’s when reality hit. She was so pale. There was no coloring left in her skin. The team of doctors worked frantically to warm her perfect little body that didn’t have a scratch on it. The nurses encouraged me to talk to her, so that’s what I did. Minutes later they detected a heartbeat.
