Heroes Take Part in God Spot

I stood shoulder to shoulder with 2 heroes today, my friend and a young man in high school with a cell phone.

Today my friend and I are driving to his home with his 2 young boys from our football BBQ fundraiser. At the stop sign ahead there is a young man standing in the middle of the road on the double yellow line in fact. He is holding his left chest and approaching every car that will slow down. Only one car stopped and is talking to the young man. As we get to our turn at the stop I ask my friend “do you have beggars in your neighbor hood?” He tells me that they usually don’t come this far from Loop 410. We both see when the young man turns he is disheveled and covered in blood. We both come to the same conclusion, he must have been in a car accident or hit by a car. We go through the stop sign and stop. I grab a towel I had with us and we approach the young man. He is holding his upper left chest and bleeding profusely, the young man in the one car that stopped has two teen women in it, the man driving the car is on his cell phone. My friend and I approach the young man in the street and ask what happened. He utters a string of obscenities and tells us his friend stabbed him and took his car. We try to calm him and can smell the beer on his breath. We finally get him to the side of the road and get him to lay down. About 8-10 cars have driven past this young man in the street before we get to him. He is pumping blood out of his chest not just a trickle. We are talking to the young man and he is cussing and screaming. My friend asks the young man his name “Russell” is the reply. The young man’s eyes begin to roll back in his head and he is losing consciousness. The young man from the only car that stops tells us that the 911 operator says to keep pressure on the wound until EMS arrives or he will bleed to death. As Russell fades out my friend grabs the towel and places pressure on the wound. My friend is on his knees and sticks his finger and the towel into the stab wound to top the bleeding and grabs the hand of Russell. The young man with the cell phone asks Russell if there is anyone he wants him to call, “My mom” was the reply. Russell begins to vomit beer right next to where my friend is kneeling but my friend does not flinch. Russell is going in and out of consciousness at this point (don’t know if it was due to blood loss or beer). We hear a siren and tell Russell to “hang on, can you hear that?, help is coming.” When Russell turns to vomit more beer I can see a puddle of blood beneath him. The first responders were two firemen in a fired department pickup truck. They ask what happened to him and we relate the story. They radio someone and stand to wait. My friend is still holding Russell’s hand, keeping pressure on the wound and talking to him. A fire truck crew is the next to arrive and they take over for my friend. When my friend stands, he has Russell’s blood from his finger tips to his elbows on both arms. I try to clean up my friend as best I can with hand sanitizer I keep in my truck. A fireman sees the blood and offers my friend some type of disinfectant. The police arrive and ask if we are family, we say no so they make us move back. Russell turns his head and looks at my friend. The look he had was “why did you leave me?” The EMT’s and police are asking Russell their official questions but not talking to him. Me, my friend and the young man from the car with the cell phone begin to talk. The young man had called Russell’s mom and told him there had been an accident and it was serious. He had given the mom the location and her first reply was “is he drunk?” Then “tell him I will meet him at Wilford Hall” and hangs up.

The young man on the cell phone tells us he did know what he would have done if we had not stopped. He offers to shake my friends hand and my friend tells him “No I had his blood all over me.” The young man grabs my friends hand, shakes it and gives him a hug. My friend and I leave to go to his house. We wash our hands 3 or 4 times to make sure they are clean and we have no cuts or scratches. We unload my truck. We are sitting in his garage drinking gatorade and water and my friend begins to shake. I told him he was the bravest person I know, that without hesitation or thinking about his own health or safety he took over when Russell began to fade. His reply to my statement will forever be burned in my mind. He gave a reply that each and every person who calls themselves Christian should give.

“John, I only saw a life, not a 21 year old alchoholic, not aids, not hepatitus, I only saw a life and it had to be saved.”

My friend did not judge by appearance or circumstance. He saw a life that was going to end in the weeds and broken glass on the side of the road with three strangers. He determined that he would do everything he could including risk disease to keep that life from ending.

We sat in his garage and realized we did not know the name of the young man with the cell phone. My friends son’s say he had a baseball jersey from Warren High School on. We also realize that we never got his name. We also realize we don’t know which hospital Russell was taken to. My friend tells me he wants to go to Warren High School to try to find the young man and tell the school and his parents they have a hero among them. My friend wants to try to find Russell and tell him to pray and thank Jesus for saving his life.

I have asked my friend several times to go to church with me. He doesn’t go to church. He starts and ends each day with prayer. He prays during the day, usually starting his prayers with “thank you Jesus for…” He reads his Bible in his home and on weekends he has his sons he talks to them about how good God is.

My friend told me he was not a hero, he said “you were there too brother and that high school kid that wouldn’t leave was the real hero.” I shook his hand and told him how blessed I was to have a friend like him in my life and my families life. He again told me “You were there too.”

I never shook, never was afraid during this whole ordeal. When I walked through the front door of my house I began to cry. I told my wife what happened and that all I could think about was that a young 21 year old could have lost his life on the side of the road with only 3 strangers trying to help him. I could not understand how a man so young could have lost so much hope and why he could not see a future for himself. I think it may be because someone saw a high school drop out that “only” had a GED who drank too much and gave up on him. Instead of looking at this young man and saying “It’s a life, and its a life that has to be saved.” I told my wife God loves that young man bleeding on the side of the road as much as He loves Billy Graham, but why doesn’t everyone. Why didn’t the 10 cars in front of us stop? How many of those cars that did not stop have people who are in church every Sunday? I think of how much importance we place on titles we are given and who we know and how important we think we are at church. About how much power we think we have and how we think we are really leading. I ask myself this question, who would call 911 and keep going because they can’t get involved or he might have a disease, or someone else will stop. We all want to be noticed, but who is willing to get on their knees in the weeds, broken glass and trash on the side of the road? Who is really willing to risk their own health to save a life, not of a family or friend, but of a disheveled, bleeding drunk standing in the middle of the road asking for help.

I am blessed to have a hero for a friend.

John H. - March 16, 2008 at 4:39 pm e