Worst Christmas Ever

The names aren’t important. The story is.

It was Christmas Eve. Lydia was newly divorced. Her husband had decided he wanted a 20-something college student, bleached hair, size 2. Lydia was 43, mother of two, and she couldn’t compete.

Lydia was driving in a beat up Toyota, with her two kids in back. The car was loaded with baggage, aimed toward Wisconsin, where her people were from.

She was somewhere around Central Kansas when the blowout happened. It was awful. The loud popping noise. The loss of steering power. She muscled the vehicle to the snowy shoulder and wondered what in the H-E-Eleven she was going to do.

Her oldest, Eric, was entertaining his 5-year-old sister, Laney, in the backseat.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” he said.

The car came to a wobbling stop. Mom was already pressing her head against the steering wheel and weeping. The spare was beneath three metric tons of crap. And she had never changed a tire in her life.

The rural highway was empty. There were no cars passing them by. Christmas Eve in the country is a quiet affair.

“We’re going to have to change the tire.” she said.

“Okay,” said Eric.

Eric. A former Boy Scout. Not only did Eric know how to change a tire. He knew how to give mouth-to-mouth. And he has also earned his wood-carving, carpentry, and survival badges. No big deal.

Eric was getting luggage out of the trunk when the truck came swerving. He never saw it. The lights of the Toyota were off. In hindsight, this was a big mistake on Lydia’s part. Turning her lights off on a rural highway.

They heard the screech of truck tires. The sound of a boy screaming. The impact. He was thrown a long way.

The driver of the truck hadn’t seen the car. And Eric had not seen the truck.

When the EMTs got to the boy, he was breathing, and amazingly, he was still responsive. But barely. They took him to the hospital, and he spent his Christmas in the ICU. Doctors did not give a lot of hope.

Lydia was a wreck. She blamed herself. She was, perhaps, at the lowest place she had ever been.

On Christmas night, she sat before the hospital sliding doors, smoking a menthol light. She asked heaven for some kind of miracle. She was not the praying kind. She did not believe anything would help her. Nothing had saved her marriage. Nothing had worked in the past.

But if you’re up there, God, she prayed, help my unbelief. She finished the prayer between puffs.

It wasn’t but a few moments later, a man came waltzing into the ICU. Nobody saw him pass by. But Lydia did. He was tall and lean. He was bearded. And his hair was longish. Maybe he was an employee. A medical staffer. Or maybe some guy with a family member in the ER.

The man walked into the ICU, easily. As though he were unseen by everyone else on shift.

The stranger stepped into Eric’s room and asked how the boy was feeling. Lydia remembers that she answered, “I’m scared my son is going to die.”

The man looked at Eric. “You’re not going to die,” the man said.

“How do you know?” said Mom.

“Because this is what I do.”

“Are you a doctor?”

He smiled. “Sort of.”

He placed his hand on Eric’s body. He said, “Everything is going to be alright. He’s going to hurt for a while, but he’ll be okay.”

Eric regained consciousness. His heart monitor started beeping in rhythm again.

The boy made a full recovery. Today, the kid is a commercial engineer. He has three kids of his own. A nice family. A backyard swing set. A retirement plan.

And even to this day, when she tells his story, and people ask who the stranger was, she answers the same as she did that night, when even medical professionals were asking how the boy made such a sudden recovery.

“The man told me his name wasn’t important.”