COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KXRM) — “Everything is going to be OK.” Words from a stranger that a new father in Colorado Springs would hear just moments after his wife, Nicole, would suffer cardiac arrest while delivering their newborn at Memorial North.
Nicole, who didn’t know it at the time, had suffered an amniotic fluid embolism, and her life, along with that of her unborn baby, was now at risk. For seven minutes, Nicole was in cardiac arrest, and her husband, Anthony Hall, was told by doctors that they were doing a postmortem C-section and his wife “had expired.”
It would be just moments before this when everything was seemingly perfect, the moment a family cherishes forever, the moment new parents get to meet their littlest bundle of joy.
Doctors miraculously saved the baby, and suddenly, Nicole had a pulse too.
“I had the best of the best that day,” said Nicole as her road to recovery would continue for several more days in the ICU.
The moments that followed, and a stranger’s kindness, would lift Anthony up after a day filled with so much pain. Anthony was now surrounded by strangers in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where even though the room was full, a feeling of emptiness overwhelmingly took hold.
Then the question, “what is it?” arose as Anthony realized in those stressful moments they never actually heard their new baby’s gender.
“When he walked in, he saw a few nurses standing over our baby. They both looked at each other not remembering and they pulled down the diaper and said, ‘It’s a BOY!'”
It was at this moment that Anthony fell to his knees and would soon meet a man, a stranger, he hadn’t been able to thank since that day.
“All of a sudden, this big man came over and picked my husband up off the ground and hugged him while saying, ‘everything is going to be okay,'” said Nicole.
The man, the stranger, was also a father in the NICU.
“His wife was in there holding their baby while he was holding my husband,” said Nicole.
“I think about this man, a lot,” read a Facebook post on the Colorado Springs group “The 411 For The 719,” as that day, Feb. 13, 2018, will forever be engrained in the Hall family’s lives.
Almost five years to the day, the family, now healthy and together once again, hopes to meet that stranger in the NICU, give him a hug, and simply say, “thank you for being there for my husband while I couldn’t,” said Nicole.
“Now that COVID is over, I’m hoping I can make something happen. It will be like finding a needle in a haystack but since God did intervene in a design-for-death situation I have hope I will meet him and his family,” said Nicole.
It was “God and the angels on earth,” Nicole said that took care of her family that day; the ER doctor that wasn’t supposed to be on shift, the ICU nurse who cared for Nicole and gave her 48 units of blood, the nurse who stayed with Anthony even after her shift ended to sit in the chapel and of course, the NICU stranger who comforted a father in need.
To these angels, the Halls say thank you. To these angels, a family is now complete with Haxton, who is almost 5 now, and their two daughters, Hadley age 6, and Harper age 11.
“You have no idea the impact and support you gave my husband that day, thank you so much for being there for him when I couldn’t,” said Nicole.