I was packing that morning when I heard a shrill whistle. I rushed into the living room only to discover it came from the TV. We were preparing to go to Montrose, Colorado, with our 10-week-old baby, Leslie.
As we drove through the mountains that afternoon, big sleety drops of rain turned into heavy wet flakes of snow. Near the top of Fremont Pass, traffic slowed and we could barely see. I nursed Leslie and then Neil pulled over and held her. “Is something wrong?” I asked when Leslie’s cry suddenly became low and husky.
Neil handed her back to me in a panic. She was coughing and gasping. I patted her on the back, but she turned bluish gray and seemed to stop breathing. I began to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but without oxygen she could go into respiratory arrest. “Lord,” I prayed, “save my baby.”
Just then the shrill sound of a whistle pierced the swirling snow. “That’s a mine over there,” I called to Neil. “Someone will have oxygen there.”
Neil started the car and crossed the road to the gate of a molybdenum mine. We flagged a guard, told him our problem, then raced down the drive, where two nurses met us with an oxygen tank. I put the huge mask over Leslie’s ashen face and, slowly, she began breathing again.
Later we went to a hospital, where tests confirmed that Leslie was all right. The doctor there had one question: “How did you know there would be oxygen at the mine?”
The shrill sound I had heard that morning was a mine whistle blowing in a rerun episode of The Waltons. I watched just long enough to see a miner revived—with oxygen.
