Kari swept Cole into her arms, held him in her lap, and tied the child's shoes. “You bet,” she said, tousling Cole's straight brown hair. “Just be careful and make sure you stay in the yard.”
Cole grinned, his green eyes twinkling. Then he disap peared out the back door with Anna close behind. Kari picked up a handful of mail on the kitchen counter and found a magazine she'd been waiting for.
Perfect, she thought. I'll go outside and read it. That way I can keep a better eye on the kids.
But at that instant a loud crash rang sickeningly through the house, vibrating the floor beneath Kari's feet.
“Cole! Anna!” Kari screamed as she raced out the back door.
What she saw made her heart stand still. The three-hundred-pound steel ramp at the back of the trailer had come down onto the ground. Little Anna stood nearby frozen in place, her eyes wide with shock.
There was no sign of Cole.
“Where's Cole?” Kari shouted at Anna, but the child remained motionless.
Kari ran toward the ramp and there, underneath, was Cole's limp body. Blood was oozing from his nose, mouth, and ears, and the heavy ramp was resting on his head. He showed no signs of life.
“Mel!” Kari screamed. “Help!”
Her husband had heard the crash and was at her side almost immediately. Summoning a strength that was be yond their own, they lifted the ramp off Cole's head. Blood began pouring from his sunken skull, and Kari swept him into her arms.
“My God, he's dead!” Kari was hysterical, her voice a shrill scream. She felt faint and she passed Cole to Mel. “Help him, Mel. What do we do?”
Only Cole's tennis shoes weren't covered with blood and Kari had a sudden, certain feeling that her child was no longer breathing.
“Get the car keys. We've got to get him to the hospi tal,” Mel said as he ran with Cole toward their family car.
Kari forced herself to respond. She grabbed the car keys from the kitchen counter and left Anna with her husband's friend. Then she sprinted toward the car, jumping into the driver's seat. In seconds, they were on the nearest highway racing toward Union Memorial Hospital.
“He's gonna die, Mel; I can't drive fast enough.” Kari's hands shook and her heart raced within her.
“He's still breathing.” Mel's voice was loud and insis tent. “He's not going to die. You need to pray, Kari. Focus on driving and pray.”
Kari prayed for several minutes, begging God to spare Cole's life. Then she remembered her favorite hymn, the one she sang whenever she needed to feel God's peace. Quietly, with tears in her voice, she began to sing the hymn that had been her favorite since she was a little girl.
“Great is thy faithfulness … oh God my father, there is no shadow of turning with thee …”
The quiet song brought a calm over Kari's heart and al lowed her to breathe more easily. She paused and glanced at her son, motionless in Mel's arms. “How is he?”
“Still breathing.”
Cole had still not moved and Kari thought for sure he would be dead by now. But if he was still breathing, there was hope. There had to be. She continued to drive as a re alization hit her: there was not a thing she could do to help Cole now. He was completely in God's hands. The same way both her children always had been, even when she'd been consumed by worry.
In fact, worrying about them had done no good at all.
For some reason, the truth of that calmed Kari even further. Though tears streamed down her face, she drove as fast as she safely could, praying constantly for God's intervention and believing with all her heart that he was working in Cole's life even at that very instant.
“Pray for a miracle, Kari,” Mel said quietly. “He's breathing slower.”
“I am.” Kari swallowed back a torrent of sobs. “God's in control.”
Suddenly, a few blocks from the hospital, Cole coughed and began making gurgling sounds. Blood spewed from his mouth as he struggled to breathe. Mel spoke soothingly to him and the boy opened his eyes.
“Daddy! Help me …” The boy's words were slurred and his eyes rolled back in his head. “I want to sleep.”
No, don't sleep, Cole. You might never wake up, Kari thought.
Cole moved restlessly in his father's arms, blood still gurgling within his throat.
“Cole,” Kari said as she kept her eyes on the road. “Do you know that Mommy and Daddy love you so much, son?”
Cole made no response.
“We love you, Cole,” Mel added. “And God loves you, too. He will always take care of you.”
The child's eyes closed once more and both Kari and Mel privately sensed they were losing him. Kari thought about the time just a few months earlier when she and Mel were tucking the children in at night. They had just fin ished saying their prayers. Mel explained to the children that it was Good Friday, the day when Jesus died many years earlier.
“I already know about that,” Cole piped in. “Our teacher at school told us Jesus died on the cross for us and we can ask him to live in our heart.”
Kari and Mel had smiled at their son, nodding in uni son. “That's right, Cole.”
The boy grinned. “So I did it.”
“You did?” Kari asked curiously.
Cole nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. I said a prayer and asked Jesus to live in my heart.”
Now, as they rounded the corner and turned into the hospital's emergency room parking lot, Kari felt strangely comforted by the scene. Almost as if God wanted her to feel peace in the knowledge that Cole's place in heaven was secure.
As Kari pulled up near the entrance, she glanced at her husband. There were tears in her eyes and a deep sense of serenity. All her life she had worried while Mel had been strong and confident. Now there was fear in Mel's eyes and as they rushed from the car Kari gripped his elbow. “Mel, he's in the Lord's hands.”
Mel nodded, blinking back his own tears. “I know. All we can do is trust him.”
Others in the emergency room stared in horror at the blood-covered child and his frantic parents as they were ushered into an examination room. As they laid him on a table Cole began to cough and cry. “I'm choking.”
Kari felt sick as she realized it was true. He was choking on his own blood.
She and Mel leaned over their son. “It's okay, baby. Mommy and Daddy are here. You're going to be okay.”
Kari took hold of Cole's small hand as once more his body went limp and his eyes closed. Around the room a handful of nurses and doctors rushed to get the boy's vital signs and insert an IV into his arm.
“What happened?” a doctor asked as he stood over Cole and felt for his pulse.
Mel explained the situation, and as he did Kari sobbed quietly. She was no longer panicked. Just deeply sad at what seemed like the certain loss of their son. There was no way he could survive being hit on the head by the heavy ramp.
She forced the negative thoughts from her mind and prayed silently for the only way out of the disaster. She prayed for a miracle.
When Mel finished the story the doctor explained that Cole would need to be transferred to Indiana Regional Medical Center across town, where they had more sophis ticated equipment for severe head injuries. “We'll transport him in five minutes.”
Kari quickly called her parents and asked them to come. “And please pray, Mom,” Kari cried. “Ask everyone to pray.”
Later she would learn that before dark that evening, hundreds of people at churches in three states were praying for her son.
Kari, Mel, and two nurses stood in the room with Cole as they waited for the ambulance. The boy's skin color had grown frighteningly pale and both nurses were struggling to locate his pulse.
“We're losing him,” one of the nurses shouted. “Get the doctor in here.”
Kari was still holding Cole's hand and she squeezed it tightly. “Cole, honey,” she said through her tears. “No matter what happens, your daddy and I love you very much and we're praying for you.”
She let go of the ch
ild's hand and stepped back to make room for the nurses. At that instant, Cole moved. Kari nar rowed her eyes and Mel took a step closer to him.
Then, suddenly, in a surreal manner, Cole's small shoulders rose so that he was nearly sitting straight up. His eyes were still closed and it seemed as if someone were sup porting him with invisible hands behind his back. His long, black eyelashes fluttered and his eyes opened, staring blankly.
In a weak but clear voice he said, “Jesus, please take care of me …” Then he closed his eyes and sank back onto the hospital bed, still once again.
The nurses looked at each other and then at the Clausens in disbelief.
Kari and Mel stared at their son, stunned by what had just happened. Before anyone in the room could discuss Cole's movements or his simple words, ambulance atten dants rushed in and whisked the boy away.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. Friends and family gathered in the hospital waiting room while doctors performed a CAT scan on Cole's brain. Early tests showed that he had suffered extensive damage.
“We'll let you know more information as soon as we have it,” one doctor told them. “But I have to be realistic with you. His chances don't look very good.”
Two hours later, a neurosurgeon found Kari and Mel in the waiting room and gently explained the X rays of Cole's head. The trailer ramp had shattered his skull, sending bone fragments into the area of the brain that controls speech, hearing, and memory.
“We'll need to do surgery right away,” he explained. “There's no telling the extent of his brain damage until we get in and see for ourselves.”
He warned them that even if Cole survived, he would not be the same boy he had been before.
“That ramp weighed three hundred pounds and the impact is going to leave permanent brain damage. You need to know how serious this is.”
Kari collapsed in Mel's arms and sobbed. She pictured Cole grinning from his bed that night last spring, talking about how he had prayed and asked Jesus to live in his heart. He was a bright, intelligent child who loved to make people laugh. Now she wondered if he would survive the night, and if he did, whether the part of him she knew and loved might be gone forever.
As Kari and Mel grieved for Cole, their friends and family clasped hands and formed a circle of prayer around them. The prayers continued for the next six hours, while surgeons worked in the delicate damaged portion of Cole's brain.
Again Kari felt an overwhelming sense of peace and acceptance. Not only was God in control of what happened to Cole, but—for the first time since Kari had be come a mother—God was in control of her fear as well.
Finally, hours after the surgery began, the doctor ap peared and lowered his surgical mask. He motioned for Kari and Mel to follow him and then he opened a door.
“Come say hello to Cole,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
Kari gasped softly and put her hand to her mouth. “He's … he's …”
The doctor smiled. “Come see for yourself.”
Kari slipped her hand into Mel's and together they fol lowed the doctor to Cole's bedside. The child's skin looked like parchment and his head was surrounded in bandages. Kari reached her fingers toward him and as she did a tiny burp escaped from the boy's mouth.
“Excuse me,” he whispered.
Kari felt a surge of elation. Cole could speak, and more than that, he still had his manners. They had not lost Cole after all. She gripped Mel's hands in her own, happy tears clouding her vision.
Hours later Cole was taken to the neuro-intensive care unit, where he improved with each passing minute.
“Could I have my toothbrush, please?” he asked a nurse. She stared at Cole, then at his chart, and finally at Mel and Kari, seated nearby.
“The doctors don't know what to think about this boy,” she said.
Despite obvious signs of success, doctors continued to warn the Clausens that Cole could take a turn for the worse at any moment. Bleeding, blood clots, seizures. All were a distinct possibility because of the severity of his head in jury. Worst of all, Cole carried a significant risk of developing a brain infection. He would have to undergo a series of painful intravenous antibiotic treatments to counteract the risk of what could be a fatal complication.
“The medicine will be very powerful and will be ad ministered directly into Cole's bloodstream,” the doctor warned Kari and Mel that night. “The sessions will take thirty minutes and will be very painful for Cole. If there was any other way, we'd take it, but there isn't.”
Mel and Kari stayed by Cole's side through the night, holding his hand and praying constantly. He looked so lost among the bandages and tubing that they began to wonder whether he would really survive. As morning drew near, Cole moaned from nausea and suddenly the room was filled with nurses. Kari tightened her grip on Cole's hand.
“Mommy, pray with me,” he said, his voice weak.
In that instant, Kari felt her heart soar. If Cole could see clearly enough that the solution was prayer then she had no doubts he would survive. She took Cole's hand in hers and prayed as she'd never truly prayed before.
She prayed with confidence.
Through the next three days, whenever Cole was awake, he asked just one thing of whichever parent was with him.
“Pray for me, Mommy,” he'd say. Or, “Please, Daddy, come pray with me.”
The next day Cole was moved from the intensive care unit to the pediatric wing, and Kari was approached by a therapist who had never met Cole.
“Mrs. Clausen,” she said, “we need to make plans for your son's treatment. I've studied his chart and … well, it's a miracle he's alive. But now we have a lot of work to do.”
Kari looked confused. “I don't understand.”
The therapist checked her chart once more. “Isn't your son Cole Clausen, the one with the depressed skull frac ture?”
“Yes, but he just got up and walked to the bathroom by himself. He's been talking nonstop all day and he's building a house of Legos on his hospital tray.”
The therapist was silent for a moment. “That's impos sible.”
Kari smiled, her heart filled with joy. “No, ma'am. With a faith like my little boy has, nothing is impossible.”
Later that day the technician who had done Cole's ini tial CAT scan stopped in to see him. Cole was adding more blocks to his Lego house, laughing at Mel's jokes. The woman looked astonished and Kari grinned.
“I felt so sorry for you that night,” she told Kari, her voice so soft Cole couldn't hear her. “I never in a million years thought he'd live, and if he did …” Her voice cracked. “I didn't think he'd ever be like this again, espe cially not so soon. I've never seen anything like it.”
By the fifth day after Cole's accident, the only reason he was still in the hospital was to receive his intravenous antibiotic treatments. The doctor had been right about them; they were harrowing and the Clausens had to endure Cole's pain along with him twice each day. The strong medication burned throughout Cole's body for the entire thirty-minute treatment.
Typically, the nurse would come in with the medication and Kari would climb into bed beside her son, holding him close and steadying him so he could not jerk the needle from his arm.
Sometimes the boy would be sleeping when the treatment started, but the moment the medication entered his bloodstream he would wake up, eyes wide with pain and fear. Then Cole would wail aloud, begging for Kari to pray. And Kari would pray, as hard as she knew how. The sessions were so gutwrenching, Mel could not stand being in the room and hearing Cole's screams.
The ordeal was exhausting, and one night, as the treatment time drew near, Kari felt physically unable to watch Cole suffer through another minute of the torturous procedure. Still, she knew that Cole was counting on her to pray for him.
She stood up and walked close to Cole's bed. He was fast asleep, but she pictured him awake in just a few minutes, screaming in pain. Help us, God …
She sighed aloud and slowly knelt beside her son's be
d. “Lord,” she whispered. “ All I can do is trust you like Cole trusts you. You are more powerful than any bacteria, than any medicine, than any fear or worry. Please protect Cole from the pain.”
As Kari stood, the door opened behind her and the nurse entered the room with the medication. Kari climbed onto the bed and lay beside the boy, her arms wrapped around him. The nurse shifted Cole's arm and slid the nee dle into his vein. He opened his eyes and started to move, but Kari patted him softly.
“It's okay,” she whispered. “Mommy's here. Mommy's praying.” The corners of Cole's mouth turned up and then he closed his eyes again.
Additional nurses had entered the room, ready to help hold Cole down once the burning and crying started. The room was quiet and dark and hushed as everyone waited. Drip by drip the medication entered Cole's veins. Ten min utes passed, then twenty, but Cole remained peacefully asleep. The nurses exchanged curious glances and waited.
Finally a full thirty minutes had gone by and the treatment was over. Cole had not so much as stirred even once through the entire session.
“Thank you, God,” Kari whispered as the nurses filed out of the room. “Thank you for knowing that I couldn't take any more.”
It was the second time since Cole's injury that God had clearly proven he was in control. After ten days in the hos pital, Mel and Kari were able to bring Cole home. There were no signs of infection and he could complete his re covery in his own bedroom.
Time passed and Cole healed completely. A year later there was only a soft area along his skull and some hearing loss in his right ear to remind the Clausens of Cole's acci dent.
For a time, Cole didn't remember anything about what happened to him that fateful afternoon. Then one day while he was playing he looked at Kari.
“Mommy, I pulled the pin out,” he said simply. “That's what made the trailer ramp fall on me.”
Kari stopped what she was doing and stared closely at her son.
“It really hurt,” Cole continued. “But then Jesus came.”
Kari felt her heart beat faster. “What did Jesus look like, honey?”