It was a typical day for Bryce Young and his father Lance.
Mother’s Day was just around the corner and Bryce decided to do something special for his mom. He wanted something unique and something that he saw on Youtube.
It is called Fractal Wood Burning and Bryce thought it would be the perfect present for his mom.
“I have some video of him working on it and saying, ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!’ When he was making the thing,” Lance said. “He was holding these fiberglass arrows with nails on the end that had electricity attached to it. He was putting it on the wood and it was burning. We were probably working on it for thirty minutes to an hour…we’d already gone onto our second board.”
The project did not go as planned.
“All of a sudden he says, ‘I feel a tingle in my hands,’ ” Lance explained. “he holds up his arms and he…his head kinda tilted up and he lost expression in his face.”
Before Lance knew it, Bryce had stopped breathing.
“His…he…he…turned blue and got limp,” Lance said. “His whole body went limp and he got goosebumps all over his body.”
Five minutes down the road, Norma Jordan and Ricky Gallagher of Acadian Ambulance were on their way to exchange their ambulance because of a broken air conditioner. That is when they received the call.
“Every now and then you get that one call that reminds you that this is what you do and why you do it,” Jordan said.
All Jordan knew when she arrived on scene was that a teenager had been electrocuted.
“And CPR was in progress,” Jordan said.
It was not until she saw Bryce that Jordan knew how grave the situation was and how little time they had to save Bryce’s life.
“We put the pads on him and used a defibrillator on him,” says Jordan. “He regained a pulse and we said, ‘Let’s roll!’ ”
In the meantime, Lance was trying to get ahold of his wife. She is an ICU nurse and was working at the same hospital they were taking Bryce.
“It was the worst moment of my life,” Nancy Young said. “It was absolutely the worst thing.”
Jordan and Gallagher stayed by the Youngs’ side through it all. They even offered support after handing Bryce off to doctors.
Lance Young is forever thankful for what they did that day.
He had this to say to all of the men and women involved: “Y’all gave us our baby back. You gave us our family. If it wasn’t for y’all we would never be the same. Y’all have done so much for hundreds of people. I love y’all. Thank you.”
