The Best of Reader's Digest

by Editors of Reader's Digest

  • YOUR TRUE STORIES •

  YOU JUST NEVER KNOW

  After WWI, many of our soldiers returned home with war brides. My Aunt Maggie’s mother was one of them. She came from France and taught French lessons privately to area children. Sometimes my Aunt Maggie (Madeline by birth) would play with one student while her mother was busy with the sibling. One morning John was free to play while his brother Joseph had his lesson. The game was hide and seek, and my aunt was “it.” John found a splendid hiding place in a kitchen cupboard. My aunt, having home field advantage, realized where he was and shut the door, trapping him. There he stayed until Madeline’s mother came looking for him and heard tapping and a little voice calling “Madame? Madame?” Years later my aunt watched John Fitzgerald Kennedy take the oath of office. “Oh,” she gasped. “I locked the President of the United States under the kitchen sink!”

  —Judy Paton Cascade, Montana

  MUST HAVE TUNES

  When I rescued a piano from an old house, I had not considered I would need assistance moving it from the back of my pickup truck and into my home. Consequently, I had to drive with it there for several days until help arrived. Finally, a CHP officer pulled me over. He had seen me before and asked why I was driving around with a piano in my truck bed. I told him that my car radio had broken and I couldn’t afford a new one. He laughed and let me go without a ticket.

  —Pepper Rae Crockett, California

  Thank You for Caring So Much

  by Peter DeMarco, from the New York Times

  After his wife suffered a devastating asthma attack at age 34, a grateful man wrote an open letter to her medical team.

  As I begin to tell my friends and family about the seven days you treated my wife, Laura Levis, in what turned out to be the last days of her young life, they stop me at about the 15th name that I recall. The list includes the doctors, nurses, respiratory specialists, social workers, and even cleaning staff members who cared for her.

  “How do you remember any of their names?” they ask.

  “How could I not?” I respond.

  Every single one of you treated Laura with such professionalism and kindness and dignity as she lay unconscious. When she needed shots, you apologized that it was going to hurt a little, whether or not she could hear. When you listened to her heart and lungs through your stethoscopes and her gown began to slip, you pulled it up to respectfully cover her. You spread a blanket not only when her body temperature needed regulating but also when the room was just a little cold and you thought she’d sleep more comfortably that way.

  You cared so greatly for her parents, helping them climb into the room’s awkward recliner, fetching them fresh water almost by the hour, and answering every one of their medical questions with incredible patience. My father-in-law, a doctor himself, as you learned, felt he was involved in her care. I can’t tell you how important that was to him.

  Then there was how you treated me. How would I have found the strength to make it through that week without you? How many times did you walk into the room to find me sobbing, my head down and resting on her hand, and quietly go about your task, as if willing yourselves invisible? How many times did you help me set up the recliner as close as possible to her bedside, crawling into the mess of wires and tubes in order to swing her forward just a few feet?

  How many times did you check on me to see whether I needed anything, from food to drink, from fresh clothes to a hot shower, or to see whether I needed a better explanation of a medical procedure or just someone to talk to?

  How many times did you hug me and console me when I fell to pieces, or ask about Laura’s life and the person she was, taking the time to look at her photos or read the things I’d written about her? How many times did you deliver bad news with compassionate words and sadness in your eyes?

  When I needed to use a computer for an emergency e-mail, you made it happen. When I smuggled in a very special visitor, our tuxedo cat, Cola, for one final lick of Laura’s face, you “didn’t see a thing.”

  And one special evening, you gave me full control to usher into the ICU more than 50 people in Laura’s life, from friends to coworkers to college alums to family members. It was an outpouring of love that included guitar playing and opera singing and dancing and new revelations to me about just how deeply my wife touched people. It was the last great night of our marriage together, for both of us, and it wouldn’t have happened without your support.

  There is another moment—actually, a single hour—that I will never forget.

  On the final day, as we waited for Laura’s organ-donor surgery, all I wanted was to be alone with her. But family and friends kept coming to say their goodbyes, and the clock ticked away. By about 4 p.m., finally, everyone had gone, and I was emotionally and physically exhausted, in need of a nap. So I asked her nurses, Donna and Jen, if they could help me set up the recliner, which was so uncomfortable but all I had, next to Laura again. They had a better idea.

  They asked me to leave the room for a moment, and when I returned, they had shifted Laura to the right side of her bed, leaving just enough room for me to crawl in with her one last time. I asked if they could give us one hour without a single interruption, and they nodded, closing the curtains and the doors and shutting off the lights.

  The author and his wife, hiking in Scotland

  I nestled my body against hers. She looked so beautiful, and I told her so, stroking her hair and face. Pulling her gown down slightly, I kissed her breasts and laid my head on her chest, feeling it rise and fall with each breath, her heartbeat in my ear. It was our last tender moment as a husband and a wife, and it was more natural and pure and comforting than anything I’d ever felt. And then I fell asleep.

  I will remember that last hour together for the rest of my life. It was a gift beyond gifts, and I have Donna and Jen to thank for it.

  Really, I have all of you to thank for it.

  With my eternal gratitude and love,

  Peter DeMarco

  Originally published in the November 2017 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.

  Humor Hall of Fame

  Cartoon by Mary Nadler

  “New system: Guess how many jelly beans.”

  My sister-in-law was teaching Sunday-school class. The topic for the day: Easter Sunday and the resurrection of Christ. “What did Jesus do on this day?” she asked. There was no response, so she gave her students a hint: “It starts with the letter R.” One boy blurted, “Recycle!”

  —MARI-LYNN FINLEYN, RD READER

  After a flood damaged their home, my aunt and uncle were forced to stay with friends. One Sunday, as everyone got ready for church, my uncle borrowed a suit from his host. The pants were too big, so my uncle said, “I’m going to also need a belt.” His humorless hostess shot back, “We do not drink before church.”

  —BARBARA GAVLICK HARTNETT SWOYERSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA

  Our two-year-old, Tess, was sitting quietly in church one Sunday when she became mesmerized by a balding man seated in front. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she shouted for all to hear, “Why is that man’s head coming out of his hair?”

  —JOAN ANASTASI, RD READER

  During evening prayers, my five-year-old kept his uncle in his thoughts: “Please help Uncle Steve find a job that he’s good at, like owning a cat.”

  —SANDI ROWE NAMPA, IDAHO

  Cartoon by Bill Thomas

  “Three wise men radioed in to say the enemy can now see us.”

  At our weekly Bible study, the leader asked an elderly gentleman, Walt, to open the meeting with prayer. Walt did so in a soft voice. Another man, straining to hear, shouted, “I can’t hear you!” Walt replied, “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  —RICHARD STEUSSY NOVATO, CALIFORNIA

  We ran into our minister at the mall, but my son couldn’t place him. It was only later that it hit him. “I know that man,” he said. “He goes to our church.”

  —CHARLES STOCKHAUSEN ST. LOUIS, MIS
SOURI

  At the Bottom of the Bay

  by Anita Bartholomew

  The car plunged off the bridge. A little boy was trapped.

  It was the kind of silky, warm November day that only happens in Florida. Pearly skies and clear vistas. The dark blue waters of Tampa Bay and the cleanly etched skyline of the city stood out as Amira Jakupovic and her family drove north across the Howard Frankland Bridge.

  Now U.S. citizens, they had moved from Europe to St. Petersburg, Florida, six years earlier. Today they were on their way to lunch with relatives in Tampa.

  Trim and fit, Amira could have passed for a teenager. Her husband, Mujo, an amateur soccer player, was in the front passenger’s seat of their green Ford Explorer, and their two boys, Amar, 7, and Emrah, 13, were in the back. The younger boy had fallen asleep.

  Traffic was light. As they approached the end of the bridge, there was a sound like a gunshot. The back left tire had blown out. The SUV, traveling at about 55 miles per hour, skated wildly across the reinforced concrete roadway. The car slammed into the left cement guardrail and careened across all four northbound lanes—spinning and rolling over several times, crushing the roof. It finally hit the highway barrier on the right, then, in a single vault, went over the rail and plummeted into the dark bay below.

  * * *

  Kerry Reardon knew the waters around Tampa and St. Petersburg as well as the snook and spotted sea trout. He was an engineer and an avid fisherman. Once, while crabbing with his wife and kids, he’d even hauled in a blacktip shark (“a little four-footer,” he says, but big enough to take a kid’s hand off).

  This Saturday, Reardon had planned to compete in a fishing tournament, but he and his teammates hadn’t caught enough bait and finally dropped out. That meant Reardon had the afternoon free to take his 15-year-old daughter, Kara, out for a driving lesson.

  Out on the road, Reardon expected Kara to turn right, toward St. Petersburg’s spectacular Sunshine Skyway Bridge. But on a whim, the young driver turned left instead, toward Tampa across the three-mile-long Frankland Bridge. When they were almost over, the traffic began to slow, then creep along.

  “Dad, there’s a backup,” Kara said.

  “Get used to it,” Reardon joked.

  Locals call the bridge the Frankenstein, due to its horrendous traffic snarls.

  Then Reardon noticed a half-dozen or more people standing at the bridge’s barrier, staring into the water. Glittering bits of glass covered the pavement, and there were skid marks across three lanes. This was not one of Frankenstein’s usual jams, Reardon realized. Someone must have gone over the side.

  * * *

  Amira had blacked out. Chill salt water revived her. Frantically, she looked all about. Her long brown hair swirled in the water. In the murk, she saw a hint of blue and white—letters on the shirt her older boy, Emrah, was wearing. She reached out and grabbed the cloth. With her other hand, she searched for the door, a window, any way out. All the glass had blown away in the SUV’s tumble across the bridge. Amira pulled Emrah to her and swam out the driver’s-side window. The two struggled to the surface.

  But her husband and their younger child were still below.

  Kerry Reardon and officer Luis Vasquez, on a police dive boat near the “Frankenstein” bridge.

  Taking a breath, Amira saw the blue prow of a fishing boat coming straight toward them. It slowed, and someone leaned over the side to take her son out of her arms.

  Amira dived immediately, searching for the wreck. She found the car, but she couldn’t get in and was forced to come up for a breath of air. She dived again. This time, she couldn’t locate the SUV in the swirling, silt-laden water.

  Surfacing a second time, she saw that her husband had made it out. Together they dived, hunting for their younger son—but it was as if the bay had swallowed the SUV and the child with it.

  * * *

  “Pull over, pull over,” Reardon said to Kara. She did as her father told her. He bolted out of the car and looked over the edge. A charter fishing boat idled by the bridge. Reardon could see that the boat captain had already pulled three people out of the water: a man, a woman and a teenage boy. Soaked and frantic, the woman was screaming and crying.

  Reardon yelled down to the boat, “Is there anyone left in the car?”

  The answer chilled him—a child.

  He hurried to his car, dropped his keys, wallet and shoes on the passenger’s seat. Dressed in just his cutoff jeans and a T-shirt, he started back. “Lock the doors,” he told his daughter. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Reardon knew that the current around bridge supports is sharp and tricky, because it runs through narrow gaps. The swift water stirs up the silty bottom, so you often find yourself with only a foot of visibility. Even with a mask and fins, most people get lost in seconds.

  Scanning the water, Reardon saw a stream of bubbles rising to the surface. There! That’s where the car was. He climbed on top of the cement guardrail and dived off headfirst.

  * * *

  Kelli Earle liked to drive with all the windows open, letting the bay breeze play with her hair. The 25-year-old registered nurse had a baby shower to attend. She was on her way to pick up panini and other party sandwiches for the luncheon.

  Suddenly, brake lights ahead of her glared red, and cars began shifting to the left lanes. Earle pulled to the right, stopped, got out of her car and walked over to the edge, where a group had gathered.

  Glancing over the side, she saw a woman, a man and a kid being pulled out of the sea and into an idling boat. The woman was looking back into the water, screaming, “My son, my son.”

  A minute later, Earle noticed someone in cutoff jeans diving off the concrete barrier and into the bay. After the man hit the surface, 19 feet below, a lone soccer shoe popped up and bobbed along in the water.

  * * *

  The moment Reardon was underwater, he felt the current sweeping through the bridge’s understructure, tugging him along. He plunged to the bay floor, where he knew the current would ease up. And if he’d estimated correctly, he’d be somewhere near the submerged vehicle.

  He was almost on top of the SUV before detecting the hulking shape. He didn’t want to leave without finding the boy, but his lungs were close to bursting. He had to surface.

  Fearing he’d lose track of the car’s position, he headed upstream, against the current. He hoped that when he descended again, the flow would carry him back to the car. He gulped air and quickly dived back down.

  Reardon reached out to touch the car and skimmed along it, feeling for the door. He found the driver’s-side window, already broken from the crash. Crawling through, he didn’t see the boy at first. He shimmied into the backseat. Reardon was almost nose-to-nose with the child before he saw dark, unblinking eyes staring back.

  The boy was still securely locked by his seat belt. Reardon groped for the buckle, touched the cold metal and snapped it open. He grabbed the front of the boy’s shirt. The little, limp frame moved almost weightlessly with him. Reardon maneuvered him through the window, then kicked for the surface. Was he bringing up a dead boy?

  * * *

  When Kelli Earle saw the man in cutoff jeans resurface, carrying a small body, she kicked off her flip-flops, jumped in feetfirst and swam to the fishing boat. “I’m a nurse,” she said. “Let me help.” One of the men on the boat pulled her aboard.

  She went to little Amar, tilted his head back to clear his airway, gave him two rescue breaths and then checked his pulse. His heart had stopped beating. His pupils were dilated. His skin was deathly pale, his lips blue.

  The bay water was cool, but probably not cold enough to help preserve brain function as icy water sometimes does. The boy needed air—and fast. Earle began CPR. With each compression, fluid from the child’s lungs and stomach spewed out onto her. The rocking boat didn’t make the procedure any easier. And the boy’s terrified mother grasped Earle, clawing at her. “Help him. Please, help him.”

  Earle igno
red her and tried to stay focused. “Get us to land,” she called to the boat captain.

  * * *

  A police officer met the boat and joined Earle in doing CPR. He compressed the boy’s chest, while Earle blew air into his mouth. They kept up the rhythm, minute after minute—on a completely unresponsive body. Finally an ambulance arrived.

  EMTs laid Amar on a stretcher and hooked him up to their equipment. They covered the child’s nose and mouth with an oxygen mask that could be hand-pumped.

  As the EMTs wheeled Amar into the ambulance, Earle checked his vital signs and turned to the distraught parents. “Do you pray?” she asked. The mother nodded.

  “Now’s the time,” the nurse said.

  * * *

  Officer Luis Vasquez, the second policeman on the scene, accompanied Amar in the ambulance. A diver with the Tampa Police Department, Vasquez had pulled a number of children from the waters during his 17 years as a cop. None had survived.

  It didn’t look like this kid was going to either. Vasquez couldn’t feel a pulse. It hurt like hell for the father of two to think he might lose another one. He kept up the compressions—he pressed, the EMT pumped air. Again and again. No response. Then he felt a faint movement against his hands. Was it the EMT pumping the oxygen out of sequence? He looked up and saw that wasn’t so. “Did he just take a breath?” asked Vasquez.

  “I don’t think so,” the EMT said.

  But then, stunning them both, the child sucked in air a second time.

  “He’s breathing on his own,” yelled the EMT. “Did you feel a heartbeat?”

  “No,” answered Vasquez, his hands still on Amar’s chest. Then he did, the punch of the heart against his palm.