- November 18, 2024
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It’s easy to feel like a hero when you save a life. But what happens when you try your best but can’t succeed?
John Raymond will not easily forget the images of that morning: the blood trickling across the street, the chest compressions, the sheet being spread over the body.
Raymond, 44, is a new nurse, recently making a career change after retiring from the Navy. Just twice before had he assisted with CPR, and that was in the hospital, surrounded by other medical personnel, each doing their job in a controlled environment. But on the morning of Sunday, July 13, driving with his wife and children on the way to church, he reached a scene that was decidedly uncontrolled.
At the corner of Pine Grove Drive and Belle Terre Parkway, a man and a woman were standing near a truck. Later, their names were revealed: Juan Manuel Godoy, 53, and Maria Patricia Godoy, 51, both of Palm Coast. A motorcycle lay on its side in front of them. Apparently there had been an accident just seconds earlier, as Godoy had failed to see the biker and pulled out in front of him.
“John, you’re a nurse!” said John’s wife, Kay, who was driving the van. “You need to go!”
Then Raymond saw what she had seen: Another man was lying in the street with the motorcycle.
So, Raymond walked across the street and knelt by the man, who was later identified as Thomas Gerald Trudell, 65, also of Palm Coast. He was in bad shape. “Blood was coming from all the wrong places,” Raymond recalled. Blood had pooled underneath Trudell and had run in a line across the street. He took Trudell’s pulse, but there was none. He wasn’t breathing.
As soon as Raymond began helping, another man approached, a former paramedic. Raymond never learned his name. But together, they helped to free Trudell’s legs from his handlebars and move away the motorcycle, a Honda Goldwing.
Raymond, who was wearing a white shirt and a tie as he always did when he went to church, knelt down next to Trudell to begin giving CPR, and his tie fell in the blood near Trudell’s head. He couldn’t exactly give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation because blood was bubbling from Trudell’s mouth.
Across the street, Raymond could see his children in the car, crying. Cars were lining up behind, honking their horns, unable to see the accident.
This was nothing like being in the hospital.
But he got to work, administering chest compressions.
“I felt helpless,” Raymond recalled later. “I couldn’t do half of what I was trying to do because I couldn’t get air down his lungs. I was kind of dazed. I didn’t know what to do, but I just decided to keep doing the compressions. I was trained to keep going until someone is there to relieve you. So I was just waiting for that, someone with more experience.”
While at first he felt mostly alone in the effort, as he worked on Trudell, “It all clicked together,” Raymond recalled. “People were calling 911.”
Raymond noticed as he performed CPR that Trudell resembled someone he knew. He was the same build and wore the same kind of facial hair as Raymond’s good friend.
“It didn’t really impact me during what I was doing, but it impacted me afterward,” he recalled. “I keep seeing his face. I keep seeing his face. … All day (Monday) and all day Sunday, I kept seeing his face on the ground and reliving the scene. I had waves of emotion for short periods of time, here and there, just for a few seconds. I can feel it welling up in me, and then it goes away.”
Ultimately, a deputy arrived. Shortly thereafter, a fire engine with more medical personnel. But after a brief heart rhythm that gave everyone hope: nothing. The man was pronounced dead. A sheet was pulled over his body.
After making sure he wasn’t needed further, Raymond got back in his car and the family returned home so he could take a quick shower and change his clothes and still make it to church.
He reflected on the fact that he has now given CPR three times, and none of the victims has survived. He said, "You just want them to make it. You want to do some good. And your kids are looking, and you kind of feel like you need to be successful at what you do.”
Raymond said he has also thought a lot about Trudell’s family, as well as the Godoys and how they must be traumatized by causing the crash.
Even though his efforts didn’t result in saving a life, he feels that he did the right thing. He has been trained to give aid, he said. “I had to answer the call."
