My husband died twice by the side of the road, but today he’s alive, as God had other plans. Rachel Rounds shares her story.

RACHEL AND TOM ROUNDS

Rachel writes and edits Ignite magazine. She also edits Testimony Tuesday and Enews. She attends Calne Baptist Church in Wiltshire and is a freelance journalist. Tom is a retired RAF officer, from Fiji. They have a 12-year-old son Tanoa - which means sacred vessel.

Rachel’s story

It was about 4:30 p.m. on Monday, February 24, when I heard an urgent knock at the door. It was my husband’s friend Wayne, who immediately said, “Tom has been in an accident. You need to come with me quickly.”

When I got in his car, I kept asking him what had happened, but he didn’t answer, and I knew that something bad must have happened to my husband. Five minutes later, we arrived at what I can only describe as a scene of carnage. Tom’s car had gone off the road into the lay-by and was covered in bushes. There was an ambulance, two police cars, and as I walked towards his car, I could see at least four or five paramedics. Tom was lying on a gurney with people frantically attaching canulas and breathing equipment. There were so many people around him that I couldn’t get close, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

A very kind paramedic appeared to tell me Tom had had a heart attack whilst driving his car, and they were trying to stabilise him before taking him to the hospital. The accident had happened outside his local pub, the Bug and Spider, so the landlady and bar staff were all there. We often go there for Sunday lunch, and so I know them. They hugged me as I burst into tears.

This was the only time I cried for weeks as I went into a strange autopilot. I can’t say I felt ‘the peace of God’ in some miraculous way, but I am recovering from Long Covid, and somehow, I managed to drive 30 miles to Bristol and back over the next few weeks and look after our 12-year-old son. Something I never thought I would have the strength to do on my own.

My husband is not a Christian. We married when I was officially ‘off God’ and had no intention of coming back, but I have always prayed for his salvation. I knew God had saved him when I later discovered what had happened.

At the point he had the heart attack, he had just come round a roundabout, so was going very slowly, which meant that when his car did go off road and come to a stop, it did so at a reasonably gentle pace. The bumper and headlight are broken, and there are scratches, but that’s about it. Also, as he came off the road, two off-duty paramedics were driving a couple of cars behind him. They immediately stopped their car along with two young strapping lads and pulled him out of his car.

The paramedics performed CPR, and the women from the Bug and Spider recognised Tom’s car and rushed out. They have a portable defibrillator, and the paramedic used it on Tom. Her actions saved his life.

The average waiting time for an ambulance in Wiltshire is four hours. One arrived in 15 minutes. It took them forty minutes to stabilise him before they could put him in the ambulance, and they took him to Bristol Royal rather than Swindon or Bath (which are nearer) because it turns out that it is the best heart hospital in the whole of the UK and the third best in the world.

A few days later, I looked at the report the paramedics had written. The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is a neurological scale used to assess a person's level of consciousness, particularly after a brain injury. 15 indicates mild concussion; three indicates traumatic brain injury. Tom’s score was three. He also stopped breathing and his heart stopped on two occasions. I can’t remember what medical term they used, but when I looked it up, it meant he was dead.

My nurse friend later told me she didn’t think he would make it to Bristol. The shock was enormous once I finally got to see him in Bristol. He was in the ICU and had tubes and wires attached. From the neck upwards, he looked like a cadaver. His skin (if possible) was simultaneously yellow and grey. I felt my legs give way and bile rise in my throat. However, I managed not to faint or be sick. I quietly prayed over him and then prayed in tongues, telling the Holy Spirit I didn’t know what to pray except: “Thy will be done.”

The chief cardiologist then called me into a private room and said: “There is no easy way to say this, Mrs Rounds, but because your husband stopped breathing and we don’t know for how long, he may have brain damage. This means he could wake up tomorrow and be fine or never wake up again.”

This part of the equation hadn’t even crossed my mind. I thought about our darling, beautiful boy; he could lose his father, as I did at the age of thirteen, or we would have to live with a man in a coma for however long.

He told me to go home and get some sleep as “it’s going to be a long haul.”

After very little sleep, imagine my amazement as I discovered a text from his son, from his first marriage, who had arrived early at the hospital, telling me that Tom was awake and talking! He said the doctors were in shock. By the time I arrived, he was very much ‘out of it’ on morphine and kept repeating himself, but he was definitely awake and alert. Praise God.

He spent two months in hospital and had a triple heart bypass, and has had a defibrillator fitted. Also a week after Tom’s accident I received a text to tell me our son had been in an accident. I ended up in Swindon A&E with him. He had broken his collarbone whilst riding a scooter at the scooter park. He was in such agony and crying so much that it hurt my heart to see him in such pain. At times like this, you want to shout at God - but again, I felt an inner calm that can only have come from the Holy Spirit.

Today, things aren’t easy. The lack of oxygen to his brain has slowed him down, and he gets impatient and frustrated. I struggle with my emotions, but people from church have been fantastic, and God has been good to me. Tom didn’t see ‘a light’ when he died, and I wish he had! He also hasn’t yet become a Christian, but he does believe his guardian angel saved him. So please do pray for our little family. God has a plan. I just have to keep on trusting in Him.