My Mother’s Emergency Turned Out to Be My Own Salvation

It was four in the morning when I got a call that shook me awake. On the line was my son Yehuda, who had spent the night at my mother’s house. “Mom,” he said nervously, “they took Grandma in an ambulance to the hospital!”

“What happened? Why the ambulance?” I asked.

“She said she felt dizzy and got scared, so she called for help. She told me not to call you, just to call Uncle Avi, but I forgot his number…”

Without thinking twice, I got dressed and prepared to head out. My husband, still half asleep, sat up and said, “You’re in your ninth month, and it’s your seventh pregnancy, thank God. Where are you rushing off to at this hour?”

I explained what had happened. He looked at me and said, “I admire you. You’re fulfilling two mitzvot at once, honoring your mother and visiting the sick.”

My mother is a widow, and I couldn’t bear the thought of her sitting alone in the hospital.

I arrived at the emergency room just ten minutes later. My mother was chatting and smiling with a nurse. Everything seemed okay. She was glad to see me but asked why I had come. “I told Yehuda not to call you because you’re so far along in your pregnancy!”

I smiled and reassured her it was alright. She told me that they had already checked her blood pressure, sugar, and heart rate, and baruch Hashem (thank God), everything looked fine. I asked her why she had called an ambulance. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just suddenly felt afraid. They decided to bring me in for tests because of my age.”

She was waiting for her discharge papers, and as we were talking, I started feeling strong back pain and an urgent need to use the restroom. I told her I’d be right back.

But as soon as I entered the bathroom, everything changed.

Suddenly I felt like I was spinning. Everything happened so fast. Within seconds, they declared an emergency in the ER and rushed me upstairs in a wheelchair. I didn’t even have time to understand what was going on. When I reached the maternity ward, the nurses quickly lifted me onto a stretcher and raced me toward the operating room.

Up until then, I was calm. But when I saw the panic on the staff’s faces, I realized how serious it was. I covered my eyes and began saying Shema Yisrael, placing my trust in Hashem.

Meanwhile, my mother had already been discharged and was looking for me. No one had told her what was happening and it had all happened so quickly, they hadn’t even asked for my name. She wandered through the hospital until a nurse recognized her.

“Mazal tov!” the nurse said. “You have a new grandson!”

My mother blinked in confusion. She didn’t understand. The nurse then explained that I had suffered a sudden placental abruption, a life-threatening emergency. They had rushed me into surgery just in time. I was now on the fourth floor, recovering.

When I opened my eyes after the surgery, there was my mother, the person I had gone to the hospital to care for now standing beside my bed, taking care of me.

A nurse entered the room, and only then did I realize she wasn’t just a nurse. She was actually the chief surgeon of the maternity ward. She sat down beside me and said, “Congratulations on your miracle birth. If you hadn’t already been in the hospital, the amount of blood you lost would have made it impossible to save either you or your baby.”

I sat in silence, overwhelmed by the realization. My mother had come to the hospital with no clear reason. My son Yehuda, who wasn’t supposed to call me, did. I rushed to the hospital without delay. And Hashem arranged all the details so that I would be in the right place at the right time so that my son and I would be saved.

We named him Elroi, a name that comes from the words of Hagar in the Torah: “You are the G-d who sees me.” Hashem saw me in that moment and saved us.

I thank Hashem every day for the open miracles and the hidden ones, too.