Heaven sent: 8-year-old dead for 40 minutes lives to tell about it

Christian Aldrich, 8, tells his story this way. “I died and I went to heaven. That’s what I say.”

And usually, that’s when the room falls silent.

“I was dead for how long?” he asks his mom, Amber Aldrich.

“Forty minutes,” she answers.

“And they brought you back?” his hairdresser asked recently.

“No, they didn’t bring me back,” Christian said. “God brought me back. He healed my heart, my lungs, my brain and I was out of the hospital in three weeks. This (his right leg in a cast) is all that’s left and I’m learning patience.”

‘I felt it when he died’

It had snowed several inches the night of Nov. 13, 2010, and the Aldrich family’s plow truck was broken. So that afternoon, Jim Aldrich and his only son Christian were using their snowmachines to pack the driveways. Jim and Amber Aldrich are divorced and live in houses nearly across the road from each other off Soapstone Road.

Christian was smiling ear-to-ear that day when he rode to where his mom was clearing snow from the woodpile, walked over and threw his arms around Amber. “I love you so much.”

The boy asked if he could ride a bit longer before helping her clear the woodpile, his mother agreed and turned back to her task.

That’s when she heard a loud crash. “I knew it was bad,” Amber said.

She ran down the driveway and saw a truck across the road with a snowmachine sticking out from under its bed.

The driver was standing in the road already talking with a 911 dispatcher on his cellphone. It was 2:30 p.m. when 911 dispatchers received his call.

As she got closer, she could see Christian’s head sticking out from under the back left tire.

She started screaming for Jim.

Amber fell in the snow beside her son, held his head and kissed his face. “Mommy’s here. I’m not going to leave you.”

“When I got to him he was still trying to breathe,” she said. “All I knew was that was my son and I was watching him die in my hands. I felt it when he died.”

‘If you need him today, I give him to you freely’

Across the road, Jim had just parked his snowmachine when he heard a strange noise and ran out to the road.

“All I saw at the time was a truck stuck in the ditch,” he said. “Then I saw the rear left tire of the truck was sitting on my son’s chest. He had already begun to lose color.”

Jim went back to the house, jumped in a modified Dodge flatbed with dual winches and a boom on the rear and headed back to the accident scene. He hooked the winch to the back of the truck and lifted it straight up and off Christian’s body.

“For all the problems we’ve had with that truck, it started immediately,” Jim said.

Paramedics arrived, extricated the boy from the wreckage and started to work.

By then the family’s pastor, Ronald J. Herring, had arrived and was praying with Jim when paramedics loaded Christian into the ambulance to take him to the emergency helicopter. He had no pulse.

“I threw my hands in the air, ‘God, I gave you my son years ago as a child of the church. If you need him today, I give him to you freely,’” Jim prayed.

When paramedics in the helicopter called on the radio a few seconds later to say they’d gotten Christian’s heart and lungs working and he was headed to Providence, Jim said he fell on the ground and thanked God.

“To have given him freely and then to have him given back to me — I’ll never forget that,” Jim said.

‘That picture won’t leave my mind’

The driver that terrible day was a neighbor, a man whose kids knew Christian from the school bus.

“Get this truck off him,” Amber said.

“I can’t. It’s stuck,” the man said.

In his eyes, Amber said she saw the same overwhelming helplessness she felt.

“My heart went out to him,” she said.

Amber stayed with Christian, holding his head and watching helplessly as he slipped away.

On her face in the snow, she prayed. “My baby is in your hands. I know you are capable and that you will heal him, if not here on earth, then in heaven.”

And then she let Christian go.

“That picture won’t leave my mind. Every time I close my eyes or go near my driveway, I still see images of my son dying in my hands,” Amber said. “But every time I open my eyes I see his smiling face; I see God’s miracle.”

Later, Amber saw the man and went over and hugged him and prayed with him. She said Jim came over later and prayed with him too. Christian’s parents told the driver “we don’t blame you” and that they forgave him.

But Amber said the man was deeply traumatized, so she made a point to take Christian by his house to see him in person when he came home from the hospital.

‘Stay with him and just love him’

First responder Rick Lucia was off duty when his son called his phone to say he heard a call on his father’s pager. He said the accident sounded bad. Lucia grabbed paramedic Glenn Stevens on the way and the two were the first on the scene off Soapstone Road near the intersection with Smith Street.

After Jim winched the truck off Christian, the paramedics started CPR and prepared the boy for transport to the hospital. Then they loaded Christian into an ambulance and transported him to the helicopter that would take him to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, where a team of doctors and nurses would work to save his life.

Before she and Jim headed for Providence, Amber went to her cabin to change into dry clothes. That’s when a friend ran inside to tell her they’d gotten a pulse.

Amber immediately dropped to her knees and thanked God, but her tearful gratitude seemed so inadequate, she said.

“I know in my heart that it is a miracle,” she said. “Jesus is alive and well and he’s still in the miracle business.”

The drive to Anchorage was the longest of her life, Amber said.

At the hospital, hours passed before doctors came to tell them what they knew about Christian’s injuries: two broken ribs, a bruised heart, crushed lungs, his liver and bowels were swollen and bruised and he had a severe compound fracture to his right leg. The leg was hanging by a thread, the doctor said. The neurologist said brain damage was likely.

The pediatrician was the least hopeful of all. She told them there was too much damage and that Christian wasn’t expected to live through the night.

“We were encouraged to stay with him and just love him,” Amber said.

Christian did live through the night and spent the next four days in a coma.

And after several more hours of waiting in the ICU waiting room, his parents were finally taken to Christian’s room where they saw their son attached to a ventilator, seven IVs, a heart monitor and seemingly every other piece of equipment in the hospital, Amber said.

‘Hey, Mom, you want to see something cool?’

Amber never believed the doctors who told her Christian would likely have lifelong impacts from the 40 minutes his heart and lungs were stopped.

“His body would twitch when he heard familiar voices,” Amber said. “I saw this broken body laying there, but I could see his fighting spirit.”

People streamed in and out of the boy’s room the whole time he was hospitalized. All three of his teachers from Swanson Elementary visited. The paramedic who was first on the scene, the helicopter pilot, several other paramedics, church friends, family members — they came, they prayed and they offered the family their love and support.

Amber said Christian seemed to respond when he heard his teachers’ voices. His heart rate increased and his breathing sped up — she said she thinks it was because he was worried they would send him to the office, again.

“He loved his teachers and they loved him,” she said. “I’m thankful they came.”

Three days after the accident, Christian grabbed at a nurse’s arm and tried to remove his breathing tube.

“It was undeniable, there was intentional movement,” Amber said. “But we were still cautioned that it was not a sign that his brain was functioning completely.”

Amber said she didn’t eat much while Christian was in the hospital, but she was about to take a bite when the doctor came around the corner, “Hey, Mom, you want to see something cool?” She dropped her food tray and ran after the doctor.

Christian had opened his eyes.

One of the first things Christian saw when he woke up was his right leg wrapped in gauze and Ace bandages to cover the fixators holding the two pieces of his tibia together where two inches of bone was missing.

He still had a breathing tube and couldn’t speak, but his eyes got big and he was pointing.

One week after the accident he was able to breathe on his own and the next day doctors removed Christian’s breathing tube.

His first words were, “I want my mom.”

“Honey, I’m right here,” Amber said.

He could also move appropriate body parts when the doctor asked, which made even the doctors begin to smile and look hopeful, Amber said.

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series, “Heaven Sent,” about 8-year-old Christian Aldrich. See Tuesday’s Frontiersman for Part II.