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For a change of pace, this Nurse of the Week was on the receiving side of a rescue—and, instead of driving her car to work, she ended up riding there in an ambulance. The off-duty nurses who (in these stories) usually play the role of impromptu first responders were occupied elsewhere that evening, but fortunately, two strangers pulled over and filled in—which is a relief, since sometimes, nurses need to be saved too.

It happened in the blink of an eye. Pendleton, Indiana RN Ericka Cosby was driving to her evening shift, her mind probably on the pending handover. As she rode over a bump in the rural road, the jolt dislodged her mobile phone, which slid to the floor. Without thinking, she reached down to retrieve it before it could become lost under the seats. As Cosby started to lower her arm, her mind cut in and arrested her movement, but it was already too late.

Describing her ordeal to a local news station , Cosby said, “I didn’t even make it to pick it up before I was heading straight into the guardrail. The police officer said I rode down the guardrail for about 10 feet and flipped down the hill two to three times—not sure how many—but I landed upside down, half in the creek and half on the grass.” When her car finally came to a rest, Cosby found herself upside-down and trapped by an inflated airbag. Being tumbled about inside the auto as it fell 10 feet and flipped repeatedly did not leave her unscathed: she broke her nose, fractured an orbital, and suffered various contusions; the airbag did its part by burning her in various places while it trapped her. Cosby was also phoneless, of course, and as luck would have it, she could not reach the button to activate her On-Star service.

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The injured nurse was able to reach the horn, and—to attract attention on the quiet country road—she pressed down and honked repeatedly at intervals. The upside-down car’s lights were still on, and smoke began to creep out from under the hood. Now, though, luck started turning her way. Two passersby—a woman and a man—noticed the smoke and lights and pulled their cars over to offer help. The efforts of Cosby’s Samaritans, however, were hampered by difficulties posed by unfastening her seatbelt as she hung inside the overturned car. “I was very afraid if I unbuckled the seat belt, I was just going to land straight on my face… because I couldn’t bend my knees to get them out anywhere [and] there was glass,” Cosby recalled.

Nurse Ericka Cosby talks to rescuer Robert Wilson.
Ericka Cosby talks to rescuer Robert Wilson. (Fox59, Indiana)

The rescuers were determined, though, and the male bystander, she says, “actually crawled into my car on all fours and acted like a tabletop for me. That man didn’t know me, and he literally let me fall onto him.” As the man held her, the unknown woman quickly unlatched the seatbelt, and the two pulled her out of the car. Then—in one of those Hollywood moments that no one wants to pop up in real life—while they helped her away from the auto, it burst into flames (Really. Take another look at that Twitter photo.).

Now recovering in the hospital, Cosby expects to be discharged soon (so she can go to work in her preferred fashion). She told local reporters that the two strangers were her “guardian angels.” The male angel, Robert Wilson, said, “I don’t feel like I did anything that someone else wouldn’t do. I was brought up to help people.”

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For more details on this story, go to Fox 59 in Indiana.

Koren Thomas
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