‘Forever grateful’
Whoever said you only die once never met John Crowley, or his heroes, Josh Barraud and Marie Bradshaw.
Crowley stopped breathing twice after falling from his bike on a Greytown street last Thursday, smashing his head on a kerb.
Twice Barraud, 47, and Bradshaw, 69, brought him back, bursting their Covid-19 bubbles to give mouth-tomouth and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to a man they didn’t know. Bradshaw did the CPR. She’d never learnt the technique: ‘‘I just went off what I’d seen on [television show] Grey’s Anatomy.’’
Barraud went in for the mouth-tomouth, recalling his first aid lessons at Nelson College three decades ago.
Amid the stress of what Bradshaw called a ‘‘horrific’’ scene, and neither knowing just what they were doing, together they saved a life.
Crowley, a husband, father and grandfather, was flown to Wellington Hospital by helicopter, where he awaits tests on his heart. He has arrhythmia, which is a prime suspect in why he fell without so much as trying to break his plunge.
Emergency services later told Raewyn Crowley that her husband, a former senior news executive, would certainly have died without the intervention of two strangers.
‘‘I will be forever grateful to those people,’’ she told Stuff. ‘‘I could have had a box of ashes on my doorstep.’’
Crowley had popped out for a bike ride around the Wairarapa town the couple moved to only this year. When Barraud and his daughter, Trixie, 10, saw him, he was on the wrong side of the road seemingly surprised to encounter them coming the other way. He took evasive action, only to fall heavily and smash his head. With Bradshaw, Barraud tried to get the injured man into the recovery position. ‘‘That’s about the point he stopped breathing.’’
Both went back to work, and the breathing started again. Bradshaw was so vigorous with her CPR that her patient later complained of the pain.
Bradshaw watched until the unknown cyclist had been loaded into a helicopter. Like her co-hero, the enormity of what she’d done didn’t strike until Raewyn Crowley phoned.
‘‘We both did what we had to at the time,’’ she said.
Barraud was less affected at the time, saying he went into a ‘‘weird shock’’. Later, Raewyn Crowley called.
‘‘Talking to her, I realised who he was – a loved man. I look forward to having a pint with him.’’