"My mind was just hoping, please, please, please wake up. Please wake up. Push on, push through it, and wake up. That's all I want you to do."
That is the voice of a father facing the worst scenario any parent can imagine – the potential death of a child in front of their very eyes. Chris*, whose voice it is, knows what that feels like.
Chris and his two sons, Liam (14) and Aiden (11), were at a friend's barbecue on a hot day in Marlborough at the end of last year, with the two boys in the swimming pool. Their brush with the unimaginable is one of thousands of potential tragedies attended every year by St John Ambulance – and is being replayed ahead of their national Heart Of Gold Annual Appeal, on now.
This one has a happy ending but Chris says it could all have been different if it hadn't been for Liam's younger brother Aiden's quick response and bravery and the attending St John ambulance officers, Shelley Avery and Tracy McCowan.
"Liam started to stare off into the distance," says Aiden, re-living that moment. "I asked him if he was okay, but got no response. He fell back and he sank."
Liam was having a tonic-clonic seizure. "What went through my mind was: 'I have to pull him up from the bottom of the pool,'" says Aiden. "I had no time to think about being scared. I swam down and pulled up his arms and brought him to the surface.
"It was kind of scary because I was smaller than him – I couldn't touch the bottom. He was still seizing. They dragged him out. I put him (Liam) in recovery position – we'd had St John come to our school a few days before, so I knew what to do."
Chris takes up the story: "The seizure was very hard to watch. In between the seizure and waking up, when there's no movement, and he's unconscious – it's full body convulsing, slurring and gagging…it went on for two or three minutes. He was bringing up a bit of water; that's the part I was worried about.
"Because he wasn't there. There was nothing there. And that's like his brain may have had to reboot or something. Then, boom, he was back to life. He was breathing through the whole process, but he just wasn't there. That was pretty uncomfortable."
Chris describes how comforting it was to see the St John ambulance officers arrive: "Basically, without St John, the situation could have been very different for Liam," he says. "I was so relieved just to see their faces. They knew what they were doing. They asked all the right questions, and they had all the gear they needed to take control of the situation."
"It's just fantastic that they can turn up and do their best for everyone. I know St John is partly funded by donations – and I'd just say thanks to everyone for keeping St John going. If it wasn't for them, there'd be a lot of New Zealand families who would struggle with day to day living with kids with illness, adults with illness, all those things – and emergency services in general."
One of the ambulance officers assessed Liam's condition. "We had to make sure he was getting plenty of oxygen in his blood," she says. "We also had to make sure there was no water in his lungs. Often, when people inhale water in situations like that, it can lead to secondary drowning."
The other officer says: "We transported Liam to hospital in the ambulance and continued to do observations, he was coming around from his seizure by then. He was back to his cognitive state and able to converse and wanted to know what had happened, we told him the full story."
His mum Heather wasn't at the barbecue but rushed over when she got the call. She says of Aiden: "That kid does not miss anything. He's a bright little cookie. He knew it wasn't a prank. He knew what to do and did all the right things. If it wasn't for him and his quick thinking and actions calling for help, I don't want to think about what could've happened.
"I tell him not all heroes wear a cape. He's been pretty humble about it – though there have been a few jokes [to his brother] like: 'Stop annoying me or I won't save your life'."
"Saving lives is a team effort," says St John Chief Executive Peter Bradley. "We saw this in Aiden's actions – how he applied what he had learned in the first aid training he received at school from the ASB St John In Schools programme, coupled with the swift and expert response from our caring ambulance officers.
"We have also seen this in the tremendous support and generosity the public have shown us over the years and we look forward to seeing their hearts of gold again this year."
Bradley says 111 call volumes increased almost 10 per cent nationwide to more than 600,000 with ambulance officers attending over 400,000 emergencies last year. This comes on top of unprecedented year-on-year increases in demand in recent months due to the pandemic. He predicts 2022 to be an even busier year.
Perhaps the last word should go to Liam: "I don't remember too much - I remember being in the pool and feeling a bit odd and waking up and an ambulance officer talking to me.
"I wasn't very surprised [that Aiden came to the rescue]. He's always helpful, looking after other people. He's the best brother anyone could ask for. I'm really grateful.
"I feel I've been treating him a lot differently than before – a lot nicer."
Donations to the St John Heart of Gold Annual Appeal can be made directly at heartofgold.org.nz, by texting APPEAL to 2790 or by calling 0800 ST JOHN (0800 785 646)
*Surnames withheld for privacy reasons