BARRINGTON — On a Friday afternoon in late July, Barrington resident Linda Davis was slowly making her way back home through rush hour traffic on Route 114 after picking up her son, Sidney, in Providence. As exhaust fumes and the late afternoon heat blanketed the roadway, mother and son idled in the car, singing songs and discussing Sidney's day at Moses Brown School to pass the time. Linda remembered there was a lot of traffic on the road that day, "more than usual."
"The ozone was really bad," she said. "There was a lot of exhaust coming in from the AC."
Still, Linda, an asthmatic since she was a teenager, had no idea that moments later she'd be gripped by a sudden and severe asthma attack.
"It was really weird," she said. "I didn't have any breathing problems all day. I didn't have any signals."
When the attack hit her, Linda quickly pulled over to the side of the road, unable to breathe and struck with fear. Later on, she would say it was one of the worst asthma attacks she's had in 15 years. Without rescue, she believes she would have died right there. But help was about to come from an unexpected source.
To the rescue
Sidney, only 9, is also an asthmatic, and as soon as he saw his mother suffering from an attack, he knew what to do.
Reaching into her bag, Sidney extracted Linda's inhalor parts and quickly assembled it. Normally, the inhalor would have been enough to quell the attack, but this time Sidney and Linda were "shocked and scared" to find that it wasn't working.
Thinking fast, Sidney took out his own inhalor, but that too was ineffective. Linda's air passages had constricted to the point that medical intervention was needed. But Sidney didn't even know how to operate a cell phone, let alone direct a rescue vehicle to a random section of Wampanoag Trail in East Providence.
"I really didn't think that I was going to make it," Linda said. "It was a very scary reality. You don't have much time."
Nobody was pulling over to help, so it was up to Sidney to save his mom. Luckily, despite the turmoil, he was able to collect himself and recall his asthma emergency training.
"I remembered exactly what should happen then," he said. He had to dial 9-1-1.
Despite having never used a cell phone before and unable to get directions from Linda, who at that point couldn't talk, Sidney managed to dial emergency and get a dispatcher on the phone.
"It was one of the scariest moments in my life," he said. "At first, they asked simple questions, but then they got harder and harder."
The dispatcher needed to know their exact location, but Sidney had only a vague recollection of where he was after traveling through East Providence on a daily basis to Moses Brown. He recalled enough, however, to begin giving a description of the area.
Meanwhile, Linda was frantically trying to keep herself from becoming unconscious, a typical and often fatal symptom of severe asthma attacks.
"I was afraid I was going lose consciousness, and then something would happen to him," she said.
At one point, Sidney tried to get out of the car and flag down a passing motorist, but Linda signed to him to stay by her side. The heavy traffic made for a dangerous roadside situation, and she didn't want to risk anything, even if it meant her situation would continue to go unnoticed.
"He was fighting for me, and I was fighting for him at the same time," she said.
Help arrives
After navigating through a difficult 9-1-1 call that was interrupted at least once when he hung up to attend to his mother, Sidney was able to give enough information for the dispatcher to confirm the location. A rescue vehicle was immediately sent out from the Wampanoag Trail Fire Station in East Providence. Sidney recalls two fire trucks also arriving at the scene.
As the EMTs approached the Davis's car, Sidney recalled one of them asking if that was his mother inside. He answered yes, and they went to work. Soon, Linda was in the back of a rescue truck headed to Rhode Island Hospital and Sidney was with her.
"I was so out of it, I didn't really know [what happened at that point]," Linda said.
EMTs are prohibited from discussing a patient's medical history, but in most cases a nebulizer, a more potent form of an inhalor, or medication is administered to the patient to relieve the symptoms.
To calm Sidney, the rescue workers talked with him on the ride over and asked about his clay turtle that he had made that day at Moses Brown — "they were amazing," Linda said.
After recovering at the hospital with treatments of prednisone to open up her airways, Linda was released. She, her husband, Jim, and Sidney live on Fountain Avenue.
Per her doctor's orders, Linda had to increase the frequency of her nebulizer treatments, and true relief probably won't come until the hazy, humid days of summer give way to fall. But to Linda, things could have been much, much worse.
"[Sidney] was very smart and stayed calm, and he thought on his feet, which was amazing," she said. "He just turned 9. In some aspects, he's still this little boy who leaves his dirty clothes on the floor and watches too much TV, but he's also a brave little boy who's had to do some tough things.
"It just makes me see him in a different light. He's really a hero to me."
Sidney, who will go to Primrose Hill School in the fall, wasn't sure what to make of the "hero" talk, but he understood the importance of what he did that day. "I'm proud of myself for saving my mom's life," he said.
By Scott O'connell
soconnell@eastbaynewspapers.com