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Chapter 1: What led David Dwyer to search for his wife Kelly in the woods?
It's February the 13th, 2011. In the woods of New Hampshire, just outside the town of Hooksett, the beam of a flashlight weaves through the trees, making fleeting incisions in the darkness. Ranks of densely packed evergreens appear in its glare, their trunks slender and pale, their slumped boughs stiffened with frost.
43-year-old David Dwyer, flashlight in hand, staggers through the snow, his eyes scouring the slivers of shadow between the pines. His voice resonates through the dark forest, echoing the same two syllables, Kelly. Eventually, David emerges into open space, a circular clearing covered in a blanket of pillowy white.
Though it's not immediately obvious, this clearing is in fact a pond, frozen over and buried by snow. David stands at the pond's edge, his breath fogging the frigid night air. He points his torch beam towards the opposite bank, where the black mass of the forest stands out against the darkening sky. David calls out again.
Once the echo of his own voice has faded, he listens, his ears pricked, his senses sharpened to a fine point. And then he hears something. It sounds like a wounded animal ensnared in barbed wire, a throaty, feral groan. His pulse quickening, David directs another yell into the dark void that surrounds him. Again he waits, and again.
Whatever that noise was, it didn't sound human, but it's not like I'm making a noise and then a howl is, you know, calling back, or a coyote's howling at the moon. There was a rhythm, something is answering. Me yelling, Kelly, something is answering back. Something, someone.
The sound is primal, an expression of pure animal distress. But it also seems to be answering him. Whenever David shouts Kelly's name, the sound comes back. David starts inching his way along the edge of the pond, following the direction of the sound.
I just kept walking and trying to follow this animalistic noise. And enough time went by that all of a sudden my flashlight picks up this black hole in this frozen white landscape.
David stares. It looks like a blot of ink on a pristine page, a little circle of black against the surrounding white expanse. a hole in the ice he trains the flashlight on it and there staring out from the hole surrounded by freezing black water her face like a ghost is david's wife kelly her eyes look like you would think if you can envision an animal carp in a trap
frantic, wild, animal-looking eyes. And she opened her mouth, and that noise that I had been hearing came out of her.
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Chapter 2: How did Kelly end up submerged in freezing water?
And that's really all I remember. That's my last memory of that day.
As Kelly slips into a hypothermic stupor, David will have to perform heroics to reach her in time. How will he get her out without risking his own life too? What will be the consequences of Kelly's hours spent trapped beneath the ice? Can she, quite literally, come back from the dead? I'm John Hopkins from the Noisa Podcast Network. This is Real Survival Stories.
It's the afternoon of Sunday, February the 13th, 2011. In a sprawling area of woodland about a mile outside the small town of Hooksett, New Hampshire, Kelly Dwyer happily picks her way along a path through the evergreens. Bright winter sun slants through gaps in the trees, dappling the forest floor with shifting patterns of light and shade.
Kelly, a dark-haired woman of 46, breathes in the cold, pine-resin-filled air and listens to the sound of the wind stirring the branches.
Trees are very symbolic to me because in the winter here, the shadows in February are beautiful, incredible lighting. It does something different to the bones of the trees. The deciduous trees, when they've lost their leaves, you can see their skeletal structure. And I would always look out at that and just marvel.
Kelly walks slowly, methodically lifting each snowshoe before placing it back down with careful precision. She takes periodic breaks, holding onto tree branches for support while she stops to recover strength, her body racked with deep, heaving breaths. There was a time when Kelly wouldn't have struggled with exercise like this.
But for the last few years, she has been battling a health condition whose symptoms, fatigue, muscle pain, nausea, have made it difficult for her to lead a normal, active life.
For about three years prior to 2011, I had started to develop really mysterious physical symptoms. Slowly over maybe a year, I became really ill. And this was from someone who was extremely energetic, very strong, determined, very healthy. And then things just started to slowly deteriorate.
As the months passed, Kelly's health continued to decline. She and her husband, David, spent countless hours meeting with various specialists, but nobody seemed able to identify the cause.
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Chapter 3: What emotional and physical challenges did David face during the rescue?
Kelly takes another few steps forward. At this point, it's hard to say exactly what happens next. Kelly herself can't say for sure. Maybe she pauses, lifting her head to admire the treetops above the opposite bank. Maybe a bird flies over, distracting her for a single critical second, pulling her attention away from the ice beneath her feet.
So something must have compelled me to either step forward or step backward off of that. I think probably about five feet from my usual blaze trail. Whether something flew over and I took a step forward or back to look at it with my binoculars, I don't know why I went off that safe trail.
All anyone can say for sure is that when Kelly puts her foot down, there is a loud crack, a sudden lurch of weightlessness, and a paralyzing shock of cold as she plunges vertically through the ice and disappears beneath the water's inky black surface. As her muscles tighten and contract, Kelly acts quickly.
She kicks off her heavy metal snowshoes and flings her forearms onto the solid ice, trying to heave herself back up. But the slippery, unstable edges, coupled with the numbing effects of the cold, make this action impossible. Kelly reaches into her coat and pulls out her cell phone, but it must have shorted out after hitting the water. The screen is black and unresponsive.
She grips the edge of the hole and gasps for breath, fighting to maintain a sense of clarity against the dizzying effects of the extreme cold.
I remember screaming toward a development past a wooded area near the pond. And I remember screaming, screaming, screaming for help to the point where my voice went hoarse. And that's really all I remember. That's my last memory of that day.
It's about 5 p.m. in the Dwyer household. Shafts of late afternoon sunlight filter softly through the sash windows as David Dwyer potters about his study. Somewhere, his daughter Laura is practicing her flute. In another room, 12-year-old Catherine is finishing some homework. Aside from these little pockets of activity, the house is a hush of calm. Shadows lengthen across well-worn floorboards.
Warm air murmurs from heating vents.
It's a normal, relaxing Sunday. Not a lot of care in the world. There was no errands to run. There was no commitments to honor. It was just a nice, relaxing, beautiful Sunday type you hope you get every now and then so you can just rejuvenate.
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Chapter 4: What were the critical moments when Kelly was found?
David puts on his coat, hat and gloves. He straps on his snowshoes and grabs a flashlight. Then he opens the door and steps out into the gathering gloom. David walks purposefully, but not with any great urgency. There is no immediate reason to be concerned for Kelly's well-being. But as he steps into the shadows of the trees, night seems to steal over him all at once.
By the time I got out of our yard into the woods, it was dark now. There's no fooling myself that the sun is going down and there's a little light. It was downright dark.
The beam of David's flashlight probes the darkness as he trudges deeper into the snow-laden woods. Slender trunks and spindly branches loom on either side of the footpath. Any second now, Kelly will surely appear around a corner, apologizing for causing any unnecessary concern. But the further David walks, the less sure this becomes.
Halfway from our house to the beaver pond, I started yelling her name just in case she had fallen somewhere. And again, my mind is thinking, it's odd that she's not here. She's not on the path. It's odd she's not home yet, but it's odd she's not on the path walking back, meeting me. So something is now wrong.
Could she have tripped and sprained an ankle? Kelly's battle with Lyme disease can leave her feeling weak and unsteady on her feet. David quickens his pace until eventually he reaches the pond.
It wasn't until I got all the way to the pond's edge that, no Kelly. And this is not good. It makes sense she's on the path. My brain is thinking logically, she's on the path. She's walking back. Even if she broke her leg, she's on the path. So now that I'm at this pond surrounded by woods, where is she? Where could she be?
David stands at the edge of the pond, shining his light's beam out across the frozen surface. He shouts Kelly's name, his voice gruff with anxiety.
And it's pitch black out. So as I'm yelling, I yell her name again, this noise to the right, way off in the distance, comes back. It's hard for me to describe. I can't describe it. I can't mimic the noise. The best I could describe it was an animalistic noise coming from the dark over to the right on the pond.
He strains his ears. It sounds like a wounded animal, except it seems to be answering him, calling back whenever he shouts Kelly's name.
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Chapter 5: How did the emergency responders react to Kelly's condition?
I thought, all right, I'll slip into the hole. I'll go in, and I'll push her out. That would have been a very bad plan, but that's what I was about to do when I could see in the woods and hear. I could hear voices and flashlights. David looks up.
Beams of light weave through the trees as a team of firefighters barrel through the forest towards the pond. It's hard to say how long it's been since he spoke to Laura, but it can't be more than 15 minutes. The firefighters soon reach the spot on the bank where David dropped his flashlight. He can see that one of them is dressed in what looks like scuba gear, a full-body dry suit.
Three firefighters make their way over to David and Kelly. The one in the dry suit slips into the water and wraps Kelly in a bear hug. There is a rope tied around his waist and the two firefighters on the ice hold the other end of it. The next step is to pull them out.
The firefighter in the water is looking at me saying, I've got her, you can let her go. He had to say it again. He might even had to say it three times. And the third time was very kind and gentle, looking at me saying, trust me, I have her. You can, you can let her go. So I did.
It's a few minutes later. The rescue team carries Kelly through the woods on a stretcher. David walks in front, illuminating the footpath with his flashlight.
The whole walk, I have this illusion she's going to be fine. Because when they pulled her out of the hole and they're strapping her down, I heard one of the firefighters turn to the other two. He wasn't talking to me. He was talking to the other two. She has a pulse. So the whole walk back, I'm thinking, well, you have a pulse, right? You have a pulse. Hot chocolate, warm shower.
We'll be laughing about this in an hour in our house. All will be well and all will be right in the world.
But when they reach the backyard, David's wishful thinking evaporates. Instead of carrying Kelly inside the house, the firefighters rush her to the driveway where they load her into the back of an ambulance. David watches, helpless, as his wife is whisked out of sight. The scene in front of the house is chaotic.
There must be half a dozen vehicles parked here, police cars, fire engines, ambulances, a tumult of wailing sirens and red and blue flashing lights. Worried, neighbors cluster around the foot of the drive, craning their necks. David stands in the middle of it all in a state of shock. A firefighter comes over to him and starts asking questions about what happened. But David can't focus.
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Chapter 6: What were the medical efforts made to save Kelly's life?
And I realized, because she's dead, they needed permission to keep trying.
It's the early hours of the morning of February the 14th, 2011. A quiet night at the CMC Hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire. Then all of a sudden, an ambulance screeches up to the entrance of the ER. A female patient is wheeled through the doors and whisked to the ICU, where a team of specialist heart doctors swarm around her.
As they begin prepping the patient's unconscious body, the doctors exchange worried glances. They have already been briefed on the patient's condition. She has suffered a cardiac arrest triggered by hypothermia, and continued attempts to restart her heart have failed.
Even after efforts to warm her, the patient's internal body temperature sits at an unsurvivable 27 degrees Celsius, or about 10 degrees below normal. Their last recourse is a cardiopulmonary bypass, a surgical procedure in which the blood is removed from the body, warmed up, then pumped back into the patient's veins. The chances that it will work are vanishingly slim.
So she arrived at CMC with no brainwave and no heartbeat, and they're looking at the clock going, this is over three hours, three hours of CPR. And we're hooking her up to a bypass machine, and they were like, why are they sending this? They questioned why they would send this poor woman over here in this condition.
Despite the grim prognosis, the cardiac team gets to work. About an hour later, one of the doctors steps into the waiting room where David and his family members sit in agonizing uncertainty. David jumps to his feet, nerves shredded. But this time, the doctor has a positive update. The bypass worked. They have warmed Kelly up, and they've got a heartbeat. It's still too soon to celebrate.
The doctor warns the family that Kelly remains in a coma and will need to be kept on life support. David and the others are allowed to go in and see her.
She didn't look alive. She didn't look like Kelly, but she was alive. Her heart was pumping. She could not breathe on her own, but her heart was pumping on her own.
And this is how she remains, through the next day and the next. For six days, Kelly is kept in this room in the ICU, hooked up to various machines and monitors. As well as raising her body temperature and restarting her heart, doctors have to pump water and pond muck from Kelly's lungs.
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Chapter 7: How did Kelly's recovery process unfold after the incident?
She just showed up every day. And the nurses, the wonderful people, family, medical staff, everybody. I look back at that just saying how wonderful people were.
This is not a story about me. This is a story about the never give up spirit of the community and of a family and of people that are there to take care of each other. Nobody ever gave up on me. That's what the story is about. It's not me surviving this. I survived it because of the community and all members of my community. And that's a really a wide net that I cast. Never gave up on me.
And we don't give up on each other. We shouldn't.
Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet 24-year-old park ranger Andy Peterson. On April the 30th, 1998, Andy wakes up late. He decides to put off his list of chores and instead heads to Colorado's Roxburgh National Park for an invigorating hike. It's a decision that will change his life forever.
On the forested slopes of Carpenter's Peak, Andy is stalked and then attacked by an apex predator that seems intent on ending his life. Hunted, isolated, and terrified, it appears certain that he will become the beast's next meal. That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen right now without waiting and without ads by joining Noisa Plus.
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