At Death’s Door, He Was Put on Ice

In 2007, Patrick Savage, then a 52-year-old deputy chief of the New York City Fire Department, suffered cardiac arrest after a morning run on the treadmill. He had run triathlons every year since 1984, but a genetic predisposition for heart disease finally caught up with him. At Columbia University Medical Center, doctors performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques, but Savage failed to rebound. Over six hours, Savage, whose face periodically turned purple, experienced seven consecutive cardiac arrests. At one point, Stephan Mayer, a neurointensivist at the Columbia hospital at the time, spoke to the deputy chief’s wife, Mary Grace Savage, a nurse who worked in his intensive care unit.

“He’s probably not going to make it,” Mayer said. Because Savage had been “pulseless”—his heart stopped beating for a cumulative total of about 90 minutes—he could have suffered brain death due to oxygen deprivation.

“I know that,” Mary answered.

Despite the grim prognosis,