Todd and Christie Reid were having a much-deserved night away. Christie is a teacher. It was a long weekend. So they headed down to Natchez, Mississippi, on Saturday, leaving their two boys back home. 

They had just sat down to dinner when Christie’s cell phone rang. It was another mom.

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“She was very calm,” Christie said. “She said, ‘Is Todd with you?’ I said he was. She asked if she could speak to him.”

And that is how the Reids learned that their 17-year old son, Sam, had been thrown off a sled being pulled by a four-wheeler — and impaled on a metal tractor spike used to lift heavy hay bales.

The tractor spike had entered Sam through his left abdomen and emerged from the base of his neck. The paramedics had to cut the spike off the tractor, carefully leaving it inside Sam, as they transported him to the hospital.

“He’s definitely our miracle,” Christie said when I talked to her Wednesday night.

Which is the best part of this harrowing story. Thanks to the surgeons and staff at Regional One Health Medical Center, it appears that Sam is going to be OK.

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“You always hear that your life can change in an instant, in the blink of an eye,” Christie said. “I want to tell people, ‘Don’t take anything for granted.’ You can be sitting down with your husband for dinner, and next thing you know be on the way to The Med.”

Sam actually had called his parents earlier Saturday afternoon, asking if he could go four-wheeling with some of his friends from Arlington High. 

“He’s a good kid, very responsible, we don’t have any trouble with him doing outlandish things,” Christie said.

Sam and his buddies decided it would be fun to hitch a sled to the four-wheeler and take turns pulling each other around. It wasn’t on a street, like you’ve been seeing throughout Memphis these past few days. It was in a field.

“Well, it came time for Sam to be pulled, and the rope — the one that attached the four-wheeler to the sled — snapped and broke,” Christie said. “It wasn’t an old rope. The paramedics thought it might have gotten brittle in the cold. But that propelled him toward a tractor that was parked over to the side.”

It was a hay tractor. With two big metal spikes mounted to the front, which are used to heft heavy bales.

“The friend who was driving heard the rope snap and tried to run and intercept Sam,” Christie said. “He didn’t make it in time. Sam slid right into that hay fork.”

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And here, telling the story, Christie asks to “brag on” her kid. Because for the hours that followed, Sam remained astonishingly calm.

That is what everyone who was at the scene has told Christie. Impaled on a tractor spike, he wasn’t screaming, he wasn’t thrashing. He just wanted to get the thing out.

But that had to be done at the hospital. So the paramedics sawed through the metal spike, shielding Sam while they sawed, and transported him to Regional One, spike and all.

In the meantime, Todd and Christie were driving back from Natchez as fast as they could. They arrived at Regional One around midnight, just as the surgical team, led by Dr. Louis Magnotti, was finishing up its work.

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“They took him into surgery immediately and started operating,” Christie said. “They got the spike removed. We’ve been told by the surgeon, everyone that was in the operating room, that he would have died if the spike had been an inch either way. It barely missed his heart. It barely missed his spinal cord.

“His left lung had several lacerations, they had to remove some pieces from the top lobe and the bottom lobe. But he’s very young and healthy and, in time, he probably won’t even realize that it happened to him. And he has a neck brace on because he does have some small little bones that are fractured. Those should heal, too. I just really can’t thank everyone enough for everything they did for Sam. I am so grateful to them.”

Indeed, gratitude is what motivated the Reids to talk about their near-tragedy. Like so many Memphians, they had heard good things about Regional One, the rebranded name for The Med.

“You hear it is the No. 1 trauma center, and that’s great,” Christie said. “But at the same time, you think, ‘I don’t really know if I’d ever want to go to The Med.’ Well, they’ve been incredible. Hands down, I’m glad that’s where Sam ended up.”

The Reids were finally able to talk to Sam late Sunday morning, when his breathing tube came out. 

“The first thing he said was, ‘Is the spike out?’ ” Christie said. “He’s been doing better and better. He wants to know what he has to do to go home. I told him he had a farm implement in his body and that’s about as much of a foreign body as you can have. But he looks like he’s going to be OK. He’s determined. He is willing to do the work.”

For now, Todd and Christie are trading off shifts at the hospital. It seems like everyone in the greater Arlington community is bringing meals and offering prayers and generally offering to pitch in.  

But Wednesday night, in a quiet moment, Todd and Christie looked out the window as more snow drifted down from the sky.

“Todd said that Sam sure would like to be out there, playing in the snow,” Christie said. “I immediately said, ‘Nope, nope, no way.’ We’re not going to be playing in the snow for a very long time.”