Cape woman is recovering from a near-fatal accident in July

Angels surround Viola Surface every day.

Elegant ceramic figurines -- classic angels with flowing robes and long, tapering wings -- fill display cases in her living room. Cherubs with fat faces and small, stubby wings, sit on the edge of end tables.

And, her family says, angels saved her life July 3.

After a fall in her kitchen, Surface was rushed to Southeast Missouri Hospital. A CAT scan showed a broken neck, a life-threatening break at the second vertebra.

She was blue in the face when she returned to the emergency room, daughter Nancy McIntyre said.

Viola stopped breathing, and Dr. Mike Killen and the rest of the emergency team went to work to revive the 80-year-old great-grandmother. And that, the family believes, is when the angels stepped in as well.

Some came in the guise of paramedics and doctors.

"I remember them coming and kneeling by me," Viola said of the paramedics who came to her home. "I don't remember them carrying me out."

Her next memory is being bathed in a blue light and watching herself on an emergency room treatment table.

"I was a little bitty person, about this big," she said, holding her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.

"I looked down, and when I looked down I saw myself, and I was blue, too," she said. "I remember floating in a blue cloud.

"I was watching myself and floating in this cloud, and somebody asked me do I need help? I said yes. I don't know where they took me or what they did."

By every accepted medical measure, she shouldn't be around to tell the tale, said Dr. Joel Ray, the neurosurgeon who placed the immobilizing device known as a "halo" on Viola that day.

Ray had just finished surgery at Saint Francis Medical Center when he received the call from Southeast. When he arrived and saw the images of the break, he knew she wasn't out of danger. Her spinal column was almost completely blocked, with her head pushed forward.

"I was concerned I would cause her death by putting her in a halo," Ray said. "I had the 10 family members come in to say goodbye."

The break, he said, was almost identical to the one that caused paralysis in the late actor Christopher Reeve.

Family members said they believe three miracles saved the matriarch of their family. Viola, the widow of a strict Pentecostal preacher, was saved by the first -- the nephew who shares her home arrived moments after her fall.

The second brought Ray to her bedside with his skill as a surgeon. And the third put her on her feet again.

"This was truly a horrendous case," Ray said. "I am not going to counter what they say."

Viola's emergency room account fits the descriptions of others who have experienced a close brush with death, Ray said. It is more powerful, he said, because Viola wasn't on any medications that could cause hallucinations or dull her senses.

In an operating room three days after the break, Ray braced her neck with rods. Today, Viola is home, receiving physical therapy three days a week and chafing to renew her active life.

"I would get up every day, had my house cleaned, my bed made, would go to work and come home and cook supper," Viola said. "I went full blast every day."

The day of her accident, Monday July 3rd, was a rare day at home for Viola Surface.

Viola was relaxing, watching television and waiting for her daughter to arrive to take her to the bank. She's usually at one of the two shops her daughters operate on North Sprigg Street selling knick-knacks and second-hand furniture, both of which were closed for the Independence Day holiday.

As she went to the kitchen for a fruit drink, her foot caught on the edge of a rug.

"Intead of stepping on the rug, my foot went under it," she said. "I heard something crack."

The "crack" was the snapping of a small bone that juts up from the second vertebra, the only thing holding her spinal column in line with the first vertebra. It had sheared off.

As she lay there, she prayed. "Lord, send someone."

A few minutes later, her nephew, David Johnson, who shares her Wiliam Street home, arrived. Calls went out, to her daughter Nancy McIntyre, owner of Peddlers Corner at 111 N. Sprigg Street, and her grandson, Darrell McIntyre. Darrell called 911 on the way and arrived before the paramedics.

"She was laying on the floor, begging me to move her," he said.

On the phone, Nancy McIntyre was telling him just the opposite. "Do NOT move her," she recalled saying.

Paramedics placed Viola on a backboard, secured her head so it wouldn't move and hurried her to Southeast Missouri Hospital.

As doctors, nurses and other emergency personnel worked, the family gathered. Viola is a mother of eight who raised six of her grandchildren as well. She is great-grandmother to a dozen more. She has passed her strong Christian faith to her children and grandchildren.

"We believe God used Dr. Ray, guided his hands and performed this miracle through Dr. Ray," Nancy McIntyre said.

After nine days at Southeast Missouri Hospital, Viola moved to the Lutheran Home to recuperate. On Aug. 21, she came home to her three parakeets, her Chihuahua Molly, her enormous white cat Snuggles and a goldfish named George.

And she came home to be with her angels.

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126