Forget your Valentine's Day romantic novel list. This true love story is definitely one that will make your heart melt.
For 10 days, 21-year-old Howard Field drifted in and out of consciousness in the intensive care unit at McKay Dee Hospital in Ogden, Utah. It was 1972, and the injury to his leg was so serious that multiple surgeries would be needed to repair the damage.
He didn’t know it at the time, but the fact that he’d made it through the first surgery had been deemed miraculous. Field received more than 20 units of blood, and after working on him from midnight until morning, the surgeons were forced to sew him up early because it was doubtful his body could endure more trauma.
The accident had happened a few days before, on the morning after a rainstorm in Lyman, Wyoming. Although Field had been home from his two-year LDS mission for only a few months, he had managed to land a job operating a front-end loader. Because he grew up on a ranch and was comfortable around large equipment, it seemed the perfect way to earn money. And Field needed money to finance taking girls out on dates; something he hadn’t yet gotten around to doing.
That May day, as Field drove his loader onto the highway, he realized something was wrong; the steering mechanism wasn’t reacting properly. Field thought he could muscle the vehicle safely down the road, but gravity took over and the steering unit totally failed. He realized too late that his attempts were fruitless.
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