Sirens couldn’t be far. They never missed a game at Branch Brook Park.
Four hospitals stand within two miles of its softball fields, bringing speeding, shrieking ambulances through the neighboring Newark streets as often as planes fly past Citi Field.
Sarah Taffet had played there for years. Her father, Paul, was familiar with the blaring intrusions. They did their job. They couldn’t be ignored.
On Oct. 3, 2021, Sarah returned to her youth field with her Fordham teammates to participate in an offseason fall tournament. First, the Rams faced Seton Hall. Then Villanova.
The sun was shining. The air was warm. The soundtrack was unusually serene.
“It just stuck out at me because of all the sirens I used to hear, I didn’t hear one that day,” Paul said. “I mentioned it, and said, ‘That’s odd.’
“The first one I hear is Sarah’s.”
In the second inning of the second game, Sarah hit a ground ball to first, and got knocked down by a hard, but clean, tag. She stood up and jogged back to the bench, when she began gasping for air and the world went black.
“She was twitching on the ground,” said Bridget Ward, Fordham’s assistant athletic trainer. “She was not breathing, and she turned a ghastly gray color.”
The sirens remained silent. An ambulance couldn’t arrive in time to help.
“I see my daughter lying on the ground, no heartbeat, I’m 10 feet from her, and I couldn’t do anything,” Paul said. “I hear somebody say, ‘I have no pulse,’ and the shock took over.”
Ward had other plans that Sunday.
She had tickets to attend the Jets game with two friends. She doesn’t usually accompany the softball team in the offseason, but a conversation with head coach Melissa Inouye that morning made them both uncomfortable with the absence of any athletic training staff at the games.
“I know this field in the middle of Jersey is not gonna have emergency equipment, and I’m like, I’m not gonna go [to the Jets game],” Ward said. “There were a lot of universities at the park that day, and I think I was the only one that traveled with my respective team.”
Inouye texted Ward, asking her to bring an automatic external defibrillator (AED), a portable device that analyzes the heartbeat and can deliver electric shocks to restore the heart’s regular rhythm.
It was packed in a red bag.
“I never ask that,” Inouye said. “I still have the text saved in my phone.”
When Ward arrived at the park, she asked the team to help carry her equipment to the field. Sarah reluctantly grabbed the red bag.
“I was complaining about this bag that I was carrying,” Sarah said. “I’d never seen this device before. I’m like, ‘Why do we have this bag here? What is this for?’”
Sarah was a senior. Ward had known her for three years. Following the tag, Sarah’s face told Ward something was wrong. The trainer was heading to the field to check on Sarah when Fordham’s second baseman collapsed near home plate.
“I thought maybe she hit her head,” Ward said. “Her eyes were open, but she was not responsive. I could not feel a pulse. She stopped breathing.
“Her parents are there watching everything. I just went right on autopilot and started doing what I knew and what I could do.”
Sarah’s mother, Maria, was being consoled behind the dugout. The coaching staff led distraught teammates to the outfield.
A pair of Fordham parents with medical backgrounds assisted Ward, rolling Sarah on her back and starting CPR. Chest compressions. Rescue breaths. Prayers.
“It was almost like ‘ER’ or ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ going on right in front of you,” Inouye said. “It was very traumatizing for some of the girls. Some of them were getting triggered by hearing an ambulance. They saw a very good friend of theirs, and they weren’t quite sure…”
Ward asked for the red bag. She placed the AED pads on Sarah’s chest.
“It said, ‘Shock advised,’ and I hit the button,’” Ward recalled. “That was the first time our AED has been used.”
Sarah’s heart began beating again. Her lungs filled with air. She awoke from her three-minute brush with death.
“I remember waking up and being really confused, like when you get out of breath from being underwater,” Sarah said. “I could see the facial expressions of everyone around me. Everyone was quivering and obviously really scared. I’m like, ‘What happened? Someone tell me what happened.’ The trainer who saved my life said, ‘Your heart stopped,’ and I’m like, ‘What? What do you mean?’”
Sirens sounded two minutes later. An ambulance transported Sarah to nearby University Hospital. From her bed, she texted her teammates:
“Sorry guys, I peed myself and got resuscitated, but I’m OK.”
Sarah was released from the hospital after two days of tests, which revealed no underlying reason for the 21-year-old’s near-tragedy. The diagnosis was commotio cordis — most famously suffered in January by the Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin — which is triggered by blunt impact to the chest at a precise moment in the heart’s rhythm. Sarah spent the next three weeks undergoing additional tests (genetic, stress, EKGs, echocardiogram), and no issues were discovered.
“I was ready to play again,” Sarah said. “I didn’t think it was that serious, but I’m very grateful that I’m not a doctor and I couldn’t clear myself.”
On Oct. 28, Sarah was accompanied by her coach to receive another opinion at the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She considered her latest appointment to be of such little consequence that she failed to inform her parents of it.
A coronary CT scan helped finally crack the case, revealing Sarah was born with a rare congenital heart defect — anomalous left coronary artery from the pulmonary artery (ALCAPA) — in which the heart doesn’t receive enough blood and oxygen. The condition is typically diagnosed during infancy. The mortality rate of ALCAPA hovers around 90 percent, if left untreated.
“The doctors told me I could’ve dropped dead at any time in my 21 years of living,” Sarah said. “The doctor compared it to a car with three wheels. It shouldn’t get the job done.”
“Who gets open-heart surgery and goes right back into their sport? That’s not what’s supposed to happen.“
Fordham trainer Bridget Ward on Sarah Taffet
Without a ground ball to first base and a tag to her chest, Sarah’s condition still might be a secret.
“She could’ve gone her entire life without ever knowing she had this or her heart could’ve stopped when she was walking down the street where no one knows CPR or has an AED,” Ward said. “We were lucky it happened in a situation where it did, because if she was alone in her apartment or out with friends, we have a different outcome.”
The doctors wouldn’t let Sarah leave the hospital. She was scheduled immediately for open-heart surgery.
“I’m like, ‘Sorry, can you repeat that?’” Sarah said. “I wasn’t processing the information.”
On Nov. 1, Sarah entered the operating room. Five hours later, her heart began working properly for the first time in her life. She remained in the hospital for a week, struggling to breathe or move because her sternum needed to be broken to perform the surgery. She spent the rest of her “terrible recovery” at home, taking online classes, while plotting her return to softball.
Slowly, she built up her strength and stamina, walking laps at a track near her New Jersey home, increasing the distance traveled each day. More rigorous exercise followed.
Three months after exiting the OR, Sarah returned to Fordham for practice. She would see live action less than two weeks later, ultimately missing just three games of the 2022 season.
“It was nerve-wracking, and we definitely monitored her quite a bit in the beginning,” Ward said. “It was really emotional watching her just be back out in her element. I figured she was probably done with softball. Who gets open-heart surgery and goes right back into their sport? That’s not what’s supposed to happen.
“We joke about it all the time, we’ve had ankle sprains that take longer to come back from.”
Sarah reclaimed her starting spot at second base. Last May, she graduated with a degree in business administration, as the Rams won the Atlantic 10 title — Sarah ripped a game-tying triple in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament — and advanced to the NCAA Regionals.
“I wasn’t nervous it was gonna happen again,” Sarah said. “I never saw it like that. I was grateful.”
Before returning for her final season — NCAA athletes impacted by COVID-19 were granted an extra year of eligibility — Sarah spoke with Ward about using her story to increase AED awareness. Ward became a certified instructor, and helped Sarah’s teammates become Fordham’s first team with every player certified in performing CPR and using AEDs. In February, Sarah and Ward attended an American Heart Association event at City Hall, meeting with several members of the local government.
Soon, Sarah will complete her master’s degree in media management. She hopes to land a job in sports. Preferably, baseball or softball.
For another few weeks, she can still enjoy the game from the infield.
“It definitely changed my perspective on the game and life in general,” Sarah said. “You can’t take it so seriously. It’s a game. Life is so precious. Just enjoy every minute.”