When Methuen (Mass.) High hockey forward Brady Barron collided with an opponent, fell to the ice and had his wrist sliced by a skate, Janielle Martin didn't hesitate.
"As soon as he started to fall, I saw the wrist," Martin, 30, told WCVB-TV. "By then, I already had the door open and was already on the ice."
Her speedy action upon seeing "a couple of drops of blood" may have saved the 16-year-old's life, the responding emergency medical technicians assessed.
"We were talking about it and they said, 'You had two minutes to live, basically'" Barron told the newscast, "and when I first heard that, I was in shocked, and that was scary."
A former athletic trainer for the school who left to pursue her nursing degree, Martin was filling in -- as she's been known to do over the years -- for Methuen trainer Al Delano, who was working a nearby track meet at the same time, the Gloucester Times reported.
"I put pressure just above the laceration on his arteries and also up on his upper arm on a major artery called the brachial artery," said Martin, "and raised his arm above his head."
If the critical care nurse wasn't on hand when a Gloucester (Mass.) High player's skate "severed a dozen tendons, several nerves and an artery," according to the report, who knows what might have happened to Barron?
"I know what it means when you sever an artery," said Barron's father Scott, visibly shaken by the incident on camera, "and I know the worst that could happen."
The junior forward now wears a purple cast and hopes to return for his senior season. Before he plays hockey again -- or drums for his band Silent Stories -- his wrist must heal for two weeks before he can begin rehab that could take up to nine months until any feeling in his hand is restored, according to the Gloucester Times report.
"I've taken all the positives from it," said Barron. "I could be dead."
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