'This is what miracles look like': 2-year-old reunites with rescuers

On April 2, 2-year-old Delora Gragg was rushed to the hospital after being ran over by a 10,000-pound track loader.

At the Burke County Commissioners meeting on July 20, little Delora chattered, giggled, and smiled in a dress covered in butterflies as her parents corralled her to the front of the room during a Recognition of Life Savers ceremony, the scars from that day prominent and pink, but healing.

Lined up behind Delora and her parents, Clayton Gragg and Bridgett Langston, stood the team of first responders that saved her life, with some wiping tears as the 2-year-old sheepishly made her way to the center.

James Robinson, director of emergency medical services, explained that Macayla Brady and Robert Ledbetter were off duty and at a funeral for Brady’s mother, which happened to be across the street from the construction zone where the accident occurred.

They were among the first to respond, and among the first to be named at Monday’s meeting.

“That particular day, we had two very young providers, very new in their careers, and this is one of those calls that I’ve seen end careers because you never know how they’re gonna turn out,” Robinson said.

Once everyone had lined up, Robinson invited Delora and her parents to come to the front, saying, “This is what miracles look like when they walk in the room. … So often we don’t get to see what the outcome is, and it makes you wonder.”

After the ceremony, the family congregated in the lobby with the collection of first responders, allowing them to say hello to Delora and see how the family was faring.

THAT DAY

Although West End Fire Department Chief Randall Brackett wasn’t on the scene until the latter part of the incident, his team was, and he remembered everyone’s solemnity after returning to the station.

“Every one of them, you could look in their face and see the horror in their face, the sadness,” Brackett recollected.

The chief explained that Delora’s father had been operating the track loader while she played up the hill under someone else’s supervision. Once she slipped away from the woman watching her, she took off down the hill, with the woman hot on her heels.

Unfortunately, she ran behind the track loader just as her father was backing up, getting caught underneath.

“He knocked her down with the dozer and actually ran over her head,” Brackett said. “Her head was buried in the dirt. It was a horrible, horrible, horrible injury. To look at her now, you can’t even imagine what it was like.”

“When our people got there, she was crying for her daddy,” Brackett continued. “To imagine and to think that she was still conscious and alert and aware is just beyond belief.”

THE PARENTS

“Honestly, we were worried for her life until her first surgery,” Gragg said, explaining that the machinery had smashed her entire right side. “She never had (seizures or infections afterward). It was wild. It flipped the doctor out, too. He said, ‘She’s your Easter miracle.’”

Gragg said that due to Delora’s young age, the doctors didn’t have to place any metal plates inside her skull, as the materials wouldn’t grow with her as she ages.

Instead, they used bioabsorbable screws — plastic implants that dissolve as the bone heals — to secure the skull, erasing the need for a follow-up removal surgery.

After doctors at UNC Health Blue Ridge in Morganton stabilized her, Delora was transferred to Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, where she remained in the pediatric intensive care unit from April 2 to April 22. From April 22 to May 13, she was in rehab.

“She advanced faster than they could believe,” Gragg said. “That’s what they kept telling us. ‘She’s doing so well,’ all the doctors were telling us.”

Delora excitedly whipped her head around to a smattering of applause in the room for another recognition. She smiled and cooed.

“The only thing I could do was lean on prayer,” Langston said. “I (knew) there was nothing else I could do.”