By Madasyn Czebiniak
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
PITTSBURGH — Connie Trovato was nine days past her due date when she went into labor about 7 p.m. Friday.
She called her doctor, who told her to sit tight because the beds at Magee Women’s Hospital of UPMC, where Trovato was supposed to deliver, were full.
So Trovato, 28, opted to wait out the pain in her Vandergrift home. The contractions weren’t too bad.
That is, until they were.
She screamed. She told her fiance, Brandon Harker, to call an ambulance and was soon on her way to Allegheny Valley Hospital in Harrison.
The next thing she knew, she was on the floor of the ambulance underneath three paramedics.
“I had no idea what had happened,” Trovato said.
Trovato pulled herself up and got back on the stretcher. She didn’t hit her stomach, but suffered a knock to the head.
She tried to look outside, but nothing was clear because of the rain. The paramedics were shaken. There was smoke everywhere. She heard something about an airbag deploying.
The ambulance doors opened, and there were police cars arriving.
“It was just so much stuff going on at once,” she said. “I didn’t know we were in a wreck.”
The Oklahoma Borough ambulance that was taking her to the hospital collided with a car in New Kensington. The crash sent four paramedics and the female driver of the car to area hospitals with minor injuries late Friday.
Harker, who had been following the ambulance in his car, saw the scene unfold.
The collision was reported at 11:40 p.m. at the intersection of Route 366 and Freeport Road.
Harker said he was stuck at a red light and couldn’t do anything until it changed.
“I was at a loss for words,” Harker said. “I didn’t really know what to think.”
After what felt like forever, the light turned green. Harker pulled into the nearby BP parking lot and ran to the ambulance.
His fiancee was OK.
“I got in the ambulance and I was talking to her, and she said she was fine,” he said.
Another ambulance took Trovato to Allegheny General Hospital on Pittsburgh’s North Side. She was admitted as a trauma patient and said what happened next was “overwhelming.”
“I had one person putting a neck brace on me, and I had another person getting me ready to scan my head for X-rays,” she said. “Next thing I know, I’m in there and they had my legs up and I was ready to push.”
Her son, Colt Harker, was born at 12:58 a.m. Saturday. He was eight pounds, seven ounces and 21½ inches long.
“He came out perfect,” Trovato said.
Mom and baby were transferred to West Penn Hospital in Bloomfield.
Trovato said the crash felt like something out of a movie, as though it wasn’t real.
Harker said some of his fiancee’s friends thought it was an April Fool’s joke.
“It was very much real,” Harker said. “I’ll have a hell of a story to tell (Colt) whenever he gets older.”
Copyright 2017 The Pittsburgh Tribune
All Rights Reserved