February 9, 2001

In the space of an instant, even the most routine moments can become matters of life and death. Thanks to the heroic actions of an MGH employee, what began as a terrifying situation two weeks ago turned into a happy ending.

At approximately 5 pm Jan. 25, the usually bustling Eat Street Café was quiet. Helen Doherty, RD, FMP, director of Nutrition and Food Services at the MGH, had just sat down to eat a late lunch when she noticed something wrong at a nearby table. "I saw a man bent over, and he was gagging," she remembers. "I asked if he was choking, and he couldn't speak." Doherty rushed to the phone to make a code call as a cashier, noticing the unfolding situation, called Security.

"Security and the nurses and doctors came very quickly," Doherty relates. But even before medical help arrived, another hero had stepped in. Cary Noyes, a Patient Transport employee, was already on the scene. As Doherty lifted the choking man from his seat and attempted to perform the Heimlich maneuver, Noyes, seeing that she was not strong enough to complete the procedure, assured her he could take over. Within seconds, he successfully performed the maneuver, ejecting a piece of meat lodged in the man's throat and saving his life. "Welcome back to America," Noyes told the man, an MGH outpatient. The man was examined at the Emergency Department before being discharged.

"He just appeared out of nowhere," Doherty says of Noyes, who recently received his five-year service pin from the MGH. "By the time the Code Team arrived, the situation was under control, thanks to Cary. At 5 pm, hardly anybody is in the Café. Thank God Cary was. He is a hero."

Noyes, however, modestly says that he did only what he had to do. "It was automatic. I saw what had to be done and I did it," he says.

"It was just an act of God that I happened to be coming off duty at the time." He credits the CPR and Heimlich training he has received, both in his former career with the U.S. Army and in the mandatory annual training program provided by the Patient Transport Department, for giving him the skills and confidence to intervene in a life-or-death situation.

Noyes insists that he is no different from anyone else at the MGH. "From the person who sweeps the floors to the physician who gives life to children, I think all the people who work here are heroes," he says. "We're all heroes, 365 days a year. This just happened to be my day."