Dubai: It was around 5pm on a Friday evening when Prashant Shekhar got the call. He remembers it vividly, because it was news no parent wants to hear.

His five-year-old son, Kian had been pulled unconscious from the community swimming pool.

"My nanny called me and there was so much commotion in the background that I couldn't understand what had happened," Shekhar told Emirates 24|7.

"All I knew was that something terrible had happened, and I rushed straight to the hospital."

As he arrived at the hospital, he discovered that his son had been revived by someone at the pool and was now under observation at the hospital.

“I slowly started piecing the details together of what had happened at the pool. Our children’s nanny told me that there was a man at the pool who pulled Kian out and gave him CPR until he started coughing out the water,” Shekhar said.

“He didn’t hesitate. He jumped in, pulled my son out, and when he found no heartbeat, he performed CPR until my son breathed again. The doctors told me afterwards that a few moments longer could have meant the unthinkable or lasting brain damage from the lack of oxygen,” he said.

While Shekhar did not know who this man was, he was soon about to meet him. Because later that night, Michael Collings and his wife arrived at the hospital to check on the boy and his parents.

Shekhar and the children’s nanny were the only ones watching on Kian at the hospital, with Shekhar's wife out of the country for work.

Collings walked up to Shekhar and asked, “Are you Kian’s father?”

Shekhar said yes.

What followed was, in Collings’ words, “the biggest, longest hug”.

Prashant Shekhar with his son, Kian.
Photo credit: Supplied — Prashant Shekhar with his son, Kian. Photo credit: Supplied

Just a regular Friday

British expat Collings, who works in the real estate industry, had received CPR training in 2015, when he had to work as a personal trainer. More than a decade later, the 43-year-old used that training for the first time, and by all accounts, saved a young life.

Ironically, he had almost not gone to the pool that afternoon.

His four-year-old son, Laith, had begged to practise swimming in the larger pool after making good progress with his lessons.

“My wife had told him he could only go to the big pool unless Baba came with him,” Collings recalled.

“He got quite upset that he wouldn’t get to really practise his swimming and with his teary face he persuaded me, so yeah, we went to the pool,” Collings said.

The pool that day was busy, Collings says, so he stood about three metres away, watching Laith swim towards him and back.

About 15 minutes in, he heard a young girl say to someone next to him, “there’s a kid on the bottom of the floor”.

“I just turned around trying to understand what she was saying. I could see something in the deep end of the floor underwater, so I put my head under and realised it was a boy floating just inches above the floor,” Collings said.

Everything that happened after that was instinct. Collings jumped in, swam to the boy, held him with his right hand, while swimming with his left.

Even as he was swimming towards the steps of the pool, he had the boy pressed up against him, giving him chest compressions with his right hand.

Once the boy was out of the pool and on the ground, Collings checked for a heartbeat.

None.

“He was lifeless. His eyes were open, his lips were blue,” Collings said.

He immediately started administering CPR – chest compressions and then mouth-to-mouth. After about 30 seconds, he felt a heartbeat. He continued patting the boy’s back and administering CPR after which Kian finally started breathing, although erratically. After he coughed up some water, Collings moved him up to the sunbed, where Kian finally coughed up more water and immediately began to cry. That's when Collings finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ve never felt that good hearing a child cry,” he said.

The hug that said everything

While Collings was administering CPR, people around him spun into action and called the ambulance, which arrived in 10 minutes.

As soon as the paramedics put him on a stretcher and took him to the ambulance, Collings said he felt overwhelmed.

“As a father, that’s the scariest thing that can happen. I took my son to the baby pool, looked him straight in the eye and said ‘this is why you should not go to the big pool without Baba’. He had been with me throughout this episode, so he quietly nodded. I told my nanny to strictly keep them in the baby pool and then walked home,” he said.

He needed some time alone. At the pool, everyone was congratulating him and thanking him for saving the boy's life. But for Collings, the experience was overwhelming. So, the moment he entered his house, Collings finally let the emotions take over.

“I just broke down, it was all too much. Even when I was giving him CPR, I was constantly telling him, ‘Please mate, this is not your time’, because I am a father too. I am already dealing with stuff. I lost my mother three years ago and for me to be working on a little boy … I don’t think I could have gone through that if something had happened to him,” Collings recalls.

And so, a few hours later, when he finally met Shekhar at the hospital, all he could do was give him a hug.

Two fathers, feeling overwhelmed, because they understood what it means to find your child in a life-threatening situation.

Unsung heroes

For Shekhar, the incident is still one that leaves him feeling choked. Not just because his son could have been seriously hurt, but also because of the unsung heroes who flung into action, without a second thought.

“My wife and I saw the CCTV footage later and we could see just how quickly Michael reacted. He didn’t think about it for even a second. Even after he pulled Kian out of the water, he didn’t think twice before administering CPR. A lot of people sometimes hesitate because they are not sure if they can help, or if they would get into trouble if something happened to the child, but I think he was just thinking as a father, and did what a father would do,” Shekhar said.

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The ‘Good Samaritan Law’

According to Suneer Kumar, partner at Al Suwaidi and company LLC, the UAE’s laws protect those who, in good faith, provide assistance to others in emergency situations.

Article 55 of Federal Law by Decree No. (31) of 2021, or the UAE Penal Code, states: “There shall be no crime in any act performed in good faith but causing damage to another person upon providing assistance or relief thereto in cases which require urgent interference in order to save his life, avoid any damage to his body or limit such damage."

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This week, on Father’s Day, June 21, Collings decided to pay the boy a visit, as he later found out that his son, Laith, and Kian were friends.

“They’ve been sharing video messages all through this time, with Laith wishing him a speedy recovery and Kian giving him updates on his health. I still remember when Shekhar sent me the first video of Kian recovering and smiling the day after the incident. I hadn't slept that night because I had the initial image stuck in my head, of when I pulled him out of the pool. Those videos kind of deleted that for me, so I have good images in my head now,” Collings said.

“It was the scariest experience of my life but I can safely say that it is now, perhaps, the most rewarding experience of my life,” he said.

The girl no one knows

But the hero of the story, for Collings, is the little girl who initially alerted people around her about a boy who hadn’t come back out of the water. The girl he has been trying to desperately find, to thank her for what she did.

“We’ve tried everything – I’ve asked around, posted on our community's Facebook and Whatsapp groups, our nanny has asked around as well. I don’t know where she’s from, but she had a long plaited pony tail. Nobody knows who this girl was. Some people have told me, perhaps she was a guardian angel, and I said, ‘No, we could see her in the CCTV camera, I don’t think the camera captures guardian angels’,” he said with laugh.

“She’s very real, and for me that’s the girl who needs recognition. Because that’s how I remember the story. This little girl alerting people around her, that’s what helped save the boy. People have a different version of this story, but that’s my story. I want to find the girl who helped us save this boy,” he said.

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