Tamboli knows the time is running out. Finally, he found a clot.

The cardiologist carefully passes the catheter through the blocked artery. Included is the suction device Tamboli plans to use to aspirate the clot.

He then plans to insert and inflate a tiny balloon to open the artery, and then insert a mesh metal tube called a stent to keep the artery open and blood flowing.

Then Sosa’s heart stopped.

A dozen medical staff rushed to the laboratory. It’s a “code blue” – Sosa needs to recover.

A critical care physician directs responders. They intubated Sosa to keep him breathing, hooked a tube to a ventilator and inserted it down his throat. They injected him with drugs to increase his cardiac output. With a defibrillator, they shocked his heart.

Three paramedics took turns performing CPR.

Amid this “organized chaos,” Turnberry was still trying to open Sosa’s blocked artery. X-ray images showed his heart had stopped beating.

“He was going to die on me, really on me,” Tamboli recalled.

Under ideal conditions, guiding a catheter wire through an artery toward the heart is a tricky process that requires a series of fine, tiny movements and adjustments.

Tamboli attempted to execute it on a body that was vibrated by a defibrillator and pounded with chest compressions.

“It’s like trying to fix an engine while it’s running,” he said.

Tamboli told those doing CPR he needed them to pause for 10-second intervals. Four times, CPR was stopped.

Knowing that he didn’t have much time left to get a rough idea of ??where the clot was, Tamboli asked the nurse for the longest stent. He then installed a 1¼-inch long mesh tube in Sosa’s right coronary artery.

With the stent in place, doctors were able to restart Sosa’s heart. In about a minute, he was clinically dead.

Sosa was alive, but barely.

His blood pressure was “in the toilet” and no one in the room believed he would survive.

“The intensive care doctor told me, ‘You know, I think he’s gone. Maybe we should go and talk to his wife,'” Turnberry said.

Tamboli knew it made medical sense to stop. But something inside told him to keep going. He knew that Sosa was relatively young and in good health except for the high blood pressure.

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As a last resort, he decided to install a tiny heart pump called Impella inside Sosa. The device does most of the work of the heart, delivering healthy blood to the organ. He hopes this will relieve the stress on Sosa’s heart muscles and allow them to recover.

The device is inserted through the same femoral artery. But even with the pump, Sosa’s heartbeat is still weak.

There is nothing the doctor can do. They put Sosa in the intensive care unit and put him in a medically induced coma. Give him an IV drip of a drug called a cardiotonic, which makes the heart squeeze even more.

His body temperature was lowered to around 36 degrees to give his brain the best chance of surviving intact.

“I told his wife and family to try and ask God for help because we did our best,” the doctor said.

When Turnberry returned to the hospital the next day, Sosa was not feeling better.

Three days later, doctors began thawing Sosa, slowly warming his body. Tamboli keeps calling for updates.

On the fourth day, the nurse’s report gave Turnberry hope. Sosa’s medication has been reduced, and he’s less reliant on a ventilator.

When Tamboli made his rounds, he inspected Sosa himself. An echocardiogram showed a stronger heartbeat. Sosa opened his eyes occasionally. Standing next to their comatose patients, doctors and nurses hugged and cried. They didn’t know Sosa, but they knew how hard the medical team had gone to save him. They knew how close he was to death.

On September 28, five days after his heart attack, Sosa’s doctors removed the heart pump.

It took another two days for Sosa to regain consciousness.

He awoke to find his arms and legs bound to the hospital bed to prevent movements that could disconnect the IV drip and sensors monitoring his vital signs.

There are black marks on his arms. His whole body felt beaten.

He thought it had been a day since the ER nurse cut his shirt. A nurse explained that he had been in a coma for a week.

He was sitting up when Tamboli entered his room. The doctor was stunned.

“He was so surprised,” Sosa said. “Like you see a dead man.”

Tamboli can’t say for sure that Sosa’s COVID-19 infection caused the blood clot and heart attack.

Often, blood clots appear next to plaques, a telltale sign of a high cholesterol problem, doctors say. It is unusual to see a clot in an artery without plaque.

Sosa had never had a heart problem before. Never smoke. never drink.

In Tamboli’s experience, those infected with the virus appear to have a higher tendency to clot. He said many of his patients who were discharged from the hospital ended up taking blood thinners.

Tamboli can’t explain why Sosa survived. In his 35 years of treating heart patients, no patient has come so close to being dead and alive. In this case, he believed that a higher power would intervene, be it fate, providence, or God.

“That’s the law of the universe,” he said. “There’s something higher than us. There’s a bandleader in front.”

Sosa, who turned 59 in January, said he felt in good health but tired more easily.

He takes 12 pills a day, which include blood thinners. Every three months, he has to see a cardiologist.

In the five months following his heart attack, he experienced many of the same emotions as others who have experienced near-death experiences—such as relief, gratitude, closeness to God and new-found joy.

He hopes his experience will remind others not to ignore symptoms that could herald heart disease.

Sosa is still exercising, but lightly. He still works as a handyman around the house, but no longer works into the night.

He spends more time with his wife, children and three grandchildren, walking on the beach and enjoying life.

“I know how vulnerable we are,” he said.