Noah White said the time he spent waiting for emergency personnel to arrive were “the longest three minutes of my life."

“I was just thinking, ‘Why me?’ and ‘Please don’t die,’” he said.

Trish White said she had taken the couple's daughters, 14-year-old Grace and 10-year-old Emma, to their dance class Tuesday night when she received the call from her son about her husband's heart attack.

“Once the first responders arrived, they took over, and he called me,” she said, “and all I really got out of the conversation was, ‘Dad collapsed, I called 911.’ All I really said was, ‘I’m on my way.’”

Trish White came home to find multiple first responders on the scene, a few of whom were using an AED to shock her husband.

“It took 30 to 35 minutes for them to get a rhythm for transport,” Trish White said. “Once they had that rhythm for transport, they put him in the ambulance, and I walked outside to get my son. I have a lot of friends who are first responders, and one of them had heard the call, so she arrived and said, ‘I will take Noah, we will get the girls, we’ll get you to Yale.’”

While Trish White went to Yale New Haven Hospital, Noah White said a family friend took him to pick up his sisters and brought them home to be with their uncles while they waited to hear from their mother.

Trish White said she was in the hospital’s waiting room “for some time” before she was told her husband was being transferred to the cath lab, the hospital’s advanced cardiac catheterization laboratories.

“He was in the cath lab for several hours, and when they came out and allowed us to go in, the doctors said, ‘We didn’t’ find anything in the cath, we have no idea why this happened, but he’s on a ventilator and medically sedated, and it’s one moment at a time,’” she said.

Trish White said the magnitude of her son’s actions didn’t “really hit my brain” until after her husband’s doctor asked about the timeline of events around Jon White’s heart attack.

“He said, ‘He’s only alive because of your son. Your son gave him the fighting chance, so that the first responders and us at the ER could do our job,’” Trish White said. “You start to think about what if Noah hadn’t been standing right there. ... If he hadn’t done it, we were told it would have been catastrophic.”

Trish White said her husband will need to have an MRI and a defibrillator installed before he leaves the hospital, though they don’t yet know when he will be discharged. While he is up and walking around, she said they’re uncertain about the level of cardiac rehabilitation and physical therapy he might need.

Noah White said he has tried to keep his normal school and football schedule, and his biggest support system has been his friends, including those on the Sea Cadets, and the Hand football team. He said he’s also spoken to adults in the field who reached out to talk about his experience, and his family all have shared how proud they are of him.

“Knowing that I made the call and started CPR made me scared,” he said. “I felt like I didn’t trust myself. However, after speaking with family friends, I was told that I did everything right and gave him the best chance at life. It’s still hard to process that everyone thinks I am a hero. I am just glad I knew what to do in an emergency situation, even though it was completely terrifying.”

Noah White said he saw his father for the first time since the heart attack this past Sunday after his father’s ventilator was removed.

“Our conversation was filled with some laughs, and then he said, ‘I’m so proud of you, you saved my life,’” Noah White said.

The teen said he encourages all his peers to get certified in CPR and first aid.

“It will be one of the most difficult situations in your life,” he said. “You have to keep a positive attitude, pray and remember that the training will automatically kick in during a crisis.”