Right fist placed on top of left palm means help.

It was that signal that helped 4-year-old Ruby rescue her mother one terrible February morning. Cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast in their Westhampton home, Kristin Comeau's throat suddenly began clamping up. She lay on the floor and nearly blacked out. Managing to grab the telephone, she dialed 911, but couldn't voice her condition or address.

So she made a fist and placed it upon her palm. "My mommy needs help," Ruby said, picking up the phone and speaking with the dispatcher.

"Where is Mommy?" Linda Tarpey Fabiano, of the Southampton Town Police Department, asked the child.

"Mommy is here," she said.

"I'm like, 'Oh, my God,'" Fabiano recalled. She asked Ruby for her address. Ruby responded with a street that was one word different than what appeared on Fabiano's screen, for unknown reasons.

"I have to put my faith in a 3-year-old," Fabiano remembered thinking.

An ambulance arrived at the address Ruby gave minutes later, giving Kristin Comeau oxygen and transporting her to Central Suffolk Hospital in Riverhead, where she recovered and was released the same day.

Comeau was told she had suffered a severe allergic reaction, but now believes it was post-nasal drip - a condition that can cause throat irritation and trouble swallowing. She has since learned to handle the condition by not panicking and believes she would have been fine.

Ask Ruby's mother about the incident nearly a year later and she will say she doesn't consider her giggly red-haired daughter's act a miracle in itself.

"A miracle, I think, is something that's beyond your control," she said. It was, rather, luck that she had taught her daughter sign language, a hobby of hers, and that her husband had Ruby memorize their address.

But that February day still holds an element of the miraculous for Comeau.

"It was more like a miracle that you could have a child that was able to do what she did," Comeau said. "The miracle is mostly in her."

By Christine Armario, NY Newsday
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/printedition/longisland/ny-likid264565704dec26,0,7313727.story?coll=ny-linews-print