SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- A critical-care nurse aboard an air ambulance
fought to keep from being sucked out of the cabin when a window blew out of
the aircraft at 20,000 feet.

"I guess it wasn't my day to die," said Chris Fogg, who lives near Boise,
Idaho, and was flying with a patient and the pilot last Wednesday from Twin
Falls, Idaho, to Seattle. "For anyone else, I think he would have been
sucked completely out, but for some reason I was spared, and I don't know
why."

Fogg's head and right arm were pulled outside the window, and he suffered
cuts to his head. Some equipment, charts, his eye glasses and packages went
flying out of the cabin.

The rapid decompression occurred when Fogg was unbuckled from his seat and
reaching for a water bottle.

Fogg, 41, is 6 feet tall and weighs 220 pounds. He said his size may have
helped him avoid being sucked out of the twin-engine turboprop plane.

"My left hand was on the ceiling and was holding me in, and my knees were up
against the wall," Fogg told The Seattle Times in a story published Monday.
He said he pushed as hard as he could and got enough air between his chest
and the window to break the suction and pull himself back inside the
aircraft.

"I have a vivid picture of looking at the tail of the plane and seeing my
headset dangling out of the plane," Fogg said.

He fell back into his seat, and grabbed one of the patient's pillows to stop
the blood pouring from his head. He said the pilot knew the cabin had
decompressed but was not aware of the broken window, so he put the airplane
into a dive to a safe altitude of 10,000 feet.

"I kept saying, 'Don't pass out, don't pass out, I have a patient on board
and I have to take care of the patient,"' he told the newspaper.

Fogg said the patient, who saw the whole thing, was not in danger because he
was on oxygen. The man was a Vietnam veteran and told Fogg he had flashbacks
of being shot out of the air.

The pilot made an emergency landing in Boise, and Fogg was rushed to the
hospital, where he needed 13 stitches in his head.

Fogg has worked for the Ada-Boi air ambulance service for 24 years, which
his father owns. The next day he was back at work.

"It was pretty scary, I'll tell you that," Fogg said.

updated 10:39 p.m. EDT, Mon July 2, 2007