The last thing Amber Escudero-Kontostathis remembers is sheltering from a storm under a tree in front of the White House in Washington DC with a cute older couple and a young man she had just met.
She woke up in a hospital room.
He looked around and noticed that he had a catheter in his arm;
she felt as if "10,000 grains of sand" wanted to enter each of the skin pores on the left side of her body, she explained.
At the hospital they told him that he had spent several days unconscious after surviving a lightning strike.
She then remembered that she had not been alone under the tree during a deluge that August 4, the day of her 28th birthday. She took an iPad that was next to her bed in the hospital and Googled: “Lightning in DC”
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Escudero read the headlines and shuddered, "At least three dead...".
A couple died when lightning struck them in front of the White House
Aug. 5, 202200:39
"I just remember reading the article and thinking something like, 'It can't be. But then I saw the photos of the older couple,'" she said in an interview with The Washington Post. Donna Mueller, 75;
her husband, James Mueller, 76;
and Brooks A. Lambertson, a 29-year-old bank employee, were killed by lightning that day.
Escudero was the only survivor.
And she wonders why.
That afternoon he had been collecting donations to help refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
So he met the Muellers and they immediately hit it off.
They discussed Wisconsin, where the older couple lived, and the Green Bay Packers, the football team.
He barely remembers his last conscious minutes under the tree, but he is distressed by the idea that he could have caused the death of the couple.
"My biggest fear is that I called them back," she explains, "I wouldn't be able to live with me if that was the case. It's my biggest fear, which was because I wanted to say hello to them one last time before they left."
That night he planned to have dinner at a restaurant in the capital to celebrate his birthday.
It was only 15 minutes before her husband picked her up when the lightning struck all four of them.
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After the lightning strike, two nurses who were in the area outside of their shift ran to help them.
A Secret Service officer who was there also intervened.
His quick efforts helped save the girl's life.
It is not clear why Escudero survived and the others did not.
She believes one of the reasons may have to do with the fact that she was wearing sandals with thick rubber soles, which may have helped absorb some of the electricity.
Lightning strikes claim more than 20 lives in the United States each year and injure hundreds of others, according to the National Weather Service.
In California a woman and her dogs recently died while walking after being struck by lightning.
Escudero and her husband finally celebrated their birthday dinner at the Hamilton restaurant on Monday.
They invited the two nurses who helped her that day.
"Now, we are best friends," the survivor told the aforementioned media.
"I have the guilt of 'why did I survive,'" she explains, "I try to calm myself with the gratitude of, 'Well, I survived, so I'm not going to waste it.'"
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