During the summer of 1991, 7-year-old Bryan Lindsay (left) was riding his bike on the street in Brooklyn when he was hit by a van and almost killed. Rowan Allen (right) was the paramedic who arrived on the scene that day.

Immediately after the accident, Rowan and his colleagues would check on Bryan regularly, but as he got better, years went by and they had no contact until one day when Rowan recognized Bryan’s mother, a nurse, while bringing a patient into the hospital.

At StoryCorps, Bryan, 29, and Rowan, 51, remember the accident and the bond that formed out of it.

Originally aired July 26, 2013, on NPR’s Morning Edition.