How could I deem a story as inspirational if I deprive it of connection? By the same token, what purpose does any story, great or otherwise, serve wintered in my mind? I’ve chronicled pieces of my heart for school, correspondence with an incarcerated pen pal (a moving story in its own right, but not mine to tell), and social media. By way of these connections, I’ve distinguished that my peers are especially responsive to my dating stories. Something about illustrating a sex-scapade, against the oak barrels of a distillery, during a tour, in broad daylight, really gets them going. That story is mine to tell by the way, and I will… eventually. But I refuse to narrate a bootleg Carrie Bradshaw joint, because I’m far more than the men I’ve acquainted. Although, there is one man that changed my life forever.
When the doctors gave us the diagnosis of quadriplegia, it was my first time hearing the word. I was ignorant, and deducted that things couldn’t be that bad, based on his car accident a few months prior. That previous collision left his otherwise handsome face in a Picasso of disarray. At the mere sight of him, I cried. Patches of bruising throughout, like the picked-over fruit of our mother’s kitchen. Glass, splitting the skin of his nostril, leaving it flimsy like a torn sheet of paper. The severe impact of the windshield lacerating his scalp and requiring stitches; I imagined it bled an alarming amount. He must have been so scared. Well, that face healed quicker than the amount of time it took me to compose its description. So when I saw his serene face floating in a cloud of hospital linens on this evening, not a scratch in sight, why would I think otherwise? He would be okay. He was always okay.
The hospital staff could not afford the time to explain to me, a perpetual optimist, the definite circumstance of his condition. They had other priorities, his capacity to breathe on his own was steadily declining. Our family was seated in a cold and callous conference room. The lab coats petitioned compliance in shoving a breathing tube down his throat. I don’t remember how many people spoke to us, I don’t remember their faces, but I do remember my mother’s face. I don’t have children of my own, so I wouldn’t be able to explicitly describe every parent’s nightmare for you. If I had to, the explication could be found somewhere in the panic suffocating the light that used to live in my mother’s eyes. How in such confusion, pain, and desperation, she could not find her voice.
“What do we do?” She implores to me. Who am I? I’m not a med student or his Dad. Has anyone called my Dad? But I am inquisitive. And quick.
“How long will the tube be in?” I ask the lab coats.
“We don’t know. It could be weeks, months, or it could be the only thing that keeps him alive, indefinitely.” If what they claimed his future held to be true, not walking, no running… now they wanted to confiscate his voice as well.
“We’ll give you a moment.” The lab coats offered.
“We decline.” And I look at my mother, she nods hastily in agreement. The lab coats look at each other. If I didn’t believe in God before, I was about to see God’s work then. Why else would I decline an instrument intended to give my brother life? Why would I be given the steering wheel? Why would my mother agree?
“Okay. Since you’ve declined. We can offer an alternative of breathing exercises. These could possibly provide natural healing of the lungs….” The coats went on. Why hadn’t they presented both options to begin with? My relationship with medicine shifted.
In the days that followed, my family (not the lab coats or scrubs), worked with him to heal his lungs. We joked, as our wimpy smoker’s lungs, struggled to keep up with his rehabilitated lungs. The med students interrupt our sliver of normalcy.
“Through exercises the patient was able to…” No thanks to you guys, I rolled my eyes. My brother isn’t some experiment. He’s a life. A person. He is Gino.
“Why is your nose still hella fuckin crooked Steph?” Gino clowns on me from his cloud of hospital pillows and sheets, as the med students make their way over to the next room. Ah. So glad we didn’t shove that tube down his throat.
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Despite the breathing tube victory, and the tiny triumphs and even more defeats that ensued for two years, Gino Victor Gutierrez took his last breath on the 20th of December, 2013. He was only 21 years old. That isn’t the ending I ever wanted to tell. I wanted to narrate the comeback story. How my family whisked him off to Costa Rica, he got crazy stem cell surgery, and we all lived happily ever after.
With Gino’s story ending so painfully and prematurely; I often contemplate when my own will expire. Respectfully, I want to dedicate this humble narrative, to my brother, and others like him. Who’s time was cut far too short. May their loss, and our remaining days, not play out in vain.
Stay Gold
