After a brief stint of sobriety, Gabriel Gutiérrez had gone on a bender, mixed his downers with more downers and ended up passing out. Who knows when or where that had happened; whoever had dropped him off at the Emergency Department hadn’t bothered to stick around to give a story. Ricky understood why his father had stopped breathing—heroin tended to do that—but he seemed perplexed by how that had led to his kidneys not working, or his lungs getting so trashed that they couldn’t wean him off the ventilator.
I had my suspicions. My mind whirled with a differential as he spoke, trying to piece him together medically. Middle-aged man, past medical history only significant for prediabetes outside of polysubstance abuse, found down, I thought. The kidneys are probably from rhabdo. The lungs . . . aspiration. Everything else—
We reached the hospital room, and Ricky’s hand hovered over the handle. Then he winced, remembering something.
“It’s a party in there,” he said, suddenly shy. “There’re a lot of people.”
I had noticed a particularly large group of Latinos in the family meeting room earlier today. I smirked.
“So much for the ‘smallest Mexican family in Chicago,’” I said, trying not to read too far into the small smile he gave me. Then, before he could stall any longer, I reached around him and slid the door open.
Gabriel Gutiérrez’s hospital room was as lively as a hospital room could get. Ricky’s family had clearly maxed out the limit of visitors allowed in the room at once; aside from the patient, there were four other occupants. A middle-aged man clapped Ricky on the shoulder as we entered. Reggaeton played over the hospital TV on low volume, and the windowsill was crowded with disposable foil pans and unlit veladoras.
A woman sat on the sofa near the foot of the hospital bed. A bundle of bright, multicolored yarn was gathered in her lap, and a metallic blue crochet needle flashed between her nimble fingers even as she held court for her visitors. At our entrance, she hefted her project off her lap and onto the seat next to her, making to stand. Then she looked up, and we both froze.
“Abuela,” Ricky started, walking ahead of me. “This is Angie—”
“Um,” I said. “We’ve met.” I gave the Woman from the Elevator a shy smile and held out my hand. “Nice to officially meet you, Mrs. Gutiérrez.”
Ricky’s abuela scoffed at my hand and tugged me down into a hug, pulling me so close that I could feel her heart beating alongside mine. I swallowed against a lump in my throat, overcome with an emotion I couldn’t name.
“My friend,” Mrs. Gutiérrez said. She pulled back, only to clasp my face between her two hands. “Ricardo, this is the girl I told you about. Mi angelita.” Her eyes flitted from my face to her grandson’s, her brows knitting with confusion. “How do you know each other?”
“We’re friends,” I said hastily, glancing back at Ricky in panic. “I heard about what happened, and I’m here to help.”
Mrs. Gutiérrez’s eyes welled with tears, and she pulled me back into her embrace again. Then she took me around the room, introducing me to the other visitors. The short elderly couple were the Barreras, Gabriel’s godparents. The reedy forty-something-year-old man was Juan, Mr. Gutiérrez’s successor for his eventual retirement and Ricky’s de facto big brother. Mr. Gutiérrez would be stopping by after work, Ricky’s grandmother informed me. I would have to meet him too.
I smiled and nodded and shook everyone’s hand, overwhelmed by Mrs. Gutiérrez’s instant, complete acceptance. When I was done making the rounds, I stepped over to the patient. Ricky’s dad. He was flipped onto his stomach, his face pressed into a beige, plastic pillow at the end of the bed. His back lifted subtly with every mechanical, ventilator-driven breath. Even swollen and distorted like this, I could see the striking resemblance between this man and his son. I shuddered.
“They’re going to round again soon, Abuela,” Ricky said, leaning against the counter. “Do you mind if Angie listens in?”
“Please,” Mrs. Gutiérrez said. She reached down, clasped my hands, and I saw her grandson in her face again. It was the eyes, I realized, not the shape or the size or even the color, but the way they creased beseechingly, the way I could take one look at them and know that they were kind.
“Of course,” I said. And so I did.
*
Over the next three days, I developed a brand-new routine. I put recruiting participants for my study on temporary hold* and made myself the unofficial liaison for the Gutiérrez family. I came into the hospital two hours early to catch morning ICU rounds before absconding to the floors to pre-round on my own patients, then returned to Gabriel’s room at the end of the day to check in. Dr. Milner, amused by the feisty little medical student who drilled his team every morning during rounds, took a liking to me, and occasionally whisked me around the ICU to teach me about ventilator settings and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, the lung condition Gabriel had acquired. Afterward, I regurgitated what I learned to Abuela （which Mrs. Gutiérrez insisted I call her, much to my chagrin） in as digestible terms as possible. I called interpreters for major updates and showed Ricky and Juan how to dial for one themselves when Abuela had impromptu questions. True to my word, I snuck them juice and soda from the nutrition rooms.