by Tom Brauner
The gunmetal green Audi A4 was going 97 miles per hour when it slammed into the Honda Odyssey turning left onto the Pacific Coast Highway; Julia, the young woman driving the minivan, was pried out of the wreckage and helicoptered to University Hospital, while the 17-year-old driving the Audi, Syed, walked away unblemished, but with emotional scars that would haunt him for a lifetime.
When Tomás, the resident who performed the craniotomy, met with Julia’s husband Noah to describe the operation, Noah vomited convulsively onto Tomás’s surgical booties. The couple had two toddlers, and the staff tending to the ventilated Julia became increasingly agitated as they watched her husband visit the hospital each day and then imagined him going home to be with his distraught children. As for himself, Tomás dreamt about Julia nightly, engaging her in vivid technicolor conversations about her life.
Soon Tomás began to sit bedside with the comatose Julia each day after his rotation ended, the ventilator wheezing up and down, and the feeding tubes keeping her alive. Sometimes he just sat quietly; at others, he spoke about what had happened to her. He did not know what she took from this. It was as if through his dreams he knew her.
After weeks without any brain activity, Tomás met with an overwhelmed Noah to discuss whether to remove life support. “What do you think Julia would want?” Tomás asked.
Barely above a whisper Noah finally said, “She would have only wanted to be fully alive for her babies. This is not a life for her.”
The following day the family gathered to say their goodbyes and shortly after the respirator was turned off, Julia took her final shallow breaths and died. Outside the window, the sun refracted off the water in the courtyard fountain, dazzling and dancing as if nothing had changed. But inside that room, things had changed, for Tomás and for everyone Julia had touched, and even for Syed, who was not there.
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