One Blanket At A Time By Soline Gauthier
A
little boy is in a hospitable bed, surrounded by attentive surgeons and nurses. Anxious parents, beeping and flashing medical instruments. Colas Gauthier is 11 years old, small for his age, his face is bruised and deformed. He comes in and out of consciousness, breathing loud, and sometimes speaking few whispered words. “I’m sorry mom...I’m sorry.” Relapsing into a feverish sleep he continues to mumble “mommy help me..I’m falling..help me.”
This is the predicament my brother found himself in 14 years ago, fighting for his life in the Intensive Care Unit at the Lucile Packard Hospital in Stanford. Colas cannot remember how he ended up in the hospital; he can scarcely even remember the accident. His parents, however, pieced together what happened to him, based on the fleeting flashes of his memory. Colas fell 12 feet from the first story of his school into the staircase, landing on the concrete floor below.
He suffered from bleeding in the brain for several days, one shoulder fracture, and seven face and skull fractures. His right orbital cavity was completely destroyed, his right eye was sinking into his skull, and bone fragments were floating around his brain. Throughout his ordeal he was surrounded by a team of surgeons with different specialties, an army of nurses, and his family. Without realizing that Colas was listening in, the troop of doctors would stand di-