What Happened Next

A Word on Kindness (or lack thereof)

Throughout these past 23 years since my car accident, I’ve written a lot about how it happened. How I had to have four surgeries, how I had to miss school, how I felt different and lonely, and how eventually after two decades I finally accepted my scar.

I came to the realization of how my entire life I’ve been trying to hold everyone around me together, even when I was literally strapped to a stretcher with an IV line running through my veins. I was comforting my aunt in the ambulance ride, trying to minimize her guilt, while I was still in shock from the accident she caused.

I even told my story to an audience in Topeka as part of an art project called, Truth in Comedy.

With other performers at Truth in Comedy at the Jayhawk Theater.

But very few people know about what happened next. And I don’t mean the surgeries, because clearly I’ve written about that before, but I mean what literally happened next.

After the ambulance took me to the hospital, the kind paramedics delivered me straight into an ER room. I already knew that I was missing a few layers of my skin on my forehead, but even through the shock of that, I was trying to remain calm and focus on what was going on at the moment.

The paramedics left me on the stretcher and placed me on the bed in the ER room. In other words, I was on a stretcher on top of a bed. It seemed unnecessary. I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a stretcher, but it’s not very comfortable. On top of the trauma and pain from accident, my entire body hurt because of how uncomfortable I was. It had been over 20 minutes now and I was still laying like that.

The nurse wasn’t very nice. My head was still immobilized, so I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I asked him kindly (like my family had taught me) to please remove the stretcher straps and help me get on the bed.

He sneered. “You should have worn your seat belt.”

I have never publicly shared my skin graft. Here it is. Two months after my accident. Two surgeries down and two more to go.

There’s a time and place to teach someone a lesson, but moments after being involved in a traumatic event is not it. I didn’t know how to respond, so I just stayed quiet. Did I hear him right? He ignored me and continued rummaging through items in the room.

Minutes later, my grandma and other family members came into the room, asking about how I was doing.

“I don’t speak Spanish!” the nurse yelled and kicked them out of the room. “They need to leave. One at a time! Go back! Go back!”

He then went to make some comments to himself about Cubans, not very good comments from what I remember. I was left alone with his constant demeaning comments for what seemed an eternity.

If this would have happened to me today, I would have said something to him, to the CEO of the hospital and to whomever else, but I was 16, still in shock from an accident and still relatively new to this country. That assertion and self-assurance that a lot of people born here have is something that I lacked.

My family was eventually allowed to come back in and in pain I would translate to them anything the nurse said, which wasn’t much. The nurse did bandage my wounds, however, he still managed to do something terribly unkind.

About six months after my car accident. Miami, circa 2002.

The next day, when my would-be surgeon removed the bandages, we both realized that the nurse had applied the gauze directly to my skin. Usually, when there’s an open wound of this magnitude, a non-stick dressing is the way to do it. I didn’t know that, of course. I trusted that this medical professional was taking care of me.

When Dr. Wolffe removed my bandage, my skin (or what was left) was stuck to it and the pain was almost blinding. Blood started pouring down my face and into my clean clothes. I relived the shock of the accident again.

“Who did this?”! He asked in anger. “What monster did this? They should know better.”

“I don’t know his name,” I said.

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Whenever I told this story over the years, many people said we could have sued that nurse and that hospital. I don’t know. Maybe? And here’s the thing, as immigrants, we didn’t even know that was an option. We were helpless, trying to understand and navigate this system. In fact, I was the patient and had to translate every conversation to my aunt, my legal guardian. My mom and dad were still in Cuba at this point. My dad still is in Havana.

I don’t know why that nurse was so unkind. Even if he had experienced some trauma due to a car accident earlier in his life, or if he had lost a friend because they didn’t wear a seatbelt, it did not give him the right to treat me and my family this way. I was literally still shaking from shock and still bleeding when I entered that room.

I don’t know what leads some people to behave this way, to see someone in pain and instead of helping that person, they seem to revel in causing more injury.

I sincerely hope that this nurse found peace. Clearly, his snarky and xenophobic comments came from a place of anger. There were some deeply rooted issues that he clearly hadn’t worked out. I hope that if he ever finds himself in a similar situation (and I hope he doesn’t) that he would be treated with kindness. And more than that, I truly hope that no one else experiences this kind of treatment in the middle of a traumatic event.

The first thing I always notice is my scar, especially because part of my eyebrow is missing. However, this is me and I’m happy with who I am.

Thanks so much for reading. Will you please share this post? I’m so close to reaching my goal of 100! I included a button for you, below.

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