The Final Gift

He was dead, but his body didn’t know it yet.

“Brain dead”, one doctor said.

“No chance of any meaningful recovery”, said another.

He was 19. Legally an adult, but really he was a kid with hopes and dreams and the potential to change the world who made a bad decision to drive home after a night out.

There’s a certain wail, a banshee’s keen, that comes from deep within a mother’s soul when she’s told her child is dead. She begs for his life even if it means giving her own. This mother prayed for a miracle that would never come. His little brother begged him to come back, saying he was sorry for their fight, that he would do all the chores from now on. The grief was so palpable in that emergency room that not a single person left without a new, tragic imprint on their psyche.

His heart, the kid’s heart, stopped several times. It came back to life each time thanks to the nurses and aides and doctors and therapists. His brain continued to swell though, crushing every neuron that made him... him. He was dead, the tubes and medications flowing into him were just prolonging the inevitable.

“Organ donation”, a nurse mentioned.

The kid’s mother was asked the impossible question. Would she be interested in allowing her sons organs to be donated? In her eyes, her son still played as a young child, bringing her her macaroni necklace. His father taught him to drive in the same car he died in. The bullies in his brother’s mind were beat up over and over and over again.

Yes, they decided, even though it killed a part of them. His life meant something, and his death would too.

Another medical team arrived that would coordinate his medical care for his last few hours. They would collect blood samples, titrate medications, order various tests. They would take a picture of his heart rhythm and put it in a small bottle so his mom could wear his heart next to hers. They would take his finger prints and decorate a printed tree, to remind his brother that he would leave his print on the world, that he would live on through this last gift to the world.

His family stayed by his side as much as they could bear. The hospital chaplains brought by a cart with snacks and a handmade quilt that reminded his mother of the blanket he was brought home in 19 years ago. The nurses and aides and therapists preparing him and caring for him tried to comfort his family as much as they did each other even as they tried to hide their tears behind their COVID-era masks and smiling facades. Everyone was painfully aware that this boy’s body had hours left to live. The clock was counting down slowly, a lifetime counted in minutes. The clock counted down unbearably fast, a lifetime in minutes.

At four AM, he was wheeled to the operating room. He escorted by his family, by the hospital workers who had given parts of their soul caring for him, and with the stuffed bear he had sworn he hadn’t needed since he was all grown up at 11 years old, but had kept it next to his bed... just in case. Everyone in the hospital who had even just a few minutes to spare lined the halls to honor him in this final journey. Foo Fighters, his favorite band, played him to his forever sleep.

“There goes my hero, watch him as he goes. There goes my hero, he’s ordinary....”

Four families received phone calls that night that they had prayed both for and against. Four lives would mean someone else’s life. Their death. They knew the sacrifice that a family made that night, because they faced that same mortality. They had mothers that remembered making cookies after the Christmas tree was decorated. Dads who taught them to ride bikes. Siblings that worried that their last fight would be their last fight.

They waited, heart broken.

Guilty.

Elated.

Hopeful.

*****

I had the honor of being a part of the team that took care of this young man. I was with him when he came into the hospital, I was with him when we took him to the operating room at the very end. His family told me a few stories about him growing up, and I sat in my car after that final walk and cried like I’ve never cried for a patient after working for 16 years of healthcare. This was not my good deed to give or receive, but it is the single hardest, tragic good deed that one person can do. His story, his gift, deserves to be told.