Room 2302--Blessing

It was a Friday night, October 17, 2014 the night of Etiwanda’s Homecoming Game. I remember every detail. I remember seeing him at the bottom of the bleachers laughing and making faces at me. I remember walking past him and squeezing his shoulder to let him know I was there. I wish I had taken a moment to fully capture his face because it would be the last time I’d ever see it that way. 

Exhausted from my band performance, I went home and I immediately went to sleep. I went to bed not knowing that in a couple hours, my life was going to change forever.

While I was asleep, my mother had woken me up and said, “Jordan got in a car accident. Everything is going to be fine. Just go back to bed.” I was so tired that I thought this was a dream. I wish it had been.

As soon as I woke up the next morning, I realized everything my mother said was real. We went to the hospital and I asked to see him, but my aunt wouldn’t let me. In fact, no one would. I remember being so upset and wondering why they weren’t allowing me to see my own cousin, but when I ignored everyone and entered into room 2302, I understood why. The next thing I remember was my vision going blurry and my body going completely numb as I collapsed into my mother’s arms. Seeing him lie there, unconscious, limp, covered in blood and surrounded by tubes will never escape my memory. His face and body were completely swollen. He was unrecognizable. I told myself there was no way that was my cousin. There was no way that my best friend was in a hospital’s ICU and was in a coma. That’s not him. It can’t be.

But it was. And it felt like being punched in the stomach over and over and over again. I remember forgetting how to breathe as I sobbed uncontrollably, tears rolling down my face.

The next couple of days were the hardest days of my life. I only left the hospital at night to go home and sleep, but first thing in the morning, I would wake up and go back to him. I never wanted to leave his side. I remember singing to him and telling him about my day. I remember falling asleep while holding his hand.  I remember waiting every single day for him to wake up so I could see his smile and hear his laugh and feel his tight hugs. I remember everyone’s smiles when the doctors told us he was improving. 

Then they told us he wasn’t. They told us his brain activity was at one percent. They told us he didn’t have a gag reflex. They told us his kidneys and his liver weren’t functioning the way they should. They told us all the things that were going wrong with him, all the things we didn’t want to hear. They told us he wasn’t going to make it. They told us we only had so much time left with him. They told us they could no longer keep him on life support and the only thing keeping him alive was the oxygen they were pumping into him. They told us they would slowly decrease the amount of oxygen they were giving him. Then they told us they would give us time to say our goodbyes. Goodbyes? Why were we saying goodbye if he was just showing signs of improvement? Why was everything in his body failing?  

My entire family filled up the room that Sunday on October 26, 2014. I had never seen so much pain in the eyes of the most important people in my life. I will never forget the regret and agony in my cousin’s eyes as he held on to his little brother’s lifeless body or the look on my aunt and uncle’s faces as they said goodbye to their youngest son of 16 years old. I gave him a kiss on the cheek only to feel that it had grown cold. He was gone. Just like that, I lost my best friend in room 2302.