Joel told me a lot during the four days he was visiting Alex in the ICU.
Alex was the love of his life. Alex hadn't seen his parents, now traveling in from the Midwest, in 11 years. Joel (all names have been changed) had been sober since he and Alex moved in together. But that, like everything else, ended on July 4, the day of Alex's accident.
Joel was histrionic and brittle. He was also raging drunk. As Alex's parents' arrival neared, he stepped up the rhetoric about the couple he had never met. Alex's dad was homophobic, probably closeted. Alex's mom would be reasonable, but she lived in fear of her husband.
Joel told me that he would go to Lambda Legal Defense if they tried to keep him out of Alex's life.
I told Joel that if he came to the hospital smelling like vodka again, I wasn't going to let him in the door.
During the worst days of the HIV epidemic, I had to "out" a lot of young men to their parents in ICU waiting rooms. It was a common story: Boy leaves home, goes to the big city, falls in lust, falls in love, makes a new life, gets a cough, gets sick and then dies on a ventilator in the ICU.
I'd really hoped those days were over, I thought, as I walked up the four flights to meet Alex's parents. Under the best of circumstances, this was going to be a devastating meeting.
When Alex dived into the shallow lake water and hit his head, he snapped the second and third vertebrae of his neck and crushed his frontal lobes. He was paralyzed from the neck down and in a coma.
With medics minutes away, no holiday traffic, and a friend who knew CPR, Alex was in our emergency department with a pulse before his hair was even dry. In any other city, he never would have survived -- though surviving as a C2 quadriplegic with massive brain injury is barely surviving.
I could have picked them out even if they hadn't been alone in the waiting room. He: bald head, dark suit, flag pin, tasseled loafers; she: blond hair, pink dress, gold cross, sensible shoes. I presented the details of the case. Alex would be paralyzed and on a ventilator and would likely have severe brain damage if he pulled through. His prognosis was dismal.
She said nothing. He asked good questions. I could tell which way they were leaning.
At this point, when they've come to a decision, families often start to reminisce. We'll share a laugh about a childhood nickname or a Thanksgiving cooking debacle.
