On the night of May 23rd—my mother’s birthday—I took Ana to a Yankees vs. Rockies game. It was supposed to be a simple, special evening. The Yankees were her favorite team, and we wanted to celebrate. Afterward, as we had done so many times before, we hopped on scooters to meet up with friends for dinner nearby. I rode slightly ahead of her, as I always did, keeping an eye out for anything in the road. I kept looking back to make sure she was okay.
Then, out of nowhere, everything changed. A motorcycle flew past me, doing a wheelie, and struck Ana head-on. I heard the impact before I saw it. The moment felt frozen and chaotic all at once. One second she was behind me smiling, the next she was on the ground entangled with the bike, her body broken.
Paramedics arrived quickly. Ana was rushed to Denver Health in critical condition. In the ambulance, her heart stopped. They performed CPR, breaking her ribs and sternum to bring her back. She had suffered a broken hip, a shattered femur, a herniated disc between C5 and C6, and ten facial fractures. The motorcyclist never stopped. To this day, he’s never been found.
But the worst blow came later. The doctors delivered the news with clinical detachment—words that cut deeper than anything I had ever heard. Ana had sustained a traumatic brain injury. A Grade 2 Diffuse Axonal Injury. They told us she may never walk again. That she may need a feeding tube. That an electric wheelchair might be her future. They didn’t know if she’d ever be able to use her arms again. I couldn’t absorb it. I refused to believe that this strong, beautiful woman—who just days earlier had been dancing in the kitchen and laughing with her whole body—could be reduced to a prognosis and a set of grim predictions.
Ana remained in a coma for two weeks. I never left her side. Her family and I set up camp at the hospital. We rotated sleeping in chairs, holding her hand, whispering to her, praying for her to come back to us. I stared at her motionless body for hours, willing her to wake up. The pain of watching someone you love suffer while you’re powerless to help is indescribable. But there was never a question of whether I’d stay. I made a promise—to her and to myself—that I wouldn’t leave. Not now. Not ever.
Today, as I write this, Ana is no longer in the ICU. She’s in a long-term care facility preparing for rehabilitation at Craig Hospital. Her original admission was set for August 11th—but Ana, in her quiet defiance of everything the doctors said, progressed so quickly that the date was moved up to July 29th. She’s begun to move her legs, her right arm, and—miraculously—has started speaking again, faintly at first, in soft whispers. But her voice, no matter how quiet, is unmistakably hers. She even musters the energy to complain when she’s uncomfortable—my Ana, my no-filter, fire-in-her-soul Ana.
This is just the beginning of the next fight. And we’re going to fight it together.
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