The View from Down Here…

As if there were not enough things on a young teenagers mind, the idea of the first day of high school alone would drive many students insane. There was no more playing around because to an eager 14-year-old, high school is considered the big leagues and I finally made it to the show. As I became engulfed in the sea of students outside the office, I felt so small compared to the upper classmen and wanted so badly to fit in. My name is Gabe Trujillo and I was your typical freshman in high school and couldn’t wait to get my year started. I nervously stood in the parking lot with cautious optimism and stared at the huge double doors in front of me.

I knew nothing would ever be the same.

High school is nothing like anyone has ever seen before; the girls were prettier and the jocks were meaner. “This is gonna be fun,” I whispered to myself – famous last words from an unsuspecting 14-year-old. The first few weeks were tough, but no where close to what would happen next.

September 12, 1997 began as any other day. I the past few days fighting a cold, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The doctors told us that everything was fine and I would get over it soon. But everything is about to change.

I was upset because I was barely a month into high school and I was already going to miss school; little did I know that I was going to be missing a lot more than school. As the night wore on, my health started to get progressively worse; with each breath, my lungs began to shrivel more and more. I was feeling as if a bowling ball pressed heavily on my chest as I struggled for any air possible. The tightness in my chest did not bother me too badly because I was all too familiar with this harsh reality. For the past few years, I had been admitted to the hospital for pneumonia and released several days later. Night slowly began turning into early morning and I knew something was wrong.

I was no longer able to breathe comfortably on my own so I decided to wake my parents. Slowly, I limped out of bed and walked towards my parent’s bedroom. “Dad,” I murmured, “I need to go to the hospital.” My dad jumped up and raced me out the door, telling my mom that everything would be fine. The street lights lit the lonely and desolate street as we raced towards the hospital. We entered the front doors of the hospital and I was rushed to the emergency room on a gurney and slowly began to deteriorate with each passing minute. Even all the inhalers and breathing treatments could not regain the survivable amount of oxygen into my lungs. The doctors had no other choice but to airlift me to the local children’s hospital.

My sense of location was failing and I soon found myself outside waiting for the Med-Evac chopper. The nurses loaded me to the back of the helicopter with the oxygen around my face and soon I found myself flying through the air. The city seemed so peaceful as the lights down below mixed with the rising sun on the horizon. I quietly thought to myself, “Was I dead? Because only angels can see this much of a beautiful scene.” My questions were quickly answered when I found myself being rushed to the Intensive Care Unit clinging on to life. My parents were waiting in the ICU before I was even there to be treated. The last thing I remember was pointing to my lungs and watching “Space Jam” on the TV as I slowly drifted into a coma…