A REMARKABLE JOURNEY HOME
‘In the blink of an eye, life has a way of changing’ A life-altering injury and a child have changed a young couple’s lives — and instilled in them a new sense of hope for the future
Bella Gonzalez, her fiance and their newborn daughter have spent the weekend settling in at home after being discharged from Santa Clara Valley Medical Center’s labor and delivery ward. But the couple is adjusting to far more than the sleepless nights most new parents encounter: a wheelchair, a big move and rotating caretakers.
Adrion Garcia didn’t greet Gonzalez and the baby in the lobby as they were discharged. Instead, the solar technician was released on the same day from the San Jose hospital’s spinal cord rehabilitation center three months after a bad fall upended his life.
After Garcia’s long hospitalization, the couple’s first child is giving them new goals and new hope.
“It was difficult to comprehend what was going on,” Garcia said of the hours and days after his injury. But now, “I just feel like life makes sense when I look down at my daughter.”
Over the past several months, he and Gonzalez have made a remarkable journey back. On the morning of Feb. 16, the 29-yearold was on a second-story roof, grateful for a job that allowed him to spend time outdoors, not cloistered away in a cubicle. Then suddenly he was falling, bouncing off a balcony before landing on concrete, both his body and the future he’d envisioned shattered.
“I remember waking up with my head gushing blood,” Garcia said.
He was rushed to Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria, near his Central Coast home, and later airlifted to Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara before being transferred to Valley Medical’s highly regarded spinal cord rehabilitation center.
“His injury was pretty severe,”
said James Crew, chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the hospital.
Garcia suffered a spinal cord tear that left him mostly paralyzed below the neck, with some sensation around his shoulders. He can move his arms a little but has lost most of the function in his hands. Without major scientific advances, he will likely rely on a wheelchair to get around for the rest of his life. But he’s hopeful things might improve someday.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow,” the avid football fan said. “I’m keeping the faith.”
Gonzalez, 27, was six and a half months pregnant and riding in the car with a friend when she got the call that he had tumbled two stories. Demanding the driver’s seat, she raced to his side.
“There were a lot of tears,” she said. “I was just wondering if he was going to be OK.”
The couple met nearly four years ago at the Arroyo Grande Strawberry Festival
through a mutual acquaintance. He was drawn to her compassionate nature, she to his strength and determination. They spent weekends kayaking in Morro Bay and shopping. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, they adjusted like everyone else around them to social
distancing and mask-wearing. With Gonzalez working in urgent care, they had a couple of COVID-19 scares, but otherwise, life was pretty good. They were looking forward to welcoming their first child.
In the days after the fall, “I was just praying to God
to give me more time to watch my daughter grow up,” said Garcia, whose arms are tattooed with verses of Scripture.
On Tuesday, he motored his wheelchair from the rehabilitation wing across the hall to labor and delivery, watching through a window as Gonzalez delivered 9-pound, 1-ounce Averi Rose, born with a shock of dark hair, by cesarean section.
“It was a beautiful moment,” he said, adding that he already had a surprise lined up for Gonzalez’s first Mother’s Day today.
When he first came to Valley Medical, Garcia spent hours sitting in the dark in his sunglasses, recalled Crew. But when Gonzalez arrived and when the pair learned she would be able to give birth at Valley Medical, “I saw a different Adrion,” the doctor said. Once Averi Rose arrived, the doctor “could never find the guy” because he was constantly heading down the hall to be with Gonzalez and his daughter.
“My motivation is to be able to hold my daughter for more than a few minutes,” Garcia said of the physical therapy that now consumes much of his time, acknowledging that he still has moments when it all seems like too much.
For now, the couple will settle into their new townhome in Santa Maria near family and friends. There will be more therapy and workers’ compensation issues to resolve. But the couple is holding onto the fact that there will also be new adventures and new memories to create as a family — even if they don’t look exactly as they once assumed they would.
They’ve watched YouTube videos of other people with spinal cord injuries talk about living vibrant, successful lives. She’d like to study cosmetology. He’d like to move to Northern California. After all, he said, he’s obligated to be a San Jose Sharks fan now that the city is his daughter’s birthplace.
“In the blink of an eye, life has a way of changing,” Garcia mused.
Sitting in his wheelchair on his last full day in the hospital as the afternoon sun streamed through a window in the building that has been home for months, Garcia watched his fiancee — his “rock” — as she cradled their sleepy daughter, cozy in a soft pink blanket.
“There’s a possibility,” Gonzalez said, gazing back, “of us being happy still.”