The unluckiest time for your aneurysm to burst...

[whitewriter]

Story goes:

30 yr old male, migrant from India, was having his 30th birthday at The Star on a Saturday night with mates. They hired hookers (is that the correct term?) and he was cutting up paracetamol and snorting it -- pretending it was cocaine, and all sorts of shenanigans. Alcohol. Etc. Anyways, So he was supposedly with one of the hookers (allegedly I suppose) when he all of a sudden vomited and doubly incontinent.

What did his mates do?

The hookers tucked him into bed and ran away of course.

6am the Sunday morning, they couldn't wake him up.

His aneurysm burst- Grade 2 or 3 - and he was now in neuro ICU for our standard care.

ED notes read like wildfire as the guilty boys spilled their guts to the nurses and docs down there. The file became locked because there were concerns staff not directly involved in his care were going in to have a good read.

Word on the street was he had a wife and a kid back in regional Australia. He was here on her student visa as a partner.

We didn't know if she knew about the hookers - or the paracetamol - or how much of it actually.

I wasn't going to be the first one to tell her.

She came to visit, and I remember seeing her in one of the quiet rooms (the rooms we take people in to have terrible conversations about their family member's treatment and etc) and I saw the boys bringing her take out to eat.

Apparently he was under a fair number of stress being on her visa. Working 3 jobs to make ends meet - in a restaurant/food delivery driver/uber etc.

Over the next few weeks, his friends would ask us odd questions that seemed related to the night it all happened, and his current condition. I felt they were rather sticky questions like
"could drugs have caused what happened to him?"
"Did you guys test for any drugs in his system when he came in?"

.. that sort of thing.

our answers went:"well that's confidential information I'm sorry..."

Here's the kicker, the aneurysm and bleed was right on the speech center of his brain so the neurosurgeons were saying he would never speak again. They said he'd be alright but he'd be hemiplegic on the left (so likely not to walk, considering wouldn't be able to use his left arm or left leg) but also unable to speak.

About 8 months later, he came back because his cranioplasty needed to be completed -- and he was awake, he could sorta communicate with gestures. Apparently he didn't remember what happened on that fateful night (and I also wasn't going to ask about the hookers). He looked happy chappy enough. I wondered how they were affording all his care considering she was on a student visa and Australia isn't cheap if your not on medicare.


Where is he now I wonder. Is he still married? - does his wife know the full story?