After Tragedy, Teen’s Focus Is Brotherly Love

They left the hospital together Wednesday, a little boy with Down syndrome who lost his arm in a car crash, and the teenage brother who has promised to take care of him from now on.

Juan Reyes, 18, has been at his brother’s hospital bedside for three months, ever since a September car accident took the life of their mother and so severely injured 10-year-old Elfego Reyes that his left arm had to be amputated.

The news that his brother could finally go home Wednesday overwhelmed Reyes, who said the uneasiness he felt about returning to their barren Placentia apartment was compounded by the pending holiday, which his mother would celebrate with decorations and homemade tamales.

“Everybody keeps saying ‘Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas,’ ” Reyes said of the doctors and nurses who filed into Elfego’s room at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center Wednesday to say goodbye. “How can people say that to us? I haven’t had time to even think about Christmas.”

He is also worried that Elfego might not fully understand that their mother is gone. She had dedicated her life to caring for him.

“It’s going to be so different,” Reyes said, tying his brother’s sneakers as they prepared to leave the hospital. “I don’t know how he’s going to react. I don’t know how I’m going to, either. I’m worried about that. We really are alone now.”

Since the accident, Reyes has been thrust into an adult world, burying his mother, securing public assistance, paying household bills and supervising his brother’s care. A high school senior, Reyes put his education on hold to deal with the crisis.

He has shied away from much of the public attention he and Elfego have received. But not because he hasn’t been grateful.

“We don’t need more stuff, really,” Reyes said. “We just need to get started on our new life.”

Reyes continued to avoid the well-wishers Wednesday. He declined to wait any longer for a group of strangers who wanted to give the boys a new computer for Christmas, choosing instead to call a cab and head home.

As it was, it took two nurses and the taxi driver to load all of the gifts the boys have received in donations over the past few months.

“I don’t know where we’re going to put all this stuff,” Reyes said.

Before he knew when Elfego’s homecoming would be, Reyes rearranged the furniture in their apartment and threw out the couches. Home has always been synonymous with their mother, and Reyes was concerned that familiar surroundings would cause his brother to start asking for her.

“She was very close to him,” Reyes said of Micaela Reyes, 51, a single mother who was taking Elfego to church Sept. 20 when the car they were riding in went out of control and hit the wall of the family’s apartment complex. “He’s going to be sad, you know? It’s going to be hard. She took care of everything.”

Now Reyes is in charge, toting a zippered daily planner everywhere he goes and keeping it stuffed with bills and insurance statements and scores of upcoming doctor’s appointments. He has a personal list that he also carries with him, one that not only reminds him of the endless tasks before him, but of the strides he’s already made.

“Things to do,” the first list reads. “Get Elfego back in school. Clean house. Buy groceries. Get a car. Find a job.”

Below that is another list, this time under the heading, “Things I have done.”

“Buried mom,” he wrote. “Paid rent three times. . . . Stayed with Elfego every night.”

Reyes tried to review both lists again Wednesday while waiting for his brother’s discharge papers to arrive, but he was distracted by the boy who insisted on playing with his pizza lunch and removing his shoes each time Reyes finished putting them on.

Setting the list aside, Reyes paused to hold a stuffed animal to his little brother’s face and smiled proudly when Elfego’s eyes opened wide at the attention.

“Wow!” the younger boy exclaimed. “Whee!”

Finally, after signing the release forms and reviewing Elfego’s home-care procedures with his nurse, Reyes collected the boy’s clothes and packages and the CD player he brought from home, then took one last look around the room they had shared for so long.

For three months, Reyes slept on the floor by his brother’s bed, comforting him when nightmares haunted him in the middle of the night, and willing him to recover.

“You want to go home?” he asked Elfego, who bounced up and down in his wheelchair and blew kisses to the nurses.

“Go home, go home,” Elfego said. “Home and home.”

“Here we go then,” Reyes replied. “Just you and me.”