A brother gone

DURING a trip to Los Angeles in November 2002, Salvadoran merchant Wilson Calderon arrived at King/Drew’s emergency room with symptoms of jaundice. A CT scan of the hard-drinking 42-year-old found cirrhosis of the liver and what looked like a mass, according to medical and coroner’s records.

Two weeks later, doctors performed a biopsy. Afterward, Calderon’s blood pressure plunged, suggesting that he was bleeding internally. Physicians began giving him transfusions. Three days later, he was dead.

A coroner’s investigation found that Calderon had bled to death. The biopsy needle had punctured his inferior vena cava, a major vessel, and surgeons did not repair it, according to the findings.

More than a gallon of blood had pooled in Calderon’s abdominal cavity. The death was ruled accidental.

Calderon’s brother, Jaime, a Lancaster restaurant owner, is angry at what happened. He believes that King/Drew staff members failed to make their best effort in his brother’s case.

But he decided against suing, saying something didn’t sit right about taking the hospital to court.

“They are still trying to save people,” he said, flipping through his brother’s wallet -- with Wilson’s resident card and photos of his children’s grade-school graduation. “Even though they stink.”

Jaime says he still sends a few hundred dollars to his brother’s wife in El Salvador each month to help support Wilson’s two children. He wishes he could do more.

Sometimes, Jaime says, he dreams that he and his brother are boys again in El Salvador. Sitting on a brick wall, his older brother says, “Let’s play.”