Kelly Cardona knows the day he realized how important his wife, Veronica, and two children are to him. It was May 24, 2017, when he was assaulted by three men, shot in the back and robbed. Kelly’s assailants were after his money and phone, which he would willingly have given in exchange for his life.
On June 16, 2017, Cristobal Cornejo was relaxing after a day at work when he walked outside his apartment to smoke a cigarette. Without warning, he was shot from both sides. Even with six gunshot wounds, he made it inside to ask his son to call 911.
Marion Forbes says you have to forgive to be forgiven, and he’s forgiven the man who shot him twice in his left arm and back. The shots punctured his lung and fractured his ribs. Unresponsive when he arrived at Ben Taub Hospital, he was rushed into surgery where doctors removed part of his lung. He was sedated and on a ventilator in the intensive care unit for almost a month.
Catastrophic accidents can occur in a blink of an eye. That’s what happened to Danny Lewis on October 3, 2017, when he was helping operate a steel manufacturing machine. His hand got caught, and the machine had to be reversed to free it. By that time, the bones in his forearm were crushed, and his hand was attached only by soft tissue.
Priscilla Martinez and her friend, Alyssa, were driving home in May 2017 when a driver ran a red light and hit them at a high speed. Priscilla remembers it like a movie, “Everything was so fast and so slow. We were tumbling around, and the car was flipping. We landed on the driver’s side, with my arm trapped outside the car. It felt white hot, then nothing. The car flipped again, and I army-crawled out.
Early in February 2018, Avery Nash was surprised to become embroiled in an argument with a life-long neighbor. He was even more shocked when the neighbor shot him. Four houses away, Avery’s wife, Irene, heard the shot and called 911.
Years from now, when Francisco Ramirez thinks about Hurricane Harvey, he’ll remember more than deep water. He’ll remember a surgeon with a deep commitment to saving lives.