By Jim Belshaw
Of the Journal
My memories of David Patterson always begin in a hospital hallway. He stands with his back to the wall, his hands cupped under a handrail that ran the wall's length.
The hallway was quiet enough to hear the almost whispered conversation, and quiet enough to hear the handrail's metal anchors screech in protest as David slowly pulled the handrail from its moorings.
When I saw him Thursday morning at another hospital, the handrails remained intact, but other similarities hadn't changed. Sadness, for one. A wish for miracles, another.
In 1996 at University of New Mexico Hospital, I stood in a hallway with David and his father, Bob, as a doctor gave them information on David's younger brother, Bryan, 29.
Bryan had been in a coma for almost a week, nearly beaten to death in a Downtown alley by a mob described as "skinheads."
They just happened to be walking down the alley where Bryan and others had parked their cars. No one knows any other reason for the attack.
Wrong time, wrong place, and lives pitch into the abyss.
Something went awry at APD after the attack and no investigation had begun. So Bob and David began one on their own, and it went on for almost a week until APD became aware of the situation.
That evening, the news about Bryan was terrible— a "shearing" of the brain, permanent brain damage at the very least, survivability still in question.
David was a big and strong young man, his eyes fierce with rage and sorrow, listening, taking it all in.
As the doctor spoke and Bryan's condition became clear, David tightened his grip on the handrail and pulled up. By the time the doctor left, the handrail drooped at one end, hanging clear of the wall. If the doctor noticed, he gave no sign.
David picked up a wall anchor from the floor, handed it to me and shrugged. Then we went back to the ICU, where his brother lay in a coma.
His father and I hit it off for whatever myriad reasons make two people enjoy each other's company. Bob and his wife, Sharon, let me into their lives so I might write about their struggle.
The first column was in 1996, the last in 2003, when Bob took note of another young man beaten into a coma in another Albuquerque alley.
"We're still in it," he said. "We live it every day. It's never over. Rehabilitation lasts a lifetime ... It's behind us and we're all trying to go forward, but quite frankly, there are times, if I dwell on it, it breaks my heart."
Bryan came out of the coma after 53 days, a "miracle" by some lights, but a miracle with flaws. The brain damage was permanent. He survived, but the life he knew was gone.
Over the course of those years, the readers of this space grew to know the Pattersons, who taught us lessons about strength and faith in the face of devastation.
Now the family looks for another miracle to bring life to a damaged brain.
David sent an e-mail on Wednesday, the subject line: "Twice is not as nice."
His father, Bob— Army airborne, retired from Game & Fish, a connoisseur of fast food coffee in Santa Fe— had been diagnosed with an ascending aortic dissection.
A helicopter flew him from Santa Fe to Heart Hospital in Albuquerque. There was a lack of oxygen to the brain, and now he is in a hospital bed, his brain dying and the family faced with a terrible decision.
"I don't really know why I am writing to you," David said. "Part of me is hoping for another miracle ..."
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