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Sharing the Heart of a Stranger |
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by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings |
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When we least expect it, a chance encounter with a stranger can touch and unite our hearts.
The Saturday before Mother’s Day began as an ordinary day for me. That afternoon, returning home from buying some flowers for the occasion, I stopped on Route 40 to fill my gas tank at Carroll Fuel.
As I drove into the filling station, I was startled to see a young man lying on the pavement, struggling to get up. Again and again, he would try to rise – but each time, he would fall back.
In horror, I realized that blood was gushing from his chest with each attempt. The blood seemed to be going everywhere.
As I jumped from my car, I could hear four or five women screaming into their cell phones for an ambulance. I ran to the young man and knelt by his side to see if I could help him.
I knew that we had to find a way to slow his bleeding. As gently as I could, I helped him turn over on his back and held his head in my arm.
I told him to remain calm – and assured him that I would wait with him until an ambulance arrived.
We were strangers, but the young man seemed to recognize that I was trying to help. Yet, despite my pleas, he continued his struggle to rise.
After a few moments, I realized that he might not understand what I was trying to say to him . . . .
I fumbled in my pocket, found my cell phone, and dialed a friend who speaks Spanish.
“How do you say ‘Stay down!’” I pleaded into the phone. “How do you say, ‘It’s going to be alright?’”
The young man kept gasping for air, a struggle for life that was so intense, it took my own breath away, and the minutes that followed seemed like hours.
We may have begun as strangers, but we were trapped together in the slow motion of a terrifying dream.
Although there were still other people nearby, it seemed as if the young man and I were the only two people in the world.
Life cried out to life, there on that concrete and asphalt driveway, trying desperately to be understood.
I kept trying to comfort the young stranger and slow his bleeding. Over and over, I repeated the calming Spanish words that I had just learned, cradling his head in my arms and praying for him.
It seemed as if his life was slipping away, and I felt a profound sense of sadness. When he heard me say the word, “Jesus,” he squeezed my hand.
Finally, a Baltimore County police officer appeared, kneeling beside us. Together, she and I were able to remove the young man’s shirt, exposing his chest and his terrible knife wounds.
An emergency medical team soon followed to take him to a hospital.
As the medical technicians carried him away, I looked into his eyes for the last time; and I saw a sense of kinship – and fear.
When the ambulance was gone, I knew that this young man and I had shared a moment that was very, very deep and personal – and I realized that I did not even know his name . . . .
Later, from the news reports, I learned that this brave young man, named Carlos Santay-Carillo, had not survived. I also learned that his wife, Claudia, had been in labor, preparing to give birth to their son, even as Carlos lay dying.
He had come to the gas station that afternoon to buy fuel so that he could drive his wife to the hospital. Fate had carried me to the same place just moments after Carlos was attacked.
On Mother’s Day Weekend 2008, a father died in a Baltimore hospital, far from his native Guatemala. At almost the same moment as his death, his son (also named Carlos) was born healthy and sound in another hospital nearby.
In those moments, a new life – eyes not yet opened to the promise and pain that is our America – became our countryman. I may never come to know him, but at least I will know his name.
It is far more important, though, that the new son of Carlos and Claudia should someday read these words and know that his father struggled to return to them with his dying breath.
This new American should know that, until the end, his father fought to affirm life – and that strangers rose above differences in nationality and race to join in his father’s final challenge.
Those terrifying last moments in Carlos Santay-Carillo’s life will live with me to the end of my days. I keep replaying the terror and blood – and the determination and love – in my mind.
Yet, now, I can hope that the pain in my own heart will ease with time.
Carlos and I may have begun as strangers, brought together by fate, but when our moment was done, we shared a bond deeply tied into our humanity.
Now, I know why this young father-to-be was so determined to disregard his mortal wounds and return to his beloved Claudia and their child. Now, I can understand why I was unable to keep him still.
I can understand because I, too, am a father – and the son of parents who also once traveled to Baltimore from far away in order to build a better life.
Because I understand, I plan to make a contribution to the Santay-Sales Survivors Fund that friends and co-workers have established to help Carlos’ widow and child. Anyone else moved to do so can do the same at any Bank of America branch (Account Number: 446008012447 – Routing Number: 052001633).
To share the heart of a dying stranger is a terrible thing to bear – but it can open our own hearts to life.
- The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives. |
