Alexis is 21 years old and was born in Esperanza, Santa Fe. Before turning twenty, he had already fallen from a third floor while working as a bricklayer: he crushed an elbow, lost several teeth, and a wooden plank split his head open. Then came a hernia. Then a nail pierced his hand.
Each time, his body held up. Each time, he got back on his feet.
Last year, he got on a motorcycle, and a femur fracture in three places left him hospitalized for twenty days at José María Cullen Hospital in the city of Santa Fe. Twenty days of rehabilitation, waiting to be discharged, counting the hours until he could walk again.
The day he was finally discharged, Alexis was waiting for a hired car in a wheelchair with a friend, right at the hospital entrance. At that moment, a police cruiser was maneuvering to let an ambulance entering with a code red pass. The driver lost control, knocked down the entrance gates, and hit him head-on.
The impact displaced the screws in the leg they had only just operated on. His companion, a 57-year-old woman who threw herself to the ground to dodge the cruiser, and the 31-year-old driver were also injured. The hospital’s deputy director confirmed that everyone was stable and out of danger.
Alexis is now waiting for a sixth surgery.
“I have no lives left”, he said. And yet there he is, in one piece, still telling the story.