A long, quiet ride
After the call from Ryan, Vives and Marcos' father, Chris Ornellas, drove 45 minutes from their home in Sausalito, California, across the San Francisco Bay to Oakland – mostly in silence. They promised each other that they wouldn’t jump to conclusions until they heard from the medical team. They also made a pact not to cry in front of Marcos – a promise they sometimes found difficult to keep.
Seeing their son with large plastic braces wrapped around his torso and neck, an oxygen mask and a tangle of IV tubing, surrounded by beeping monitoring equipment, was jarring, Vives said. But he was awake when they arrived, and she remembered Marcos choking up when he asked his parents, "This is going to change my life, right?" His mother whispered, "We'll see."
"We were panicking and trying to catch our breath to figure out what was going on," Ornellas said. "But the doctors patiently explained everything, showed us the MRIs, explained that the issue was Marcos' fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, explained the implications of a spinal cord injury, and walked [us] through the surgical procedure. They were amazing. We immediately placed all our trust in them."
Marcos' six-hour surgery was successful. Sun placed a titanium cage around Marcos' shattered fifth vertebra to support his neck and spine and to encourage bone regeneration around the damaged area. He picked out the fragments of crushed bone and drilled off the protrusion impeding Marcos' spinal cord.
Glimmers of hope
In the days after his surgery, Marcos lay in his hospital bed with spinning thoughts: What would life be like now? Why him? It wasn't fair. Those thoughts lasted about two days, his father said, "and we've never heard them from him again."
Marcos said he grabbed onto the glimmer of hope his surgeon shared with him and fueled it with his own grit and determination.
"When he said I had a chance, when he told me my spinal injury was incomplete, that just changed everything in my mind," Marcos said. "I had a chance and decided, 'I'm going to do everything in my power to get better.'"
Marcos was admitted to UCSF Benioff Oakland for 10 days, but minuscule signs of progress began appearing in the first few days.
"When I first got to rehab, I just sat in the wheelchair and wasn't able to move anything at all. A physical therapist had to lift my arm for me to stretch it to keep my range of movement,” Marcos said. "I was asking myself if PT was really going to help me and is what I'm doing going to change anything at all?
"But the reality was, yes, it made a huge difference, and it was really important for me to keep my mind focused. I just needed to keep pushing and had to stay positive."
The first sign of success was a slight movement in Marcos' right thigh almost a week after the accident. His father asked whether it was involuntary, but Marcos said he was visualizing the movement and trying to make his body respond. He continued to push himself, aided by loud, motivating music played by his physical therapist, Anthony Ong, during grueling exercise sessions.
"I decided to make the best of it and try to have fun," Marcos said. "When the people around you are positive, it makes you positive... and it just made me want to fight more."
Encouraged by his steady progress, Marcos asked his dad to document his physical therapy sessions on video. He played them back often, reminding himself of his daily accomplishments.
"Filming Marcos was very emotional but also filled with joy at seeing him able to sit up, stand and, later, take his first steps," Ornellas said. "The videos were a great motivator, and if he felt he was hitting a plateau, we could remind him of how far he had progressed from a week or month before."
His family never left his side and cheered each flicker of movement.
