BIRTHDAY DREAM

Boy inexplicably falls asleep after a minor traffic accident

The Weiss family are used to a quiet, easy life in the city of Manhattan, but since last
Monday, January 20, their life changed terribly. Young Scotty Weiss, was run over by a car
in the morning of his birthday, and since then, he has not woken up from an inexplicable
sleep. The facts happened near the Peter Cooper village, while the boy was on his way to
the British International School of New York, where he was studying. According to his
classmate, they were distracted while talking, walking and eating a bag of chips when
Scotty stepped off the curb and was knocked down by the car. The boy said that Scotty,
stood up without saying a word, and after a while, turned back home.

Yesterday morning, almost two blocks away from his house on Peter Cooper Village, the
young Scotty Weiss was the center of a tragic series of events that started when he was
knocked over by a car while on his way to school. According to the other boy who was
walking with him, they were walking and having some chips when Scotty was hit, and “he
fell on his side, his head in the gutter and his legs on the road”. The boy tells that after the
events, Scotty just stood up back again, shedding no tears, and after a few steps, simply
turned back home. Ms. Anne Weiss, Scotty’s mother, told the newspaper that it felt strange
to see Scotty back so soon, before classes even started, but she knew that by the way the
birthday boy looked, that something was not right; so, she held his hands in hers, until he
pulled back from her and laid on his back. As Mrs. Weiss recalls, she was going to throw
Scotty a birthday party, but none of that happened, for they spent the rest of the day at
Bellevue Hospital.

“Doctors said that the boy is simply sleeping, but they have no idea of what really is going
on in Scotty’s body” are the words that his father, Mr. Weiss, told the newspaper. As he
recalls, he was in the office when his wife called, saying Scotty was in the Hospital. When
he got there, hurrying from his job, he found his wife sitting by the boy’s bed, waiting for
him to wake up. He did the same for a while, when he decided to go back home and get a
bath. A he tells the paper “I went back home, to wash away the fear I had for my son, even
though I’ve had a good life so far, I was absolutely afraid”. Mr. Weiss, told the paper that
when he got home, he received a series of strange calls; assuming they would be from the
Hospital, a report on his son’s state, getting better, or as he feared, worse; but none of those
were the words he expected to hear. Back in the Hospital, the nurses tried to keep Anne
calm, telling her that Scotty’s condition was stable. Still sitting by his side, Anne Weiss saw
her husband again past midnight, when he told her to do the same as he, go home and take a
bath. She, as any mother would do, did not agree to this, and insisted on staying with her
son.
The Weiss family stayed like this for some more time, until a nurse came to check on
Scotty, check his pulse, his glucose dosage, and to inform the parents that the Doctor would
come by soon.

After the Doctor came, and checked on the family, Mr. Weiss suggested, once more, if it
would not be better for her to go back home, as he said, “to let him take charge”. Informing
the family that there would be more tests to realize what Scotty was really going through, a
thought of slight panic, Mrs. Weiss tells the paper that her biggest fear was that Scotty was
in coma, and the doctors did not tell her to avoid her from breaking down to tears. The
doctor who was in charge of Scotty’s health state, told the paper, he “had never seen
something like this: a car accident from which an 8-year-old boy could just walk away
from, and then falling asleep”. As he talked with our reporters, the Doctor, stated that this
case of lethargy was something absolutely abnormal, but still it was not harmful for his
overall health. Belleview Hospital’s nurse staff and doctor staff are all very well prepared
to deal with such cases of almost inexplicable illness or neurological emergencies that
come through the doors. According to a previous report, this hospital receives almost 200
cases of inexplicable neurological conditions every six months.

When it was almost morning of Tuesday, Ms. Weiss accepted on going back home “to feed
the dog, and to see if she was not in the Hospital, maybe Scotty would wake up”. So, as she
told us, after a nurse came by, and her husband stayed with their son, she went home and
did what she had said; fed the dog, and decided to take a bath. On her way out of the
Hospital, another family was dealing with what could be a very similar situation. During all
their time in the Hospital, the Weiss family never had any clarity or even certainty about
their child’s condition. The only comments they received were that he was stable and that it
was some kind of “repairing sleep, as his body did what it needed”. But still, their greatest
fear was that maybe the accident had left poor birthday boy Scotty, in a coma, or worse.

On a short side note, Mrs. Weiss recalled going to the baker on Saturday morning to ask for
a big birthday cake for her son’s special day, that would be the same tragic Monday, in
which the party she had planned, clearly did not happen. And she still wonders, as she tells
our reporter, what would be of her son’s birthday cake after these two days.

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