Thirty-four-year-old Eleno Ruiz cannot move any part of his body. He cannot stand up or speak. He has been in the same bed on an artificial respirator for about a year. His wastes accumulate in catheter bags, and although the doctors have told him that he will be quadriplegic for the rest of his life, he does not want to die. In the United States, he only has two siblings, and because he is uninsured, the family fears that the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey will disconnect him. The $1.5 million that they owe in medical costs is going up every day, and the family claims that the doctors do not want him there anymore.

“Although they’ve treated my brother well here, and they saved him from a heart attack and an infection, I’m scared that someday they’ll take him off the respirator, because since November they have used various tactics to get me to sign a paper authorizing it. But this is something that goes against our religion,” said Eleno’s brother, Francisco Ruiz, who belongs to the Pentecostal Church and sees assisted death as a sin.

“If God has him here living still, it’s for a reason, and only He can call us to leave this world,” said Francisco Ruiz. He communicates with his brother, who is conscious of his condition, through a code based on blinking. Blinking once means no and twice means yes.

“If I disconnect him, it would be like killing myself,” he said Francisco.

Kristine Walsh, spokesperson for the New Brunswick hospital, says that because of patient privacy protection laws, she cannot speak specifically about this case, but she denies that he has been treated poorly.

“He is being attended to under fair conditions, and we’re doing what we can,” she added.

On July 1 last year, when Eleno was on his way to work at his gardening job in New Jersey, a truck carrying fruit ran him over on a highway in Flemington. The impact broke the bicycle he was riding in three pieces and shattered his life, leaving uncertain his dream of helping his parents in Oaxaca, Mexico, who paid a coyote to help him cross the border in 2004.

The man who ran him over had not slept in 24 hours, was drunk and had consumed cocaine. He is now in jail serving a six-year sentence. Although Eleno, through his blinking code, says that he forgives him, his family hopes that by September they will win a lawsuit against the driver to be able to pay the hospital bill and take Eleno to Mexico, which is his wish.

Lawyer Milagros Alvarez says that because Eleno Ruiz is undocumented, the hospital has not tried every method available to try to improve his condition, as was done in the case of “Superman” Christopher Reeve, who had the same condition and experienced great progress due to therapy and treatment.

“They not only pressured us at first to disconnect him, but they also subjected him to torture, with nurses telling him all the time that he was a burden and that the best thing for him to do would be to decide to die,” said the lawyer, adding that now the hospital is trying to do whatever possible to send Eleno to Mexico.

“They even found a hospital there with help from the consulate, but if they send him there they will leave him to die because he doesn’t have resources to pay for his care,” added Alvarez, who says that the family wants to send him home only when they receive the money from the lawsuit to guarantee that he will not need anything for what is left of his life.