This story is part of the My Unsung Hero series, from the Hidden Brain team. It features stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.
When Alek Hermon thinks back to the worst week of his life, he also thinks of his unsung hero, Ray. It was 2019, and Hermon's father, Michael, was in a coma and non-responsive after a traumatic brain injury.
Hermon and his family wanted to be sure there was someone with their dad at all times. So, the seven of them all chose a shift in the intensive care unit, at a hospital in Dublin, Calif. Hermon volunteered to take the hardest time: early mornings between 3 and 6 a.m.
"It's by far the most traumatic, difficult thing I've ever gone through," Hermon recalled.
The only person he interacted with in those hours was a nurse named Ray. Ray came almost every shift to take care of Hermon's father's vital signs and basic needs. At first, Hermon didn't pay much attention to Ray. In fact, Hermon had a low opinion of him.
"He was making some kind of allusions to Christianity and the power of prayer," Hermon recalled. "I am an atheist and my father was a lifelong atheist. And I think I just had this kind of harsh judgment of him."
But over the week or so that Hermon was there, he started to appreciate Ray. Most nights, Hermon would read one of his father's favorite books to him, like Dune or an Isaac Asimov novel.
"Ray started commenting like, 'Oh, I love that book,' or, 'I've read this book,'" Hermon said. "He asked me questions about my dad. He asked me what he was like, what his interests were."
Eventually it became clear that Hermon's father had suffered whole brain death, and Hermon made the difficult decision to take his father off life support. His father was an organ donor, so he was taken to an operating room, where nearly a dozen doctors and nurses were waiting to remove his organs and tissues. For Hermon, it felt surreal.
"I'm watching them remove his intubation and his IV, and I watch him flatline and die," Hermon said.
"You're surrounded by people, but they are all completely anonymous because they're wearing masks and all of this protective equipment ... It's a really strange feeling, of being surrounded by strangers but also being utterly alone."
After his father died, Hermon left the operating room. Numb and alone, he started walking down the hallway.
"I hear feet running down the hall and someone calling my name. And I turn around and it's Ray," Hermon said.
"He's ripping off all of the sterilization gear and I realize he was actually one of the assistants in this room who was going to conduct this surgery. And his eyes are completely full of tears."
Ray embraced Hermon and held him in his arms.
"I remember my knees basically going slack and just crying into this stranger's chest and him crying like full force, weeping with me," Hermon said. "He saw the real need at that moment that I had and stepped up in a way that was so beyond what honestly anyone else was prepared to do for me."
Hermon still thinks about Ray, a total stranger who went out of his way to make sure that he wasn't alone in his grief.
"He took my suffering seriously," Hermon said. "He took my family seriously. I was a real person to him."
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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