A ventilator tube funnels oxygen into Julio Lorenzo's lungs. The 51-year-old air-conditioning repairman lies on a gurney inside the intensive care unit at Metropolitan Hospital of Miami, just south of Miami International Airport. It's mid-afternoon on April 30, three weeks after the lively, joke-cracking Cuban immigrant arrived complaining about a mild pain in his right testicle. The machine hisses and every four seconds, it belts out a loud sucking sound.
Photo courtesy of the Lorenzo family
Julio Lorenzo brain-dead at Metropolitan Hospital.
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To his left, a boxy machine on a pole with five wheels at the bottom indicates his blood pressure is a very low 67/30. His olive-color eyelids are shut tight, and his stubbly face is impassive. His hands and feet are swollen from fluid retention.
Lorenzo's girlfriend, Mileidys Cordero, a petite, long-haired brunette with a few freckles on her cheeks, grips his unresponsive left hand. Her soft brown eyes well up with tears. Cordero is flanked by Lorenzo's 60-year-old brother Rafael, who doesn't say a word, and the repairman's 49-year-old close friend, Raul Urquiaga.
Then, suddenly, Lorenzo's 26-year-old son, Andy, who's sitting in a chair nearby, buries his ruddy face in a white pillow. His father, he sobs, used it as a head support.
At 2:04 p.m., Lorenzo's lanky body spasms and his arms reach up for a few seconds. Then he goes limp. An auburn-haired nurse monitoring the machines rushes out and returns less than a minute later with the charge nurse, who breaks the news. "I'm sorry," she tells the family. "He's gone."
Lorenzo's life was abruptly and unexpectedly cut short, but the fight over his death is just beginning. His trip to the hospital is a surreal revelation of how patients are treated in one of Miami's oldest and most respected community hospitals. Physician Maray Rocher Gomez — who treated Lorenzo on April 8, according to his medical records — did not respond to two messages left on her cell phone. The number was provided by the hospital, which has no other number for her. Jaime Roncancio, another doctor listed on the Metropolitan documents, declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
"What happened to Mr. Lorenzo is a tragic situation," says Metropolitan's chief compliance officer, Carlos Garcia. "This matter is under investigation." He declined further comment.
Metropolitan has established roots in Miami-Dade County. It was founded in 1963 as Pan American Hospital by 13 Cuban exile doctors who planned to serve newly arrived immigrants from the island. It was the place where iconic exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa spent the last moments of his life in 1997.
But during the past decade, the hospital has been sued 33 times. Most complaints were dismissed, but nine plaintiffs received settlements. There have been three wrongful death lawsuits. One was dismissed, but on October 12, 2001, Pan American paid the family of patient Solange Delatour $2.8 million. (Court records of that case have disappeared.)
Before that, there was the well-publicized scandal in 2000, when then-Chief Executive Carolina Calderin and two Pan American doctors sued hospital founder Modesto Mora, his wife, then-Chief Financial Officer Roberto Tejidor, and other board members for defamation. Calderin claimed she had been removed in an attempt "to cover up... misdeeds." She asserted the defendants had been "looting" Pan American. Among other things, she said Mora's wife had a $60,000-per-year no-show job and that his sister lived rent-free in a home owned by the hospital. She also claimed Tejidor had falsified a $26,000 check request.
Pan American officials countered that Calderin had been fired after buying stock in a company negotiating a contract with the hospital. Tejidor was later criminally charged for harassing her, but those charges were dropped.
In 2001, the former chief executive's lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
The company suffered financial problems in the years that followed, abruptly closing 12 clinics, and then — in 2004 — filed for bankruptcy. Two years later, a Puerto Rican company bought the hospital for $34 million and renamed it.
Of course, Lorenzo had no idea about Metropolitan's troubled past when he went to the emergency room this past April 8. His buddy Urquiaga, who was in the hospital room during his death, says Lorenzo was an easygoing, charismatic man. Born the same year Fidel Castro took over, he was twice divorced. He had a son, Andy, with his first wife and a daughter, Arelys, with his second spouse. "He deeply loved his children," Urquiaga says. "They miss him terribly."
Lorenzo and Urquiaga fled Cuba together in 1994. They were intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard and transported to the Guantánamo naval base, where they stayed for close to a year.
In 1995, the pair made it to Miami, where Lorenzo studied and earned a license as an air-conditioning repairman. He lived in Hialeah with his older brother, Rafael. "We would have barbecues every weekend," Urquiaga recalls. "He was a regular guy who was always on call because of the nature of his job. He was always working."
In early 2008, Lorenzo's son, Andy, fled Cuba and joined his father in Hialeah. (His daughter remains on the island.) Later that year, Lorenzo ran into Cordero, who was an old flame from Cuba. They rekindled a romance and moved in together last year. Andy stayed in Hialeah while the couple found an efficiency off Flagler Street and 57th Avenue, about a five-minute drive from Metropolitan.
