An Arizona mother has broken her silence over the harrowing ordeal her family endured after her 18-month-old son was pronounced dead at a hospital emergency department, only to be discovered breathing in the morgue more than five hours later. Alexus Fiordilino says the experience has left wounds that will never fully heal, telling US media plainly: "There's no happy ending."
The nightmare began on February 8 when toddler Vincent was found floating in the family's swimming pool during a Super Bowl party. Alexus and her husband Angelo performed CPR on the child before emergency services transported him to Mercy Gilbert Medical Center.
Declared dead, then found breathing
Vincent arrived at the hospital and was treated in the emergency department. Within an hour, the attending physician, Dr Aryan Toosi, pronounced the toddler dead at 6.20pm. His parents were asked to say their goodbyes just six minutes later.
Alexus recalled the devastating moment she held her son and noticed how cold he felt. She said her mother-in-law, while embracing Vincent, believed she could hear him breathing. According to a police report, other individuals present also witnessed what appeared to be the child drawing breath, with hospital staff making a brief attempt to revive him before Dr Toosi halted the effort.
The police report detailed an officer hearing a nurse say "I have a pulse" before the doctor intervened, stating: "As long as there are no objections, I'd like to call time of death." A police officer present during the child's transfer to the morgue also reported hearing what sounded like a gasp from Vincent.
Five and a half hours after the death declaration, staff from the county medical examiner's office arrived at the morgue to collect the boy's body and discovered he was, in fact, alive. Vincent was urgently transferred to Phoenix Children's Hospital, where testing confirmed he had survived but had sustained severe brain damage requiring permanent, ongoing care.
Family questions the medical decisions made that night
Alexus said Dr Toosi had cited the toddler's blood gas levels, telling her that Vincent's blood was too acidic and that even if revived he would face a poor quality of life and ongoing suffering. "He came back, like maybe not even five, 10 minutes later and he's like, 'Yeah, so his pH levels are too high. They're too acidic. So even if we are to bring him back, it wouldn't be a good form of life. He'd be suffering. So I think it's best that I call the time for it'," she recounted.
Lawyers representing Alexus and Angelo have directly challenged that justification. Hospital documentation, it is understood, shows the blood gas results Dr Toosi cited were not actually received until 18 minutes after the 6.20pm time of death was declared, raising serious questions about the basis on which the decision was made.
The family's legal team has focused its attention on both the emergency department's management of Vincent's care and specifically on Dr Toosi's conduct during those critical minutes.
A mother's grief over her son's time alone
For Alexus, the detail she cannot move past is that her young son spent hours alone in a hospital morgue while still alive. "He was alone. He was alone for five-and-a-half hours. How do you do that to a baby?" she said. "It like, doesn't end."
She said that when she first arrived at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, she had trusted that the staff would save her child: "I thought, 'OK, these people are going to help me.'" Instead, she was told she had to say goodbye, a moment she described as almost unbearable.
In response to questions, the operator of Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, Dignity Health, described the situation as "heartbreaking" and said it respected the privacy of the patient, offering no further public comment on the specific allegations.
Vincent remains alive but requires around-the-clock care as a result of the brain damage he sustained. His family continues to seek answers over the sequence of events that left an 18-month-old boy alone in a morgue, still breathing.
