Alexus Fiordilino is speaking publicly for the first time nearly eight months after her 18-month-old son was pronounced dead at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center and later found alive in the morgue. She said the moment still feels unreal, because she believed she had lost Vincent after he nearly drowned and was rushed to the hospital on Feb. 8.
Her account gives the case its most personal shape yet. Alexus said she begged first responders to save her son after the family found him floating face down in a pool at a Super Bowl party. Police arrived and performed CPR before paramedics took him to Mercy Gilbert, where she said she kept pleading for help as the emergency unfolded. “I thought I lost my baby, and he was back,” she said. “There isn’t a day I don’t think about that day.”
The new attention comes as the family’s attorney says documents point to a possible lapse in care. Those records show a doctor ordered an arterial blood gas test at 6:08 p.m., labs were collected at 6:11 p.m., and officers were asking at 6:13 p.m. whether the gas results were back. Staff said they were not. Vincent was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m., and the lab results came in at 6:38 p.m., 18 minutes later.
That gap is now at the center of the family’s criticism. The attorney says the test was canceled after it was ordered, even though it could have shown Vincent’s blood oxygen level before the death declaration. Alexus said she believes that if doctors had waited for the results, her son would be in a very different place. She also said she felt grateful when she got the call that he was alive, but said she felt terrible that he had been alone in the morgue.
There is still another unresolved piece in the record: why the arterial blood gas test was canceled after it had already been ordered. The doctor did not sign the report until the day after Vincent was found alive, and Gilbert Police are asking the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to review the case for possible felony child abuse charges against the doctor. The family’s attorney says a complaint against the hospital and doctor will be filed next week, while the office says it has not decided whether to review the case.
For Alexus, the focus has moved from the impossible day she thought she had buried her child to the longer aftermath now facing the family. The attorney says Vincent has significant medical issues that will require lifelong care, turning a single hospital error into something that will shape the rest of his life.
