Window washer who fell 47 floors has recovered

Jan 4, 2008, 22:18 GMT

New York - Nearly one month after plunging 47 floors to the ground, a window washer has spoken for the first time in a hospital bed, startling his wife who admonished him not to touch the nurses, news reports said Friday.

The small platform supporting Alcides Moreno, 37, and his brother Edgar broke loose and the two plunged into a free fall while washing windows of a glass building on the upper Eastside in Manhattan on December 7. Alcides survived, but not his brother.

News reports said Alcides had received 24 pints of blood and 19 pints of plasma and underwent several operations. To help bring him back to consciousness, his wife, Rosario Moreno, lifted his hand every day to her face, hoping the tactile sensation would encourage him.

On Christmas Day, he woke up in in the New York Presbyterian Hospital and reached out to stroke the wrong face - that of a nurse.

Rosario Moreno visited her husband on Thursday, telling a live television interview afterwards that she told him to touch her instead.

'Apparently he tried to do it to one of the nurses,' she said. 'I looked at him and said, 'You're not supposed to do that. I'm your wife, you touch your wife'.'

She said she was stunned when he replied, 'What did I do?' 'It stunned me because I didn't know he could speak.'