WEST NEW YORK, N.J. (CBS 2) — A New Jersey worker nearly killed by a falling air conditioner unit is expected to be released from the hospital Friday.

Doctors said by all accounts Esidras Valles shouldn’t be alive, sitting up, letting them examine him, but the 24-year-old is defying all odds.

“He doesn’t know what happened. He just really found out when he woke up in the hospital. His brother told him that an air conditioning unit fell on him and he was unconscious,” Valles said through translator Bryan Pareja.

That air conditioning unit came crashing down 15 stories from a window at a New Jersey apartment complex, right on top of Valles’ face and splitting his head open.

He needed hundreds of stitches and a liter of blood.

“He had multiple lacerations starting from his eyebrow, going directly from the back of his face, facial fracture,” said Dr. Sapan Majmundar of the Jersey City Medical Center.

“The whole right side hurts, just a little numb, mostly the head area,” Valles said through Pareja.

Valles, who moved here from California a month ago, was working next to the West New York apartment complex when the 40-pound air conditioner slammed on his head.  “From the height that air conditioner fell on him, he feels definitely that someone was watching over him,” he said through Pareja.

Doctors said just an inch away and he could’ve been dead. Still, his recovery was nothing short of a miracle.

Valles said he was considering whether to stay in New Jersey or go back to California, but that he was not going to stop doing what he loves.

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