“It just wasn’t his time to go,” his wife, Rosario Moreno, said Thursday as she talked about her vigil by her husband’s bedside since the Dec. 7 accident that killed his brother, Edgar Moreno. “My husband is a religious man, and this is what he believes, that it wasn’t his time. ... Thank God for this miracle.”

Rosario Moreno told her husband’s amazing story to a room full of reporters and television cameras at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, where doctors also chronicled his recovery.

So far, Alcides Moreno, 37, has undergone nine operations — five to his stomach — and faces another three-hour surgery Friday on his spine to help him walk.

“This is virtually beyond belief,” said Dr. Herbert Pardes, president and chief executive of the hospital. “It’s an astonishing level of recovery. More work has to be done, but we are optimistic.”

Dr. Philip Barie, chief of critical care and trauma, said Moreno was given 24 units of blood and 19 units of blood plasma following the fall, when doctors were amazed that there was no excessive bleeding from Moreno’s brain. “But he was so unstable we could not move him into an operating room,” said Barie.

He said Moreno suffered injuries to his spinal cord, chest, and abdomen, fractures to his ribs, right arm and both legs. He is expected to be released “in a few weeks” and undergo a year of rehabilitation “to recover as much function” as possible.

Moreno, a U.S. citizen from Ecuador, has been getting around-the-clock care since that chilly Friday morning when he and his brother fell from the East 66th Street apartment building where they routinely washed windows. Edgar Moreno died instantly.

“This has been a very difficult time for us,” said Rosario Moreno. “We are happy for my husband’s recovery, but we are also grieving the death of my brother-in-law.”

She thanked the hospital, and the doctors and nurses who have helped her husband.

The family has health insurance and coverage from workers’ compensation, but the bill, Pardes said, will run into the millions.

“The hospital will try to be supportive, and we hope to protect the family from financially hurting,” he said.

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