The Burn Journals (3 page)

And now there are even more lights and lots of people wearing masks. They're putting me on a metal table. And it's so cold, it's so cold. And everybody's talking, but nobody's talking to me. Somebody just said my urine is red. I don't want red urine. I want to cry and I want to sleep.

I want to go back.

February 5, 1991
Children's National Medical Center
Washington, D.C.

There's a balloon and a room.

There's a balloon and something funny with breathing.

Why is there so much noise and so much trouble breathing? Why is it always night?

Stop tearing. They are tearing at me. Tearing away my skin. Please stop. Please.

Boys like in algebra. Trouble with the boys. We're standing in the parking garage. Let's go down into the garage. Let's burn. Let's set fires. Let's set me on fire. I don't want to be on fire. I want to be home. Woman with the black curly hair here to save me. Woman with the black curly hair carries me away. Save me.

I think the woman brought me waffles, the woman that takes care of me. She brings me waffles and says I'll be okay and I don't have to worry about anything. Except I don't remember eating them. I think there's something in my mouth and I can't open my eyes.

Stop. It's not time to do this now. Stop trying to unwrap me. Everything hurts. Please don't do this now. I wish I could talk and say something so she'd understand me.

There's something plastic in my mouth keeping me from saying anything.

I can't talk. They give me a big marker so I can write. I'm supposed to write what I want to say. But the marker is too hard to hold and I forget what most of the letters look like.

I try to write. I try to write what I'm thinking, but to write, you have to remember the beginning of the word and the ending of the word you're writing so that you can write down the whole word at the same time.

There's a camera in the balloon. I know because every time the balloon moves, there is a sound like a hidden camera and that means that they're watching me, but I don't know who they are yet.

Now they want me to talk to them with this board? They point at the letters and I blink when I want them to stop. And I spell out the words, but it's hard to remember what I'm trying to say. I want to say, I want to go home. I want to go home. They tell me that home is fine and I'll be home soon. But I want to be home now.

I feel like there's a rod in my side.

If they unplug me, I'll die. If they unplug me, I'll die. I could die. Maybe I should ask them to unplug me. But I don't want to die anymore.

Mom and Dad are always here. And I think I saw Grandma and Grandpa and Nanny and Grandpa and Uncle Tom or somebody that looked like Uncle Tom, but I haven't seen Craig. Where is Craig?

Mom says there's a girl next door who's hurt like me. She says the girl is my age and she got hurt the same day as me. The girl's name is Maggie.

The Hispanic boy comes and lifts my arms. He has brown hair, brown eyes, and he's very nice. Everyone is nice.

Sometimes they come into my room and pull out the tubes and I can't breathe, and they pour salt water down my throat and I still can't breathe. Then they suck the salt water out and put the tubes back in my mouth and I can breathe again.

Mom says that they're going to do surgery on my hands and that I'm lucky to have such a good doctor. He'll use my skin to fix my hands up, the skin from my stomach will be on my hands. They have to fix my hands because my hands are so important, but my back is what hurts. Can they fix my back too?

Doctors and nurses come to move me. Mom and Dad wave and all the beeping machines are following me down the hall and I can see different lights now. This must be surgery. I'll have new hands. Then maybe I can go home soon.

My throat hurts. I'm back in the room with the balloons and Mom and Dad and my new hands. Is everything okay, Mom? Is everything okay, Dad? I try to say it with my mouth, but I've still got the breathing tubes in, so I say it with my eyes. “Everything's okay, honey,” says my mom. She heard me.

There are lots of cards and pictures in my room, lots from people I don't know. Pictures of girls with teddy bears and pictures of Florida. Every day there are more cards and pictures. Mom and Dad like to show me all the pictures and tell me about how everybody cares about me.

Mom says Maggie is too sick to have surgery. Maggie and I are the same because we both got hurt the same day and
we have the same problems, but I'm doing a little better. That's good. I'm winning.

More tearing.

The woman with black curly hair is Tina. She's a nurse. I've never met anyone who's so beautiful and kind. She likes me. I like her. I know by the way we smile at each other.

They get the message board so I can ask a question and I ask about basketball. It's easier now to remember what I'm trying to say, and they are better about guessing what I want to know. They say they'll tape the All-Star Game for me so I can watch it. Someday soon, they'll take the tubes out and let me breathe on my own. Then I can have ice and juice and waffles.

Barbara with the red hair, different than Barbara with the blond hair and the other one they call Barb. Kerry, the young one. Lisa, the night nurse. Janice, like a model. Calvin, funny guy. Amy, Calvin's girlfriend. Reggie, tall guy.

Every day they give me morphine and something they call a Mickey, and then I fall asleep. I wake up when they're cleaning my legs. They always start at the legs. They clean each part three times. And it hurts so bad, but they keep cleaning and cleaning, all the way up my legs, and my arms, and my chest, but they don't touch my face, they say my face isn't bad. They turn me over and start cleaning my back. That hurts the worst. When they're done, they change the sheets and turn me over again.

Mom says they're going to take some of my skin and fly it to Boston to grow in a lab, like the Six Million Dollar Man, and then fly it back and put it on me. She's really happy about that because I don't have enough skin to cover my body. She says they want to cover my body with dead people skin and skin from pigs while I wait for the Boston skin. I don't want the dead people on me.

Mom says Maggie is going to get off the respirator soon. I want to get off the respirator. I'm going to try and get off the respirator.

They take the tubes out and I'm breathing on my own and I can tell Dad is really happy. He keeps telling me that if I can keep the tubes out, I can eat and drink and go home sooner. I try to eat waffles, but it's hard to swallow and it's hard to breathe. It's so hard to breathe. Dad says I have to keep my oxygen saturation up to ninety-eight or ninety-nine, and
he shows me the machine that has that number on it. He says if I breathe deeply, then the numbers will stay up and they won't put the tubes back in. But it's so hard to breathe, I forgot how hard it was. I try to talk, but I can't say much, so I just keep trying to breathe deep so the number is high. The cold air feels good on my face, and Dad is reading, this is so much harder than I remember it. Maybe the tubes aren't so bad. Maybe they should put the tubes back in so I can breathe again.

Surgery again. They're putting skin on my legs, but it's not my skin. It's from a pig, and they're supposed to take my skin off me and send it to Boston.

I hurt. I need something. Lisa gives me something to stop hurting, and it's working, but now I can't see, everything is double.

Ice. Mom is giving me ice, and I never realized this before, but ice is the best-tasting thing in the entire world. I could eat ice for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. I wish I could live on ice. They didn't take my skin off. Maybe tomorrow.

The nice old doctor is here, Dr. Randolph, I think his name is, and the scary-looking tall guy with the glasses. I want to make a joke, but I can't figure out how to say, What's up, Doc? with these tubes in my mouth. They've come to take my skin. They're going to put me to sleep for a little while.

I'm standing. I don't know how, but I'm standing in the street and Tina is there and we're walking together.

I'm awake. Tina is standing over me, and she's so beautiful. She says it's Valentine's Day and I want to ask her if she'll be my valentine, but I'm worried that she doesn't think I'm handsome enough, so instead I ask if I can see my face in the mirror. She holds it up and says it looks so much better than when I first came in, but I don't like to look at it. I hate the way it looks and I cry. She puts the mirror down and puts her face near mine and says she thinks my face looks so good now, and it's going to keep getting better and I won't hardly believe it when I see myself in a few weeks, I'll be so handsome. And when I get better and I can walk again, we'll go out on the town together and get some ice cream because she knows I like ice cream. Do I like Ben & Jerry's? When we get the tubes out, we'll have Ben & Jerry's together, how about that?

I tell Mom with the message board about my dream about standing, and she's really happy about that. I don't tell her I was with Tina.

My friends from school are sending me stuff all the time. Stephen sent me a tape, and they put it on the stereo for me. He put all these Aerosmith songs on it because he knows how much I like them. I miss him and Megan. I hope they're happy.

Dad is reading the comics when I wake up. It's the Sunday comics because it's in color. He holds up the pictures so I can see and starts reading what Charlie Brown says to Lucy and what Lucy says to Charlie Brown and what Garfield says to Odie. I'm getting frustrated with the way he's reading to me like a baby, so I make him get the message board and I write, I can still read, you know.

He laughs and says he's sorry and we read the rest of them together, silently.

They're taking me to surgery. This big bed can fit inside this elevator. But why are we going up? The operating room is down. We're up on the roof now, where the helicopter lands. I remember what it was like up here, flying. I remember the wind. Now we're going back down to surgery. We got lost.

Mom and Dad are holding my hands. I can't talk because the tubes are still in from the surgery, but they ask me how I am and I say, I hurt, with the message board. That makes them sad. They're looking at me with so much love in their eyes, which is so much better than when they look scared. They say they love me, and I use the message board to say I love them too.

Everything hurts, and it's so much worse than before. All I want is for there to be less pain and for them to stop hurting me. I know they mean well. I know it. But God, it hurts.

Mom says they're going to try and bring Maggie down to surgery again. I see the nurses going in and out of her room. Sometimes I wish they came and saw me as much as they see her.

Dad is sitting next to my bed again when I wake up. He's reading and he smiles at me and asks if I need anything. I try to say something, but I always forget that I can't talk, so I try to ask him with my eyes if he'll put the cool cloth on my forehead, and at first he doesn't understand. He grabs the message board, but I don't want to use that stupid thing, I just want him to understand me. I say again with my eyes, Cloth, and this time he hears me and gets the cloth from the bedside table and puts it on my forehead. He says, “Brenner, you've got the most expressive eyes I've ever seen.”

The old doctor comes by, Dr. Randolph, and says he's really happy with my progress, and my parents start asking questions with very serious voices and taking notes, but he stops them and starts talking to me. He tells me that I have an infection in my lung and that it's nothing to worry about and I'll get better soon, but I'll have to stay on the ventilator until I get a little stronger. He says I can't eat or drink anything for a while, but that'll change too. He says he's really proud of me and he knows I'm going to get better.

I just realized how many tubes are coming out of me. There's a big one in my mouth, a smaller one in my nose, something in my shoulder they inject medicine and blood into, a thick plastic one in my rib cage that drains fluid into a little yellow bag, and then there's a little one coming out of my penis. I'm glad my penis didn't get hurt in the fire.

During burn care, Tina puts on some music. She says it'll help relax me. Piano, some guy named George Winston. She really likes it, and I like it too. We have a lot in
common.

There are people running around and shouting something. Code Blue. Code Blue. I wonder what that means. They're running into Maggie's room. Tina comes to see me and tells me not to be scared. She changes my ventilator. I've got to close my eyes for a little while.

Mom says Maggie died last night. She says that's what all the yelling was about. It's hard to remember what happened last night. It's hard to remember anything. I think it's the drugs they give me. The drugs make it hard to remember anything.
I'm waking up from surgery. They were supposed to cover part of my back and my left shoulder. The tubes are out and I'm awake, but something's wrong. I feel dizzy and I can't talk and my chest hurts and my lung feels like someone is standing on it. I can't talk. Someone needs to help me. Get help. My chest, I can't breathe. Mom is here, she's asking me what's wrong, but I can't talk. I try to say, My chest hurts, but there's no air to say it with. She's yelling for the nurses. Now there's a doctor here. They're pushing my parents out of the room. Mom calls out that she loves me. I still can't breathe. This guy is asking me questions. I don't know. I don't know. Just fix it. Just fix it. They're yelling at each other and someone is sticking something through my rib cage. Oh God, that hurts. I can feel it pushing through the skin and the muscle between my ribs and into my lung. Oh God. This hurts too much. I'm so scared.